Is the USA Ryder Cup Team Better Without Tiger?
With the recent well-publicized decision by Tiger Woods to not attend or even really care to discuss the Ryder Cup, and the even more well-publicized United States romp to the title this past weekend, I’ve heard some rumblings about the value of Tiger Woods to America’s Ryder Cup team. Is he more of a distraction than force while drawing most of the attention? Is he too focused and competitive to let his guard down for a team event? Perhaps he just isn’t as concerned with winning a Ryder Cup as he is with winning majors? The knee-jerk reaction of myself and I imagine most others is… “hell no”. Tiger is one of two people in the history of golf that deserves to be in the ‘Greatest of All Time’ discussion. How on earth can a team based on golf abilities be better sans the player so far ahead of anyone else in his sport? Well, thinking deeper about the question yields some possible explanations to Tiger’s subpar Ryder Cup record.
1. Tiger’s Sunday Singles Record Lives Up to his MatchPplay Reputation
Tiger Woods is widely considered the greatest match play performer of all time. His three straight US Amateur titles and consistent dominance in the PGA’s only major match play event are good reasons why. And you know what? So is his performance in the Ryder Cup. Tiger lost to Constantino Rocca in his 1997 Ryder Cup debut, and it wasn’t all that close, with a comfortable 4&2 defeat. Tiger was only 22 at the time and this may have been the most pressure he’d ever faced in his brief professional career (mostly because all pressure in the 1997 Masters was vanquished by a 2nd round 66 that set up a weekend long coronation of the future King of Golf). While it’s easy to point to Tiger’s seemingly kevlar armor when it comes to pressure, or to 23 year-old Anthony Kim’s devastation of Sergio Garcia last weekend, it still is easy enough to give Tiger a pass for his loss to the veteran Rocca (who actually finished 5th in that 1997 Masters). And since? Four more Ryder Cups, three wins, one halved match. Pretty sharp, Tiger.
2. Tiger’s Team Ryder Cup Record is Not Quite the Same
While Tiger’s singles performance is true to form, he has not performed quite as admirably in the team events. Let’s first talk about fourball. In a fourball, or best ball match, each player (4) plays their own ball. The score on each hole for the two man team is simply the lowest of the two. It is easy to assume then, that the best fourball team would just be the two best golfers. This is actually quite untrue. It is much more potent to pair together two birdie machines that also maybe make several bogeys or worse. It is safe to assume that between two of these players, most of the time one will do well on a hole. If each make several birdies, there is a good chance that those birdies could be disbursed over several different holes, giving the team a solid shot at a very low aggregate score. The possibility of a blow up hole is also less harmful in matchplay. Make a quadruple bogey at the Masters and you are toast. Make a quadruple bogey in match play and you lose a hole, no different than if you make par and one of your opponents make birdie. And while Tiger Woods does have a knack for birdie binges, it really is not his preferred playing style. Tiger molds his game to win majors. Winning majors is accomplished by limiting mistakes. A normal Tiger round would be roughly five birdies, twelve pars, and a bogey. A great round, -4, but not a really dangerous fourball round. Nonetheless, Tiger can change his style when needed, and overall his fourball record is not horrible, standing at 4-5-1 in five Ryder Cups. All in all, not his best style of play, not his best record, but nothing worth fretting over.
Foursomes, on the other hand, is a different story. Eldrick’s career record in the foursome format (a two man team alternating every shot, playing one ball) is bad. Three wins, seven losses. Ouch. But if fourball a friend that Tiger can tolerate but would rather not spend time with, then foursomes is his arch enemy. It doesn’t work with Tigers playing style or his psyche. Tiger, perhaps more than any other athlete on earth, is build on repetition, focus, concentration, and disconnecting himself from competitors and fans. You just cannot play that way in a foursomes match. Only hitting half the shots is a blow to his flow. Any decent golfer knows how frustrating it gets when a playing parter needs three or four shots in between each of their own. The golf swing is highly technical and build on muscle memory and repetition. Long waits in between each shot kill that invaluable momentum. It is also tough for him to focus or disconnect himself from others when he’s on a team. He has to talk to someone other than his caddy and he has to actually rely on somebody else. This must drive him mad. You may think he should just flip a switch and lighten up, but if he was capable of that I guarantee he would not be a 14 time major champion right now. Tiger is Tiger and pulling a complete 180 on how he prepares for 727 out of 730 days is unreasonable to expect.
There is also the matter of his actual golf style when discussing his poor foursomes record. Anyone who has seen Tiger hit his driver has probably also seen Tiger hit his driver incredibly wild. He does it a lot, sometimes in disgusting stretches. But what makes Tiger Woods the best is the next shot. Oh, I need to hit a 240 yard stinger under 50 yards of trees then have it balloon up high over water and drop soft on the green? Sure. What? You want a 210 yard yard 4-iron out of a fairway bunker, over water, to 10 feet for birdie on the 18th hole of a big tournament? No problem. Well, the thing is, in foursomes when Tiger hits a drive into these situations, every other PGA pro is screwed. This doesn’t help the team. It is impossible to pair another player with Tiger. They just aren’t good enough to hit the shots that he uses every day. That may sound brash, but it’s pretty much the way it is.
Yet another aspect of Tiger in team events is pressure. Not pressure on Tiger, but pressure on his partner. When you play with Tiger, you are afraid to disappoint him, much like Michael Jordan’s teammates were famously terrified of letting him down. There is enough pressure already in the Ryder Cup, but being closely watched and accompanied by a man who apparently can even walk on water is a tough task. Past captains have paired with with green rookies and with the best of the rest, but mostly to no avail. It’s just hard to play with Tiger and that weighs on his team record as well.
3. The Peripheral Stuff Just Doesn’t Matter
The distractions off the course, the fact that Tiger doesn’t let too many players into his close circle, and the belief that maybe Tiger doesn’t care enough about the Ryder Cup are each a load of crap in my opinion. This isn’t an NBA team and Tiger is not Ron Artest. It’s a three day event that is 99% about play on the course and coaching strategy (simply who is paired up and in what order) and about 1% about team chemistry. Yeah, Boo getting the crowd riled up is great, but that happens with every won hole in the Ryder Cup. Tiger was, afterall, a big part of the ‘chemistry’ during the historical comeback by America in the 1999 Cup. That is really all I have to say on that matter.
Essentially, Tiger’s poor record is a product of the very traits that make him so dominant in individual play. His game is set up in a manner that only he can play and that is built to win majors. So what do you do with the man who always finishes a mile ahead in Ryder Cup points? Does a captain dare sit him for the foursome matches? Maybe. I really don’t know which type of player would work well with him, but one idea would be to figure that out and then make one of the captain’s picks the top player of that style. Someone that can scramble with the best of them, hit the ball long, and hit lots of greens? Not really sure. Other than that, just cross your fingers and hope to get lucky in one of his foursomes and both of his fourballs, then just let him do work on Sunday. I don’t think the team is better without Tiger, I just think they played better this year.
Tags: America, Boo Weekley, Constantino Rocca, Europe, Jack Nicklaus, Phil Mickelsom, Ryder Cup, Sergio Garcia, Tiger Woods, USA
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