Chris Lewis's Golf Blog

Things to Do in Tulsa When You're Dead; the Hoylake and Swing Tweak Theories

If you're a player, your hopes to win are dead. So you keep repeating to yourself: 18 more holes, collect check, go home, embrace air conditioner, later wife and kids.

If you're a local spectator, your hopes of seeing someone challenge Tiger are dead. So you remind yourself that even though Southern Hills is one of the best major venues there is, ain't no way you're seeing PGA Tour golfers in these climes again for at least fifteen or twenty years, so better do it now. (And, if you're really nuts, you put on a big tiger suit, to quadruple your chances of leaving the course in an ambulance.)

If you're a golf writer, all your competitive storylines are dead, so you mostly write the obvious "Tiger vs. Ames" or "Tiger Never Loses with Saturday Night Lead" stories that your editor expects you write, lest you get fired.

Here, we are lucky enough to have no editors (couldn't you tell?), so we can fast forward to Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday's story, "Why Tiger Won."

Basically, there are two (not necessarily mutually exclusive) explanations: the Hoylake Theory and the Swing Tweak Theory.

The Hoylake Theory advances the notion that Woods is playing super-conservatively, i.e., hitting very few drivers, which leads to cleaner scorecards and inevitably and invariably to victory. After the second round a notable proponent, Golfweek's Jeff Rude, wrote:

We saw last summer what can happen when the ball travels so far and Woods can hit long and mid irons off the tee on par 4s. He won the British Open at Royal Liverpool, aka Royal Yellow Brick Road, where he used only one driver.

We’re seeing something of a replay here. Woods doesn’t need his driver much at Southern Hills. He used the big club, arguably his most problematic stick in recent years, three times in the second round. More to the point,  the driver set up only one of his eight birdies in Round 2.

Tiger hates the Hoylake Theory because it implies that (a) the driver remains a problem for him; (b) he's not always smart enough to employ the wisest strategy, leaving the driver in the bag more often. That's why when someone stands up in a pressroom (as someone did yesterday afternoon) and says, "[Today] was reminiscent of the kind of golf that you played at Hoylake in terms of the percentages you were playing," Woods swats it away by saying, "It's totally different, a totally different golf course."

I love this about Tiger. Never gives an inch on this kind of question. And you can see why. Admitting he's playing conservatively would expose him to suggestions that if he played that way every week, and hit the driver more rarely, he would win (even) more often (than he already does).

The Swing Tweak Theory has this week been prominently advanced this week three times, by my count (discluding a quick mention by Rude on the Golfweek blog).

The first was on Thursday when on TNT Bobby Clampett quite unbelievably said, "I really like the way [Woods] is swinging right now, going back to some of the things that back in 2000 he was working on."

Naturally, I though Clampett was bonkers when he said that. Then, on yesterday's telecast, Peter Kostis did a swing analysis, and said that Tiger had moved closer to the ball and gotten his hands higher in backswing, the latter making for a less-rounded swing plane. (A less-rounded swing plane could be interpreted as being closer to 2000-- maybe that's what Clampett was talking about.) Kostis didn't seem to be making it up. To give you an idea, the position of Woods' hands at the top was closer to the "old" position (in the New York Times graphic above) than the "new" one. (I know. Shoulda done a screen grab from the TV yesterday. My bad.)

(UPDATE 2:10 PM EDT: For what it's worth, Faldo just finished saying something laudatory about Tiger's having returned to his "old follow-through.")

This morning brought a Pete McDaniel story called "Swing Fix Has Been the Key for Woods." In a nutshell, it relates (on the basis of a conversation with Hank Haney, who evidently is still home with his wife) that Woods has gotten both less flippy with his release, and less likely to hold his release off-- which to me sounds like he's simply releasing the club well, which (as the article's title says) is more like a swing fix (righting a simple wrong) than a swing tweak (a change in method).

