The Open Championship

[JasonEvans]

Brutal Friday at good old Muirfield in Scotland. Looks like only 12 players will break par today. A heck of a lot more players shot 8-over or worse than shot even par or better. Yikes!

Miguel Angle Jimenez fought his way to an even par round today. Combined with his 3-under yesterday, he leads the tournament. Lee Westwood posted the best round in the field today, 3-under, to go with his 1-over Thursday to put him in a 4-way tie for second at 2-under. Some dude named Tiger is also in that 2nd place group.

Shaping up to be a fun weekend with a lot of big names in the hunt on a course that is unforgiving!

-Jason "I wonder if the TV guys will notice that Tiger is in 2nd place... naaaah" Evans

[hurleyfor3]

Someone on a golf board I visit pointed out it looks like a Masters leaderboard.

I think Tiger has a really good chance. He only shows up in the British when the weather's nice, and he can still get out of trouble as well as anyone. Tiger's problems (driving accuracy, inconsistent putting) seem to be everyone's, putting him at less of a disadvantage.

[A-Tex Devil]

Someone on a golf board I visit pointed out it looks like a Masters leaderboard.

I think Tiger has a really good chance. He only shows up in the British when the weather's nice, and he can still get out of trouble as well as anyone. Tiger's problems (driving accuracy, inconsistent putting) seem to be everyone's, putting him at less of a disadvantage.

Watch out for Jordan Spieth! He qualified just last week, winning the John Deere at age 19, had a really good day yesterday and managed to hang in there today. I figured he'd just be happy to be there, but he's just outside the top 10, 4 shots back.

[JasonEvans]

So, what is it going to take to win tomorrow? Think 3-under will do it? The field largely moved backwards today. Westwood looked like he might be about to run away a hide and couple times, but he always came back to Tiger.

In some ways, I find this more fun to watch than American golf because the traps and the rough are so bad. I rarely see them able to spin the ball back and keep it close to the hole. It is more "bump and run" golf which is less predictable.

-Jason "I'm gonna get up early to watch, that's for sure" Evans

[hurleyfor3]

It's still a Masters leaderboard but with US Open scores. Winning score will be close to par. I don't see someone shooting 65.

We have the guy who never wins majors and the guy who only wins when he has the lead on Saturday, except he doesn't have the lead on Saturday. When I wrote that Tiger has a really good chance I did so with a track record of being far less biased towards Tiger than most here.

Tiger is no longer in the hunt in every major and has to take advantage of the opportunities he has. He hasn't had an opportunity this good in some time -- I mean, he's not just in second place, he's in second place to Lee Westwood. How he plays on Sunday will be HUGE as it portends the rest of his career.

[killerleft]

Too much has happened this Sunday to recount, but Michelson leads what is going to go down as a classic Open. One up, plenty of contenders still left. He's on 18 in the fairway, but a few people left with good chances to tie or win.

[killerleft]

Phil Michelson birdies the last two and has a three stroke lead over Westwood, who's headed to 16 and still has the par-5 17th ahead. Only Westwood still has a chance to catch Phil, barring something surreal by Adam Scott. 66 for Mich, he totally controlled himself on the back nine and hit putt after freaking putt to do what he did.

[hurleyfor3]

A lot of majors are won by the guy who backs up the least, but not this one. Phil went out and grabbed it. Great win.

[JasonEvans]

It's still a Masters leaderboard but with US Open scores. Winning score will be close to par. I don't see someone shooting 65.

How about shooting a 66 (http://sports.yahoo.com/golf/pga/players/Phil+Mickelson/29/scorecard/2013/29)?

Congrats to Phil. While pretty much everyone else not name Poulter was in reverse, he hit the gas late and won.

