Conceding putts: a question of strategy
Thomas Bjorn stood on the 16th green at Dove Mountain outside Tucson with a tantalizing chance to take down Tiger Woods in the 2011 Match Play Championship. Then, suddenly, Bjorn became extraordinarily generous.
As it turned out, his generos- ity was calculated.
Bjorn led the match 1-up, and Woods needed to make a 3-foot putt to halve the hole. If he missed, Bjorn would move 2-up with two holes to play — but Woods never had a chance to miss, because Bjorn conceded the putt.
“A lot of people asked me how I could give him a putt of that length, and I said I didn’t want the crowd to get behind him,” Bjorn said in an interview this month. “I think Tiger was surprised I gave it to him. But if he holes it, the crowd goes crazy.”
The world’s best golfers figure to face a similar predicament at some point in this week’s Match Play Champi- onship at Harding Park. And, as Bjorn’s benevolence four years ago illustrates, a lot goes into the decision on when to concede a putt.
This is a fascinating element of match play, in part because nearly all PGA Tour events are stroke play. There’s no choice in that format: Players must
putt their ball until it disappears into the hole.
But twice a year, for this week’s tournament and the Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup, the players become the sole, subjective arbiters of short putts.
The list of factors is long. How reliably does your opponent make putts inside 3 or 4 feet? What’s the status of the match? How far along is the match? Do the players get along off the course? And could the crowd’s reaction influence the match, as Bjorn suggested?
Two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson reached the semifinals of the Match Play Championship in 2011, and he has also played in the Ryder Cup three times and the Presidents Cup once. Watson, ranked No. 4 in the world as he heads to San Francisco, makes his decisions mostly on instinct.
“When I’m playing a match against the members at my home course, I never give putts. I make them all putt out,” Watson said, chuckling. “But it’s obviously different when it comes to pros.
“You might give some putts early in the round, just because it’s not a close match yet. Then you wait to see if they give you putts. You might be friendly because they’ve been friendly to you. There’s really no secret. It all comes down to the moment.”
The most famous moment in this regard occurred in the 1969 Ryder Cup, when Jack Nicklaus picked up Tony Jacklin’s ball mark on the final green in the final match. Nicklaus’ decision to concede Jacklin’s 2-foot putt resulted in a 16-16 tie between the U.S. and Europe, the first deadlock in Ryder Cup history.
This was widely hailed as a noble act of sportsmanship, especially given the event’s struggle to remain relevant at the time. It helped define Nicklaus, on his way to becoming the game’s greatest player ever, as one of its ultimate gentlemen.
But not all members of Nicklaus’ team applauded his move. According to the book “Draw in the Dunes,” U.S. captain Sam Snead once said, “We went over there to win, not to be good ol’ boys. I never would have given a putt like that, except maybe to my brother.”
Postscript to the moment: Nicklaus and Jacklin later collaborated in building a course in Bradenton, Fla., and named it The Concession Golf Club. The club will host this year’s NCAA women’s and men’s championships, starting May 22.
At any rate, Snead’s disapproval shows the murky nature of conceding putts. Golf usually allows little room for sub- jectivity — cold numbers on a scorecard determine the winner — until it’s match play and one player faces a 3-footer.
One old trick is giving an opponent every short putt for the first 14 or 15 holes and then making him putt. By that point, the logic goes, he hasn’t attempted a 3-footer in a few hours.
“Snead and Seve (Ballesteros) did that, and so did Gary Player and Paul Azinger,” NBC analyst Johnny Miller said. “There are guys who will try to get under your skin, but most guys on tour are nonconfrontational. The confrontational guys, Lee Trevino and Seve and Tiger, are the best match-play players.”
Woods, who won six consecutive national championships in match play — the U.S. Junior Amateur three times followed by the U.S. Amateur three times — is notoriously stingy about conceding putts. He’s perfectly willing to partake in gamesmanship, even against a close friend.
That’s what happened in the final of the World Match Play Championship in England in 1998. Woods squared off against good buddy Mark O’Meara, who had become Woods’ mentor in the preceding years.
Woods had steamed to a big, early lead, when O’Meara plopped an approach shot within about 18 inches of the hole (by his recollection). Woods missed his birdie putt and then turned his back on O’Meara, suggesting he would need to putt out.
O’Meara, stunned, shouted, “Hey, Tiger, you’re not going to make me putt this, are you?” Woods replied, “Well you haven’t won a hole yet, have you?” O’Meara made the putt, marched over to Woods and made his displeasure clear.
Maybe the golf gods were paying attention, because O’Meara rallied to win the match. Bjorn, after giving Woods that putt in Arizona in 2011, also won their match. There might be a lesson in there somewhere.