Hmm. That seems pretty basic. It could be that's all there is too it, and the TV guys just got carried away by suggesting it was a bigger deal. (Pete might have written the piece mainly to correct them). Alternatively, Pete could be holding back something more interesting for the print product (that is, next week's issue of Golf World). Or, it could be that Hank simply didn't tell him that much when they spoke. Don't get me wrong-- Haney is usually one of the most helpful and candid people in the world with people he knows. Maybe Hank, considering his wife's health, is just not in the mood to talk golf swing right now. Of maybe Hank, knowing how little Tiger himself likes to talk mechanics (same reasons as above-- avoiding second-guessing) was less than expansive in his conversation with McDaniel.

Wow. That's a lot of could bes, maybes, and ifs.

After Tiger wins today there will be a lot of questions about his dominance, and Stephen Ames, and (if post-major-win goofiness is what it usually is) his wife, his kid, and even his dogs. I hope somebody asks Tiger about the Swing Tweak stuff, too, even if he swats it away.   

When He's On He's On: Why Tiger Doesn't Falter (And Why He Doesn't Stage Comebacks...)

After the end of Friday's play a colleague of mine was moved to recall a press room scene from the 2000 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. Moments after Tiger Woods finished up his first-round 65 that year, a British journalist pushed his chair up to his computer, nodded his head, and said, to no one in particular, "Well, that was a nice U.S. Open."

Woods' 63 yesterday summoned that kind of memory, and those kinds of feelings. Although it was the second round (as opposed to the first) it seemed to slam the door shut on the championship, annulling the possibility that anyone else might win.

It's hardly unusual to see Tiger looking invincible before Sunday. Every golf fan knows that Tiger has held the Saturday night lead at all 12 of his major victories. Less well-known is that he's 7-0 at majors when he has a Friday night lead.

Which leads to our principal, Big Think Piece-type theme.

For a few weeks I've had in the back of my mind a piece John Hawkins penned in Golf World just before Carnoustie. Titled "Comeback "(S)kid," it pondered the fact that Woods, unlike Jack Nicklaus, had never come from behind to win a major. This has always been a head-scratcher, the weird obverse to Woods' unbeatability with a Saturday (or Friday) night major-week lead.

I kind of wish I'd written the piece, because I think I have the answers to this particular mystery.

The first reason Tiger hasn't come from behind to win a major is that nowadays it's too hard to mount a Sunday charge, simply because major set-ups are so difficult.

The second reason relates directly to this week. Tiger doesn't come from behind at majors because if he has it that week-- if he's on his game, and playing well enough to win-- he's already in the lead by Saturday, or well before then. Come Sunday, he'll play more or less the same way he played on Saturday, and Friday, and Thursday. It's all there on paper: if you look at Woods' scores at his major victories, there is seldom much variance between the four rounds-- 66's are usually followed by 68's, 68's by 70's, and so forth.

If, on the other hand, you look at Jack Nicklaus's major-winning scores, you see 72's followed by 65's, and 68's followed by 76's-- you get a kind of variance you never get out of Woods. Another way to say it: Tiger has tended to be more consistent on a day-to-day basis than Nicklaus during their major-victory weeks.

There have, of course, been exceptions. Winning his first Masters in 1997, Woods went from 70 to 66 on the first two days. At the '05 Masters Tiger opened with a 74 and followed with a 66. Yesterday, of course, Tiger's 63 followed a 71. But these three cases have something in common-- they were big drops in score between the first round and the second. When there's a big swing with Tiger, it's almost always the golf equivalent of coughing up an early-week fur ball. With Nicklaus the swings could be up or down, and could also happen on the weekend. The important point: with Tiger the swings are never down, and never happen on the weekend.

This morning the amateur statistician-slash-Math Geek in me decided to see if I could formalize these observations and demonstrate Tiger's steadiness with a single numeric comparison. I looked at the individual round scores for the five majors each man won after reaching age twenty-five, and looked at the standard deviations between scores for each week's play. (You can think of the standard deviation more or less as the average difference between rounds.) Tiger's average major-week standard deviation-- let's call it his "Majors Consistency Index," based on that five-major sample-- was 2.53. Nicklaus's was 3.10. (No, I didn't crunch the numbers with my slide rule. I just plugged them into an internet SD calculation tool.) I don't doubt that if I worked all their majors through-- including the ones they didn't win-- the portrait would be just the same, with Tiger being more consistent from day to day than Jack.