-Jason "Phil's 3-under makes it look like a runaway, but an hour ago it looked like we could be in for a 4-6 way playoff" Evans

[killerleft]

Phil Michelson birdies the last two and has a three stroke lead over Westwood, who's headed to 16 and still has the par-5 17th ahead. Only Westwood still has a chance to catch Phil, barring something surreal by Adam Scott. 66 for Mich, he totally controlled himself on the back nine and hit putt after freaking putt to do what he did.

My apologies for misspelling Mickelson's name. I guess I didn't want him to strike out!:o

[YmoBeThere]

I got on the plane this morning and Westwood was ahead 3 after 6 holes. I get home and Phil has won it. I guess I missed a lot of golf.

[killerleft]

I got on the plane this morning and Westwood was ahead 3 after 6 holes. I get home and Phil has won it. I guess I missed a lot of golf.

You sure did. Mickelson had all the answers today. Until he seized the tournament at 17, there were at least six guys within 2 of the lead. Four birdies in the last six holes was awesome, but it was the par save at 16 that was vintage Phil. He hit what he thought was the perfect shot on the par three, but somehow the ball rolled back off the front of the green 20 yards or more after seeming to stop maybe twenty feet from the hole. But a pressure-filled chip and an eight-foot putt got him back on track. As I mentioned before, Phil putted brilliantly. And there was never any sense of impending disaster regarding Phil's game. I think the telecast is being replayed tomorrow on ESPN.

[duketaylor]

Phil was just awesome and made it look easy. 302 yard 3-wood on 17 to the narrow opening was just amazing. Happy for him although I'm not a big Phil fan. Glad a "Yank" won.

[77devil]

Happy for him although I'm not a big Phil fan.

Like him or not Phil fulfills my ABT preference.

[BD80]

Phil was just awesome and made it look easy. 302 yard 3-wood on 17 to the narrow opening was just amazing. ...

INTO THE WIND!!!! No one else had made the green in 2 in the couple of hours since the wind picked up in that direction.


Like him or not Phil fulfills my ABT preference.

Tiger looked like he was going to make it interesting, stringing together a couple of birdies midway into the back nine, pulling to within a stroke or two. He hit a long (190 yd+) approach shot stiff (within 2 INCHES), playing bounce-up golf as is required at the British. But I think he has lost his greatest advantage - the other golfers are no longer watching out for Tiger, he is just another name on the board.

Phil seems much more likeable, even though I think much of it is PR. His family-hug at 18 went on way too long as the cameras clicked away. Phil does smile on the course, and it does seem genuine. I've rooted for Phil for 20 years, I can't stop now.

[rsvman]

Awesome finish for Phil; redemption from finishing second at the US Open that he should have won.

His resilience in dealing with adversity on the 16th hole was pretty impressive. He definitely deserved the win, and I'm happy for him.

[CDu]

Tiger is no longer in the hunt in every major and has to take advantage of the opportunities he has. He hasn't had an opportunity this good in some time -- I mean, he's not just in second place, he's in second place to Lee Westwood. How he plays on Sunday will be HUGE as it portends the rest of his career.

Well, I do think it is overstating things to say that Tiger's play on Sunday is "HUGE as it portends to the rest of his career." I mean, he's finished T-4 and T-6 in two of the three majors this year, and he won the "unofficial 5th major" at the TPC. And as Mickelson just showed, Tiger has at least 5-6 years of chances to win majors (if not more: Phil isn't exactly done competing at majors at 43).

That being said, it was certainly a missed opportunity for Tiger.

[hurleyfor3]

Well, I do think it is overstating things to say that Tiger's play on Sunday is "HUGE as it portends to the rest of his career."

I stand by what I wrote wrt Tiger trying to get to 18/19 majors. From here on he's not going to be in the hunt every Sunday in a major by default. Say he gets two or three decent chances through the end of next year and he misses those, then he's 38 and still stuck on 14 and still hasn't figured out a way to get off it. OTOH he wins here when he was a good position and conditions are favorable for him: now he's got 15 and he plays in a way he hasn't in years (with a solid final round) or for that matter EVER (coming from behind on Sunday).

