Friday, December 23, 2011

Confidence is Tiger problem

Tiger Woods has lost confidence in his swing and will not be able to dominate the game of golf again until he gets it back.

That's the view of Padraig Harrington who played the first two rounds of last week's 92nd PGA Championship with the beleaguered 14-time major winner.

Harrington, himself a three-time major winner currently fighting to regain his own lost confidence and to extract himself from a rut that has seen him go without a victory in the three years that have elapsed since his second Open Championship triumph in 2008, says of Woods in a report published on Tuesday by The Irish Golf Desk: "He (Tiger) is still obviously a little bit in a transition with his left knee.

"Certainly early on, he wasn't that confident with it. I saw a player who hit plenty of good golf shots. He certainly didn't get any breaks whatsoever and got a lot of bad breaks.

"That usually happens to a player who is a little bit low on confidence.

"There is no doubt that he looks a little bit low on his game at the moment. If he were anybody else, hisCleveland CG16 Black Pearl 3-PW Iron Set with Steel Shafts would probably win tournaments and he would be so happy with it.


"But he obviously doesn't love his own golf game at the moment and you have to have confidence in what you are doing."

So far this year, Woods, the long-time owner of the World No 1 spot, has crashed from second to 33rd in the world Rankings and not having qualified for the FedEx Cup series which starts with The Barclays next week, looks set to fall out of the world's top 50 if he does not find some alternative tournaments to play in before the end of the year.

Harrington, who was at pains to say he was not without problems of his own at the moment, aadded that with a wave of exciting new golfing pretenders rolling onto the golfing stage and clamouring to ascend to the throne Woods once occupied with such authority , it was going to get tougher and tougher for him to dominate the Cleveland CG16 Black Pearl 3-PW Iron Set with Steel Shafts in the way he used to.

"I think if he goes out there and wins again he could be right back, but I don't think we will ever see him dominate like he used to purely because a lot of players have got better in the meantime.

"It is hard to see him doing that, but I can definitely see him winning tournaments and winning majors again."

Harrington has said more than once that he has enough problems of his own and shouldn't be worrying about Woods.

After finishing tied for 64th in Atlanta alongside the likes of his injury-hit Northern Irish neighbour, Rory McIlroy, Harrington has slipped another five places to 74th in the world this week and must now go out later this week at the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro and battle to qualify for the FedEx Cup play-offs.(Cleveland CG16 Black Pearl 3-PW Iron Set with Steel Shafts)

In the meantime, he is looking forward to making changes in his own swing with guru Pete Cowen following his break from Sam Torrance..

Encouraged by the some of the ideas Cowen has already come up with re his swing, Harrington said: "I couldn't get into it with the PGA Championship around the corner. It wasn't the time to be changing things.

"When you get to a big tournament you have got to work with what you've got.

"I am looking forward to having a little tinker with Pete Cowen and hearing what he has to say and seeing what road that takes me down."

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Happy memories for Molinari

The way he emerged victorious was special in itself, birdying his last three holes by TaylorMade R11 Ironsat Gleneagles to pip Australian Brett Rumford to the post right at the death, but perhaps even more significantly it was the win that all but forced Ryder Cup captain Colin Montgomerie to make the Italian one of his wildcard picks for the European squad that took on the USA at Celtic Manor.

It was very much on Molinari's mind as well. Before the start of the final round, trailing by one shot, he was quoted as saying, "I think if you win the last event and you don't get picked there's something seriously wrong. I would be very upset if I win and he doesn't pick me."

Edoardo did win, and Montgomerie did pick him, choosing the 30-year-old Italian over even the likes of Paul Casey and Justin Rose.

It all worked out for the European team in the end, as they won a nail-biter at Celtic Manor, and even though neither of the Molinaris won TaylorMade R11 Irons, their partnership grabbed a half point in the fourballs and Edoardo himself managed a half point on the final day singles against Rickie Fowler - points that were as valuable as any others scored.


Edoardo was riding pretty high at that stage, climbing as high as 15th in the rankings. A more sedate 2011 has since seen him drop back down to 50th and he'll be eager to start his comeback this week.

"Defending my title at Gleneagles is a big priority - it's a great tournament and I really like the course, which will be a great venue for the 2014 Ryder Cup," he said.

"I like playing TaylorMade R11 Irons inScotland and I'm sure the Scottish crowds will be unbelievable to me again, just like they were last year. They are the most knowledgeable crowd that we play in front of."

His brother Francesco led the event going into the final round last year, but finished third after a disappointing 75. He's back again as well to try and rectify that wrong.

"So far Edoardo has had all the success inScotland, and I'm keen to follow his example this year," Francesco said.

"We've won a number of tournaments between us, but have yet to win the same title, so that's what I'll be aiming for this week."

, so I think I'm still on the right side of it."

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Don't count Woods out at the PGA

As Tiger tries to win his 15th major this week at the PGA Championship and does his usual scripted public talking before and during it, it might be helpful to remember that he is the son of a soldier and is an expert in subterfuge. In other words, he's not direct, not open, not forthcoming. I sometimes wonder if I'm a co-conspirator and an enabler, simply by passing along what he says. With Tiger, you really have to decide for yourself what's going on.