The lesson of all of this? I guess it's that considering that consistency, Tiger has probably shot his high and low rounds for the week, and will probably shoot two 67's this weekend (his average thus far, producing the lowest possible standard deviation) and walk the championship out of Tulsa.

Since When Was This a Ryder Cup Year?

I love the BBC's minute-by-minute "As It Happened" recaps of major championship rounds, but I particularly relished Friday's (for which, click here), as it featured cool little indicators at the points Europeans and Americans made big moves (like falling in or out of the lead). The great thing is that the icons represent either Europeans or Americans-- there's no such thing as Scots, Englanders, Spaniards, or (Lord knows) Australians. The view from over there: we're playing the Ryder Cup even when we're not playing the Ryder Cup.

Not Actually Being at Southern Hills? Priceless.

First of all, thank God Chris Berman wasn't doing the TV play-by-play yesterday. I shudder to think what he'd have done with Graeme Storm.

I'll also hallelujah for not having to cover this thing in person. Never been so happy to miss a major.

We should give thanks too for John Daly, who-- let's be honest-- is one of only three or four guys who could replace the heat as this tournament's headliner.

In a TNT featurette yesterday JD was asked how he was dealing with the soaring temps. He shrugged, "I just drink my Diet Cokes, smoke me about a pack and a half of cigarettes, and go on."

I'm probably not the first person this week to wonder which is more likely-- Daly winning, or keeling over from heat prostration. But I'm not just joking around about it. I actually think both are real possibilities. On the possibility of him winning, two of TGC's* best talking heads seem to agree with me. On their post-game yesterday Tim Rosaforte smilingly recalled an old Ray Floyd line about fat boys playing well when it's warm. (If Tim Herron can win at Colonial in the mid-90's, why not Daly at Southern Hills in the low 100's?)

Then Frank Nobilo pointed out that anyone near the top of the Thursday evening leaderboard is in (ahem) great shape, because conditions will make slow-starters wave the white flag early. "That's why you want to be out in front at the end of Day One," he said. "You know the heat's going to knock a lot of people out. They're just going to say, aw, this is too hot."      

(Somebody, by the way, should give Nobilo some props one of these days. If either one of the networks imported him, he'd outshine half their present talent.)

(Uh, I hope you realize I am indeed joking about Daly actually winning.)

Although you wouldn't know it with all the Daly ballyhoo in the morning papers, Elvis is still in the building. Watching his TV highlights was a weird experience. TNT, TGC and ESPN all made it look like he played a monster round: his oh-my-gosh driver-driver to 20 feet on the 650-yard 5th was surrounded by footage of a half-dozen great approach shots. If he hit any bad shots, no one seemed to have any footage of it. Yet at the end of the day he'd shot one-over, hitting only 10 greens-- even though he hit 10 fairways! Wow. How'd that happen? That's not Akron-quality iron play. Looks like I may have been right about Tiger not playing well here, but for reasons other than I thought.

(By the way, part two: I couldn't believe it when Bobby Clampett said yesterday, "I really like the way [Woods] is swinging right now, going back to some of the things that back in 2000 he was working on." Uh, did I miss something? I can only imagine how Hank Haney reacted when that came out of his television at home in Dallas.)

(Third by the way: TNT's broadcast yesterday happened to be blanketed in one big Tiger diss, American Express's ceaselessly-repeated Shaun White spots. They do nothing more than underline, over and over again, the company's dismissal of Woods as a spokesperson.)

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*Despite corporate recommendations I'm going to keep writing "TGC" instead of "GOLF Channel." I'm old school, baby. Plus it saves me keystrokes.