Instead we got the same ho-hum Sunday Tiger we're now used to. They guy making all the heroic shots and having the "Tiger 10 years ago" Sunday round was Phil.

He's approaching where Jack was in the late 70s, when a lot of people were saying Jack was finished. Jack won three majors after turning 40, but the real impressive feat was he *lost* I think only two other majors that he had a good chance to win -- the only ones I can think of where he was in serious contention on Sunday were the 1981 Masters and 1982 US Open. Three for five. Not seeing Tiger matching that.

[killerleft]

I stand by what I wrote wrt Tiger trying to get to 18/19 majors. From here on he's not going to be in the hunt every Sunday in a major by default. Say he gets two or three decent chances through the end of next year and he misses those, then he's 38 and still stuck on 14 and still hasn't figured out a way to get off it. OTOH he wins here when he was a good position and conditions are favorable for him: now he's got 15 and he plays in a way he hasn't in years (with a solid final round) or for that matter EVER (coming from behind on Sunday).

Instead we got the same ho-hum Sunday Tiger we're now used to. They guy making all the heroic shots and having the "Tiger 10 years ago" Sunday round was Phil.

He's approaching where Jack was in the late 70s, when a lot of people were saying Jack was finished. Jack won three majors after turning 40, but the real impressive feat was he *lost* I think only two other majors that he had a good chance to win -- the only ones I can think of where he was in serious contention on Sunday were the 1981 Masters and 1982 US Open. Three for five. Not seeing Tiger matching that.

Tiger's last five years surely reinforces what you say, but I'm just not ready to dismiss him as over the hill. He has lost some mojo, for sure. His shadow on a leaderboard no longer causes grown golfers to flinch and flame out. But he's still consistently good even when he doesn't have that famous "A game". I see his problems as mental ones, but can't back that up. We'll see.

[77devil]

Well, I do think it is overstating things to say that Tiger's play on Sunday is "HUGE as it portends to the rest of his career." I mean, he's finished T-4 and T-6 in two of the three majors this year, and he won the "unofficial 5th major" at the TPC. And as Mickelson just showed, Tiger has at least 5-6 years of chances to win majors (if not more: Phil isn't exactly done competing at majors at 43).

That being said, it was certainly a missed opportunity for Tiger.

I disagree that you can make the deduction I put in bold. Since 2003 Tiger and Phil are 6 and 5 in majors respectively. But Phil won his first at age 34 and Tiger won his last at age 32. So what can we discern from this data about Tiger's future performance in majors? Not much, but the trends suggests that Tiger is well past his prime while Phil's game continues to benefit from the wisdom of experience that was lacking in his 20s. Another way to think about it is the physical advantages that allowed Tiger to distance himself from the field have eroded away, while Phil's ability to execute hasn't changed but his decision making has.

[greybeard]

It seems unrealistic to me to think that Tiger can hold up physically in a major. He had an injury that does not permit him to function the way that had been grooved over the first 35 or so years of his life. That injury forced him to radically change the way he swings to put less torque on that left leg of his. Among, I am sure many, many, many other changes that were consciously made to make it safe to play and make his new way of playing "effective" is his swing plane, which has been changed more than any other golfer on a championship level in the history of the sport (Hogan, I think, kept the shape of his swing after the terrible injury in suffered).

When the rubber meets the road, when an athlete simply has to trust him or herself, Tiger has a huge problem. The self that he will go to is the self that he brought to the Tour and dominated it with. That self has not gone anywhere. The other self, the one who associates with the new swing, is not the one that will "naturally" emerge. He will, at times, get caught between the two. This "new" self also has a new dynamic when it comes to putting. He can maintain focus on the new mode, and play within that mode, except that in those most important moments, the final two rounds in majors, thinking interferes with trusting, and trusting is less a place of calm than a place needing resolution.