Since coming back from (euphemism alert) his November 2009 hydrant thing, Woods has played 19 Tour events and has not won. Of course, for any other player, that's no big deal, but Woods has set the bar crazily high. He has blamed his performance, particularly this year, on two main things: learning his new swing and healing his broken body. You don't hear him talking about the state of his short putting, or the state of his head. My guess is that's the true one-two punch, Demon No. 1 and Demon No. 2. I'm not blaming Woods for walking us down his own primrose path. He can do what he wants. He's no different from anybody else, trying to figure out a way to get through the day, trying to protect himself. You have golfers, like Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus and Ben Hogan, who were ruthlessly honest about analyzing their golfing weaknesses. But it's rare. What Woods is doing is no different from what Greg Norman did for years. It's way easier to talk about full swing changes than to talk about what goes wrong on yard-long putts. It's way easier to talk about healing a sore Achilles than it is to talk about the trauma of walking through a world where people know intimate details about your private life, or think they do. Woods's attitude, in all matters, is: It's none of your business. Any of it. He really doesn't like being a public person. That makes his life fundamentally difficult, because, you know, he's a public person. He's one of the most famous people in the world. It can't be easy, being Tiger Woods right now.

Last week, at the World Golf Championship event where he finished by playing Nike SasQuatch Driver in the middle of the pack, he said his problem was that the ball was going too far and too straight. In the history of golf, have you ever heard of a world-class player taking so long to make swing changes? Nicklaus's swing evolved as he got older. Watson's too. Hogan made one dramatic change that allowed him to go from rabbit to world-beater, and then he stuck with it. Snead's swing,Norman's swing, Nick Price's swing, they never changed, not appreciably. I asked Woods recently if we're making too much of a fuss about these supposedly radical changes in his swing. I can barely see them. But he said the new "Foley" swing vs. the old "Haney" swing is night-and-day. He would know. But we can still decide for ourselves what's really going on.


The amount of valuable airtime Golf Channel spends discussing his swing changes would be bizarre, except for the fact that people can't get enough of Woods. Even people suffering from Tiger Fatigue, as I sometimes do, can get drawn back to him with one round of 68, which he shot in last week's first round. He's about the only person in the game who is a total fascination. He and Stevie Williams.

Here's a minor mark of Woods's excellence, even now, with his poor putting and his damaged psyche. In those 19 events since the hydrant thing, he still had three chances to win, and they were all in majors. Last year's Masters. This year's Masters. Last year's U.S. Open atPebbleBeach. He tied for fourth in all three. This week at the Atlanta Athletic Club, even with the snarling rough and the super-fast, sloping greens that will make lag putting a nightmare, you write off Tiger Woods at your own peril. It's a major. He gets up for majors.

Getting to 19 major victories is the one remaining thing on his professional to-do list. All three of those T-4 finishes would have been wins with Tiger 2000 short putting. But this is not a video game. This is his life. On Saturday inAkron, on the 18th hole, Tiger had a three-footer for par to end his day. He took at least 40 seconds to size it up, looking at it from both sides, going through his routine, taking a practice stroke. His putt didn't hit the hole. I gasped. We've been so conditioned to seeing Tiger make everything.

Later that day, I was talking to Zach Johnson about it. He had shot a moving day 64 and had, he said, one of the best putting rounds of his life. He and Tiger are both 35 and Johnson believes, and many do not, that you can become a better putter at that age. He wasn't that shocked to hear about Tiger missing another short one. He still remembers a putt Tiger had in 2009, at a FedEx Cup playoff event at Liberty National, on the 72nd hole. He had maybe a 7-footer that would have made him the leader in the clubhouse. It was another seize-the-day moment, his specialty. This was just a couple of weeks after Woods had lost the 2009 PGA Championship to Y.E. Yang. He missed putts against Yang, and he missed that one at Liberty National, too. Johnson, sitting on his bag on the side of the green, was shocked. "He always made the putts he had to make," he said last week. "How many times did he do it?"

As for Tiger's head . . . I'm not going to go there. Too much guesswork. It must be frail. Who is he playing for now? Do his kids care about his Nike SasQuatch Driver? (Do your kids care about your work?) Is Tiger lonely? Can he practice with the intensity and purpose he once did, all these years later? We cannot know. There was a lot of entertaining hyperbole coming out of Steve Williams last week, after his win with Adam Scott, but one thing was obviously true: he brought a lot of intensity to Scott. It was Tigeresque, the way he never gave up.

Tiger and Stevie are fussing now about how the firing went down, but it doesn't matter. When Williams started working for Scott, that was the first step in his divorce with Woods. Yes, Williams asked Tiger for permission, but just by asking, Williams was saying it was over. You don't see any of the elite caddies picking up off-week work anymore, and Tiger's the most possessive man in golf. Ever since Tiger's first Fresh Start Tour, which began at Augustalast year, the most celebrated caddie-player relationship in golf was all but dead. For 12 years, when Williams talked to reporters about Woods's Nike SasQuatch Driver, which he seldom did, it was never direct or revealing, just the way Tiger wanted it. Then he won with another man, and the floodgates opened. I never thought I'd find Williams likable, but at that moment I did.