Ten Burning Questions Heading to Southern Hills

1. Will this event ultimately be known as the Blast Furnace PGA? Yes, if the forecaster over at weather.com is to be believed. (Seems like we ought to get used to the phrase “excessive heat warning.”) The current Golf World, incidentally, has a nice chart of the hottest majors ever. The top five, with average daily high:

1. Southern Hills, 1970 PGA, 100.3

2. Dallas AC, 1963 PGA, 99.3

3. Baltusrol, 2005 PGA, 98.5

4. Southern Hills, 1982 PGA, 97.0

5. (tie) Northwood (Dallas), 1952 U.S. Open, 96.6

    Southern Hills, 1958 U.S. Open, 96.6

2. Considering how well Tiger played last week, could anyone bet against him? I wouldn't. On the other hand, he didn't fare so well the last time he played this course. (Looking for his fifth straight major, he went 74-71-69-69-T12, and was never in contention: he started Sunday nine shots off the lead). I've previously theorized on this site that Tiger plays better on courses with fewer doglegs; Southern Hills, of course, has a boatload of 'em (here's the best online course map I could find-- it's at the bottom of the linked page). One of these days we'll start taking Tiger at his word when he says he prefers courses that are "right there in front of you." On the other hand, he may be playing too well right now for any of that to matter.

3. What else can we learn from history about this week? One of the things I most vividly remember about the 2001 U.S. Open were the lines off the tee taken by Retief Goosen (who of course won) and Sergio Garcia (who finished T12, going for 77 on Sunday after starting the day in fourth). When they weren't expertly working the ball around the doglegs, they were blowing it over the trees, precisely planning landings so that their balls wouldn't run through fairways. What that tells us is that in 2001 Southern Hills favored the best drivers of the ball. I wouldn't expect any different this year. So who should we look for? Well, that Hunter Mahan kid's leading the Tour in total driving stat right now. But since that particular stat's not all that trustworthy, here are two more names: Vijay and Sergio. Yes, Sergio. (It should be clear that when I say "best drivers of the ball" I mean both long and accurate. Short and accurate doesn't do it for me, especially on a par-70 layout that's over 7,300 yards long.)

4. By the way: did they fix the 9th and 18th greens? They did. They fixed a lot of other stuff, too. A double dip of Geoff Shackelford musings, first from his website, and then from his big-time, high-paying Golf World preview. Incidentally, I don't know how long this link will last, but a site called golfworldmap.com still has up an interesting satellite shot of Southern Hills during its 2004 renovation. (The brown holes are the ones they're playing this week.)

5. Is there anybody in golf who's not a Kerry Haig fan? Last year Golf World's (and everybody else's) Tim Rosaforte proclaimed the PGA's championships director (pictured here at Valhalla with Jack Nicklaus last year) the "best course set-up man" at the majors. Tiger Woods gave him an unsolicited nod at his press conference yesterday, saying, "I think Kerry does a great job of setting up the golf course and making it fair; he makes it very difficult, but he makes it fair." Haig's set-ups also drew praise from Phil Mickelson at his Tuesday press conference, although Phil didn't mention him by name (or maybe did, and the transcriber missed it?):

The PGA is a group of professional golfers who understand [how to] differentiate the better players from players that aren't as talented. That means they incorporate all elements of the game. If the penalty for a missed shot is the same for everybody, like water is, or U.S. Open rough, there's no opportunity for guys to differentiate themselves. It's a 100-yard hack out of the rough and there's no skill in shot-making. There's no ability to get it up by the green and challenge those shots.

The thickness of rough around the greens prohibits talent from coming out, because it's too much guess work of the ball coming out. You chop it on the green. The greens are so hard and fast; it runs down to wherever the low point is. The PGA gives you chances to get up and down around the greens. The rough is tough, but it's fair. The areas around the green, there's a lot of shade areas around the green that test your short game.

The rough off the tee is challenging, but playable. You can possibly get a lot of shots on the green or around the green, certainly. And that tests course management, tests overall skill. It tests short game. And so the whole [range] of a player's game is tested.   

Yep, it's pretty clear that Lefty is still pretty p.o.'ed about Oakmont, but I challenge you to find me a tour player that would disagree with one word of the above. (Also in the linked Mickelson transcript: Phil relating, with regard to his injury, that last week was "the first week that I didn't have to numb up the back of my hand" with lidocaine spray "to be able to hit balls.")

6. Could it be that the PGA will offer a more playable set-up than many of this year's regular Tour venues? It would seem so. In fact, a lot of people in Akron last week were thinking just that thought. In Sunday's Plain Dealer we had Arron Oberholser declaring, "It seems like we've played eight or nine U.S. Opens this year. I don't understand what's gotten into our rules officials or the members at these clubs that they need to have these golf courses as hard as possible for us."