To me, ignoring the havoc wrought by that celebrated US Open victory is the stuff we make false heroes of, and then wonder what the problem is, why they can't get it done anymore.

The man known as Tiger is both talented and brave beyond imagination. He just is not the same anymore. Has not been since before that storied US Open win. That's just the way it goes.

In a certain sense, RGIII is much luckier than Tiger. RGIII will easily be forgotten. He'll get his name and life back. Tiger will remain Tiger even though Tiger is long gone and is not coming back.

[Channing]

how is holding up in a major any different than holding up in a normal tournament, which he has done several times. A major is more emotionally draining (I guess) but its the same number of holes as other tournaments.

[hurleyfor3]

how is holding up in a major any different than holding up in a normal tournament, which he has done several times.

Most obviously, a major has all the world's best playing, whereas a typical PGA Tour event has 30-60% of the world's best.

[Mal]

how is holding up in a major any different than holding up in a normal tournament, which he has done several times. A major is more emotionally draining (I guess) but its the same number of holes as other tournaments.

It's different because the competition is deeper, and the course is different (and, at the U.S. and British Opens, more difficult). Those seem to be factors right now for Woods. As others have mentioned, the other top guys are not afraid of him anymore, so there's a mental advantage he's lost. Ten years ago, it always seemed like some unheralded guy playing out of his mind challenging Tiger at the Majors - Bob May, Chris DiMarco, Rocco Mediate - but (with the exception of Rich Beem) eventually getting run over by the talent deficit when it came playoff time or coming down the stretch. Meanwhile Els, Singh, Mickelson, Love and the others at the top of the ranks were wilting at the mention of the name "Tiger." He'd come up behind them and passed them while changing the way the game was played before they could evolve and they didn't know what to do. Nowadays, it's not that the next generation doesn't respect or revere Tiger, but he's just another dude who's over a decade older than them, and they've tailored their games to emulate/imitate his. And when you get all those other top guys together, one or more of them are much more likely to string together a couple good rounds on the weekend at a Major than they were back then.

And the biggest reason for that (IMHO), is that they've caught up to Tiger in one of the most important ways: lots of guys bomb it as far as he does now. They all seem to drive it 310, and they all hit a 7 iron 190 yards. Dustin Johnson and Keegan Bradley and Rory McIlroy consistently outdrive Woods. And they're just as accurate, if not moreso, whereas a while ago the only guys outdriving him hit every other fairway and had nothing else remarkable in their games. Tiger's 63rd on tour in distance, and 58th in driving accuracy, this year. So, while a decade ago, hitting a lot of fairways and being precise with his irons simply meant that Tiger was uncatchable, now it's a prerequisite for him to win unless his putter's on fire, and he's not blitzing people the way he used to even when he does put it all together.

Meanwhile, the courses have gotten longer and longer and longer, so now we're toying with 8,000 yards at Erin Hills in a couple years. Remember when Tiger used to completely overpower golf courses? He'd occasionally find himself with 3 eagle putts during a round, and routinely play the par 5's at -10 or better over a tournament. Back in the day, that was like a 2 or 3 stroke advantage over everyone else in the field. They'd have to press and shoot for more pins on the par 4's just to give themselves a chance to keep up in birdies, which led to bogeys and getting dominated. No longer.

One more factor, to continue playing archair psychiatrist, is Tiger's mentality. Back in his heyday, he seemed to thrive on crushing his opponents, over and over, watching them melt at the sight of him. He was Genghis Khan out there. What is best in life? Hearing the lamentations of those Dockers wearing fools. I'm not sure he liked playing golf nearly as much as he liked just winning. Now he has to feed himself on a simpler love of the game. And I don't know if he has that love figured out. I thought when the whole thing went down in '09 that he should have taken a year or two off, completely, so that he could find the time to sort out his life and his demons and realize what a blessing golf was in his life. But instead he just sort of plowed ahead like he was compelled to.

