And Tiger Wins Yet Again

Need I say more?  Sure, he missed the cut at the British Open.  But does that stop him from coming back with guns blazing?  No, not at all.  So for all of you doubters and haters out there, here is just another reason why Tiger Woods is the number one player in the world and will be until the day he retires.

Tiger won again.  Are you surprised?  I’m not.  He comes into the Buick Open, an old sponsor of Tiger actually, having been dropped due to decreased car sales, after missing the cut in his last event, the British Open.  Granted, the field this past week at the Buick was not one filled with Phils and Cinks, but none the less it was still four rounds of golf and a he still had to post some decent scores to find himself at the top of the leaderboard.  Of course, coming off a first round starring at only one under par, he was a little nervous about how the rest of the week would pan out.  But that did not stop him for going 19 under the next three days.  Yeah, I said that correct.  Tiger finished the tournament at 20 under par.  (That is a lot of stinking birdies for those of you that do not watch and or play golf.)

Hey Rick Reiley, Tiger got mad this week.  Did you see that?  He slammed a club down after hitting a ball into the water, on hole thirteen I believe.  Are you going to write an article calling him a baby and a poor sport?  I mean, come on Rick, think of the children.

(Can you tell that I was bitter back there?  Rick Reiley, famed sports writer, recently called Tiger a handful of names and basically belittled Tiger for having a temper.  You can find my reaction a couple of pages back on this blog and you can search for it on Yahoo! Sports to see his reaction.  However you look at it he was out of line to say those things about Tiger.  OK, I am better now.)

This week was a test for Tiger.  It was a test for many reasons, actually.  The first being that he is fresh off a missed cut at the British.   So if nothing else he was rested. But the second is that he is not hitting his driver all that well.  He made some severe swing changes coming off his surgery at the start of this year, and has switched to a new Nike driver. (I hated it when he left Titleist but I guess dollar bills speak louder than fairways) at the end of last season.  The driver, granted, is not the reason that he is missing so many fairways, but it is easy to blame equipment changes on a turn of missed carpets.)

The PGA Championship is coming up in a couple of weeks, and having not won a major this year (he took eight months off so give him a break) and missed a cut in one he has to shut some mouths with a decent finish, better yet a win in the PGA.  He has the talent, that is obvious, but does he have his mind back in the position to win a major?  It sure doesn’t look like it to me at this point.

Tiger is only thirty-three years old.  I keep going back to that, as this is a big deal when it comes to expectations.  Everyone thinks he needs to win every tournament he enters and he doesn’t, all he cares about are the two (perhaps three) records that Jack currently holds.  Tiger will be, if he retired tomorrow, the best player ever to swing a club, but he wants those records.  He wants more majors than anyone in the history of the game.  And he wants more tournament wins than anyone has ever has as well.  Again, he wants more than anyone ever will win.  The third, and more than likely the one that will never happen, is holding all four majors in the same season.  Like I have said before, he had them all at once, but not in the same year.  No one has ever done that and quite frankly I am not sure anyone ever will.

So to all of you haters out there, shut up.  I am sick and tired of hearing you talk about Tiger being in a slump or Tiger having hit his peak.  He has not it his peak, and he is quite a few years from it actually.  He will win more majors.  He will win more tournaments, and he will make more money than you and I can even count before his career is over.  So unless you are trying to make yourself feel better about your game by saying he is in a slump, shut your damn mouths.