Doug Ferguson's post-Akron story featured a bunch of other pros expressing similar sentiments. Steve Stricker said, "It seems like every week we're getting one of these."

Tiger said, "The golf courses are so much harder. Stevie [Williams] and I were talking about this. Have we played a tournament yet where you had to go low? With our schedule of tournaments I've played in, that hasn't been the case at all."

Added Adam Scott: "You used to have that one or two times a year, and that was a challenge. But every week it starts to get boring. It lacks imagination." 

7. On the lighter side of the news, have I been the only one thinking that Per-Ulrik Johansson, winner of last week's Russian Open, is looking a lot like Goldmember these days? (Click photos to enlarge.)

8. Hey, anyone know where Geoff Ogilvy's been lately?

The short answer is: on page 108 of this week's ESPN the Magazine, hanging out in some pretty exclusive media-star company. (A lot's changed since the only people he had to talk to were me and Shackelford.) So what's in  the interview? Well, click to enlarge, but generally, a bunch of good-guy talk, and a thesaurus-sized list of synonyms for choking.

The longer answer to the Where's Geoff? question is kind of complicated. Let's see: almost won the Match Play, third at Doral, top fifteens at Memorial and Congressional, but otherwise some so-so performances, a couple of missed cuts... and three 78's since June 1?

Hmm. I know, I know. I'm just asking. And still rooting, although I'm not supposed to.

9. So, if Ogilvy's had a not-so-great year, who's really taken a step backwards over the last 52 weeks? Ogilvy's world rankings slide (no. 8 to no. 10) is nothing compared to those of August '06 top-twenty players David Toms (falling 10 spots, from 13 to 23), Retief Goosen (12 spots, 5 to 17), Colin Montgomerie (22 spots, 15 to 37), Jose Maria Olazabal (24 spots, 16 to 40), Chris DiMarco (33 spots, 14 to 47), or David Howell (51 spots, 10 to 61). The steepest drop from the top twenty, however, has been Darren Clarke's. His fall, from 20 to 144, has of course been due to the illness and death of his wife, consequent periods of inaction, and attendant personal problems. Nope, no question about why he's no longer among the top twenty. But with twelve months gone since Heather passed away, another question looms: Can he make it back?

10. How high does Mike Weir have to finish this week to ensure he'll get picked for the Presidents Cup team? That's a tough one. Gary Player is, among other things, kind of a softie, so my feeling is that anything in the top 15 this week will shoe Weirsie in. Anything outside that, however, would be problematic (especially nowadays, with endorsement bonus money often linked to international team membership). Turning a deserving man away is not something Player can take lightly. On the other hand, last time around he picked an apparently undeserving outlier, fellow South African Trevor Immelman, and ignored the criticism like it wasn't even there.   

St. Andrews and Firestone Trumped by... Russia?

First of all, I'm not saying a single word about Paula Creamer's cute little 21st-birthday badge. (Click to enlarge.)

In most ways the day's best pictures were of Lorena Ochoa walking up the 18th at St. Andrews, soaking in the atmosphere and the cold drizzle on her way to collect her first major.

But my personal favorite (which makes up, I hope, for the Creamer pic) is this screen-shot of Maria Hjorth's caddie embracing his boss after today's round. Notice the hat. Today St. Andrews, tomorrow the National, huh?

So, here's today's math lesson. Tiger plus Firestone equals mortal lock. Tiger plus Firestone plus bulletin board material (thank you, Rory) equals utter humiliation of everyone in the field.

Ochoa's victory had to be the most historic, and Tiger's the most impressive (he is now a mind-boggling six-for-nine at that golf course), but neither, I don't think, was as personally important to the winner as Per-Ulrik Johansson's win at the Russian Open.