I think he's a great enough athlete, with enough competitive fire, to find a way to evolve again and win one or two more Majors before he's done. But he's going to have to do it the way Mickelson just did - playing his best golf at the right moment, and mistake-free. There will be no more Pebble Beach-style destroying the field anymore; he's just not that much more talented than the field at this point, and that's only going to become more true as he ages. What remains to be seen is when/if he switches his mentality to accept that - enjoy the good days, and stop wondering why you're not smoking everybody the way you used to and dropping f-bombs all around the course.

[greybeard]

Most obviously, a major has all the world's best playing, whereas a typical PGA Tour event has 30-60% of the world's best.

You'd have to have lived with an injury like his to understand I believe, but let me try. Great athletes, I'm reminded of Sugar Ray Leonard almost out on the ropes with Tommy Hearns nailing him, shot after shot, go to a place where there is no "I" and no "time." People call it, "Being in the moment."

That place the controls are given over to less than conscious action--there is perception/processing/action that is of one piece, happening in the very same moment. An athlete like Tiger, when he goes to go there, finds himself at a bit of an impasse--which Tiger is the question and "the moment" is no longer that singular point.

What brings that out in an athlete, and I'm only guessing, well a little more than guessing but not because I am an athlete, is the situation that Leonard found himself in. The fight, the championship fight against the best puncher in the game in anywhere near his weight class, is slipping away unless that conscious control is gone, and even then. Leonard dropped his shoulders, his neck lengthened, his eyes softened even as they widened, and he was the cat, the leopard, and his hands flew, not wildly, but with incredible rhythm, accuracy, fluidly, and power.

Why didn't Leonard show that earlier in the fight, why had he rarely, rarely ever showed that type of fighting before? Who knows. But, Hearns brought it out; there was no where to go, and Leonard found a place inside that didn't require him to go anywhere, didn't require him to try to control anything. Trying to control was out of the question.

Tiger lived in that place more than all but a very rarified group of other athletes; he resided there on the back nine in majors, probably lots of other tournaments. The shots he saw and then executed, the putting lines and speeds that he saw and then executed were surreal.

You don't get to surreal when you let go, find yourself heading to that place that has for all your life been "home," for all your life until terrible damage made "home" a place you had to foreswear to continue to do what you loved, to play the game. So, rather than failing into the moment, living perception/processing/action as of one piece throws you into a place of resistance, conflict. You must separate and then the moment is lost.

I am not saying that Tiger doesn't get in the neighborhood of the tangent when he is winning tournaments and shows brilliance. What I'm saying is that the challenges of having to fight against himself, to be of two minds, two swings, breaks him down during the course of a major. The course becomes ever more unyielding as the weekend progresses, and then Sunday, when everyone in the hunt finds himself at one time or another cornered by Tommy Hearns, Woods feels, knows "home", can taste it, and there lies his ruin.

I am also saying that the course itself, the grind that it puts on the body, the legs, the eyes, the exquisite timing and coordination that great athletes/golfers need to call upon take its toll on Tiger's rebuilt body in a way that is difficult to understand unless you've been broken in a manner like Tiger was/is. It does not take much, a grain of sand feel in a knee or ankle or hip of sacral joint or under a shoulder blade. Not much. Everybody experiences those grains of sand. Not like guys who've been damaged like Tiger, not in a sport like golf in which tremendous force or subtle touch involves smoothness in the tiniest of transitions.

I know that this is long winded, and I also know that for many it is one time too many. Long winded, let's just say that I know of no clear, succinct way to put this. "Grey, not again," well, it still seems to be the case that the issue of "what's wrong with Tiger" has been kept alive since that dreadful walk around Torrey Pines. Not by me, it hasn't. I've been saying the same thing since I watched with sorrow as the crowds and the pundits cheered a wounded warrior do what he had no business even thinking about trying. I repeat myself because we all do.