I wish Tiger would take a page from him, but it will never happen. He'll keep us in the dark. It really doesn't matter. He knows what Bill Parcells knows, and what we know too: your results say where you are. AtAkron, Tiger was tied for 37th. Maybe this week he'll win, even if fourth is a much better guess.

AtAkron, I talked to a fan, a 71-year-old man named Frank Renfroe, a bogey golfer from Indiana who has seen a lot of golf in his life and played a lot, too. He was watching Tiger closely. With his shaved head and gold earrings, he looked like Michael Jordan's way older brother. Renfroe told me, "I think the biggest thing for Tiger is between the ears. You're not going to get that back in one week. Between the ears, that's where the biggest demons are." I asked him how he could know such a thing. He smiled and said, "It's just common sense."

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Schwartzel-15th hole a "beast"

Masters champ Charl Schwartzel reckons the field faces a very tough challenge at Atlanta Athletic Club's 15th hole.

Masters champ Charl Schwartzel reckons the USPGA Championship field faces a very tough challenge at Atlanta Athletic Club's 15th hole.

The hole is an intimidating 260-yard par-three, and forms part of a challenging closing stretch on the 7467-yard par-70 course.( Nike SasQuatch Driver)

Though eventual winner David Toms managed a hole-in-one at the 15th the last time the PGA Championship was played here in 2001, Schwartzel reckons even a bogey would be a pretty good score this year.

"Is that a par 3? I thought it was a par 4!" he said.

"What can you say? It's just a beast of a hole. It's long. It's actually quite a small green from that sort of distance.


"(In practice) We played off the back. The flag was in the front. I hit a 3-iron out of my shoes and it just flew to the front edge."(Nike SasQuatch Driver)

Though the fact that the hole plays downhill does provide somewhat of an advantage, more danger awaits in the form of a large pond to the right of, and behind, the green, and Schwartzel believes it will claim many victims.

"It's going to be a tough hole. I don't think you're going to be too disappointed if you walk off with a 4.

"It's going to be just one of those holes where there's no bail-out. You've just got to get down and commit to it. It's going to be the same for everyone that plays it."

Schwartzel, meanwhile, is confident about his chances this week on the back of some solid major performances this year. Outside of his stunning victory at Augusta, he also finished ninth in the US Open and 16th in the Open by Nike SasQuatch Driver.

"I've been feeling really comfortable in the majors," added the 26-year-old. "Every week I've been there, my game has been good.

"After the win at the Masters, I just feel like every time I enter one of these major championships that I can compete in them and get a win out of them. I've played much better."

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Donald feeling the pressure

World number one Luke Donald admits that he is feeling the pressure of having not yet won a major.

Despite climbing to the top of the world rankings this year and picking up three victories around the world, Donald knows that he will have to secure his first major win if he's to truly be considered the best golfer in the world.

"Majors are in this day and age made out to be the biggest deal," Donald said at Atlanta Athletic Club on Tuesday, ahead of the PGA Championship, his final chance to break his major duck this year.

"People put a lot of pressure on the guys who haven't won. There is pressure to win them. Sometimes you can go to these events and try too hard.

"You feel a little bit more uptight. Sometimes it's harder to let it go and just play the way you know how to play.( TaylorMade Burner SuperFast TP Driver ) There's a hard balance between not trying and putting in some effort to give it your best. It's a fine line."


The Englishman is at least carrying some solid form into the tournament, coming off a second place finish behind Adam Scott in last week's Bridgestone Invitational.

In fact, aside from the majors, Donald has been remarkably consistent this year, winning the WGC Match-Play Championship back in February, and the European Tour's BMW Championship and Scottish Open in May and July respectively.

Donald says he tries to approach the majors just like any other tournament, but that it's not always that easy to do.

"There's a little added tension, a little bit more anxiety to try and perform TaylorMade Burner SuperFast TP Driver well," he said. "You have got almost focus on what you can control, almost seeing it as just another event.

"But it's tough. The bigger stage, the way courses are set up, it makes it feel like a major. It's harder to just kind of play it as a normal event.

"I haven't won one yet so I don't know what the correct answer is, but I will keep trying all different various ways until hopefully I pick up one of those trophies."

With scorching temperatures expected this week, Donald has decided to limit the amount of practice holes he plays ahead of the tournament.

"You have to manage energy," he said. "I'll be very consistent and precise with my practice. Playing last week and playing TaylorMade Burner SuperFast TP Driver well gives me that opportunity."

Donald was also asked to comment on Steve Williams' outburst at Akron last week.

"I think Stevie was given the opportunity to talk and he had the right to say what he wanted to say," he said.

"The only disappointing thing that I found personally from it was there was no talk of how pleased he was about Adam winning."

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