When Per came over to play here full-time in 2001, he had a full and impressive resume-- it included five European Tour wins and two Ryder Cup appearances. He also had a ton of enthusiasm. He had been chomping at the bit to follow friends and fellow Swedes like Jesper Parnevik and Peter Forsberg to the States. On top of that, he had just been engaged to Jill Parnevik, Jesper's sister. I hung out with Per and Jill a couple of days at Q-school back in late 2000; they were down-to-earth but enthusiastic people, and were incredibly upbeat about starting a family and making a life here in the U.S. (Incredibly, I have an unpublished (and unpolished) Maximum Golf Q&A with Johansson from just after 2000 Q-school-- done at exactly the same time as the one with Stephen Allan!-- that includes his thoughts on their romance, his college days alongside Phil Mickelson at ASU, and his boyhood fondness for ABBA.) 

Per finished only 97th on the money list in 2001, and things only got worse: 121, 126, 202, you get the idea. He stuck it out, being demoted to the Nationwide Tour, going back to Q-school most every year, paralyzed by conflicting swing thoughts but determined not to turn tail and go back to Europe. Eventually, though, he did. Last May 1, one month after missing the cut at a Nationwide event in South Carolina, he wrote on his website, "I really don't enjoy being on the Nationwide too much and have decided that I need to start playing more and the place I can get some starts and rebuild my confidence is on the European Tour. So here I am in Wales!"

Evidently it was the right thing to do. Five years in the wilderness is a long time-- long enough to make you wonder whether or not you'll ever make it back. I don't know if winning in Russia marks the absolute end of that journey, but it's got to help. 

No-Cartoon-Character Sunday Morning Blogpost

Sorry. Eric Cartman has the week off.

So, I think we can officially give Rory Sabbatini the first (weekly? monthly? annual?) Anthony Kim Candor award. I don't care if he is a little tongue-in-cheek about the smack he's talking about Tiger (specifically, about beating him in one collegiate round)-- it's good to see someone (besides Kim) refusing to be polite.

No matter what happens today, to me the biggest story of the week has to be Amex becoming the second company to (effectively) fire Tiger. Actually, maybe it's (in a sense) the third-- at any rate, it's really surprising what is happening with the guy you think would be the number one celebrity endorser in the world.

My biggest regret of the week is that I didn't make it over to ladbrokes.com (the site of the UK sports book) before the start of play today to see if there were any prop bets regarding Lorena Ochoa's ability to hold her lead today. I post fake odds here all the time, and I've made light in this space of Lorena's recent final round heaves, but seriously, what would the odds be on her surviving today's stress?

Finally-- the Long-Awaited Anthony Kim Profile

If you don't know who Anthony Kim is, you should. A strong contender for this year's Tour Rookie of the Year award, he's also the least reserved-- okay, mouthiest-- kid to appear on Tour in years. And he can play.

Props to World and Strege for spending the time and ink on this non-obvious profile. A quote that will endear Kim to sportswriters forever:

“I just remember watching TV and hearing all these answers that players were giving, answers that had no opinion. You don’t know what they’re thinking. You don’t get to know them. I’d rather have 50 people love me and 50 people hate me than have 100 people who don’t even know who I am.”

All-Time Caddie Clashes

The brouhaha between Jay Williamson and Mike Mollet has me thinking about my all-time favorite tales of player-caddie conflict.

Number one on the list is the famous face-off between Fulton Allem and Bob "Bullet" Burns. This is just as Burns told me the story, pretty much verbatim:

In 1996, during the second round of the MCI Heritage at Hilton Head, Fultie was playing so bad that on the eighth tee he remarked, “I feel like breaking something.”

Burns replied, “How about breaking par?”

“Very funny," said Allem. "You’re fired.”

A close runner-up, although it (sadly) comes with no dialogue, is this one. Michael “Sponge” Waite was carrying Robert Allenby’s bag at St. Andrews in 1995. They were at the point on the peninsula most distant from the clubhouse when Waite (who has more recently caddied for Michael Campbell) got sick of his boss, for whatever reason, and put down the bag.

The funny part: he had walked all the way back to the car park before he realized that his keys were still in Allenby's bag.

(I once got Sponge on the phone to try to confirm this tale, and he more or less hung up on me. I took that to be a non-denial denial-- which is to say, a confirmation.)

A New Way to Chew Up Even More of Your Time!

If you aren't already reading the (relatively) new "Local Knowledge" blog over at Golf World, you should be.

Let's see: fourteen reporters to one? Alright. I'm used to those working conditions.