It's really simple -- just ask Tiger directly, or at least read what he personally says about his putting, instead of what Brad Faxon says or what people who puff the PGA Tour say, or what people who like hero worship feel like believing:
"
Poor putting costs Woods dear
Tuesday September 4, 11:47 AM
NORTON, Massachusetts, Sept 3 (Reuters) - Tiger Woods rued a poor putting performance after having to settle for a share of second place behind winner Phil Mickelson at the Deutsche Bank Championship on Monday.
The world number one needed 31 putts in the final round at the TPC Boston on his way to a four-under-par 67 and a 14-under total of 270.
"It was very frustrating," Woods told reporters after finishing level with fellow Americans Arron Oberholser (69) and Brett Wetterich (70), two strokes behind Mickelson.
"I did not putt well the majority of the week, I just had that stretch there on Friday," he added, referring to his second-round 64 when he covered the last eight holes in six under par.
"Other than that, I unfortunately did not have the speed right. I had too many three-putts. I think I had four or five three-putts this week.
"That many three-putts and (I'm) still right there, which means I'm hitting the ball well. I just need to clean it up on the greens for next week."
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Good luck to you, Tiger! We're all hoping you get your poor putting sorted out permanently, so no one on Tour can beat you ever again as Phil did this week. Did Phil win it or did Tiger lose one?
Re "Putting Under Pressure": There is a long-standing view that ONLY golfers who hole putts under pressure are great putters. Nicklaus used to justify his claim that he was the best putter in golf, despite others who holed more and longer putts more often, on the basis that he holed "the ones that counted". Yeah, okay, that's certainly a view about how to judge a golfer in terms of success, but don't scratch the surface too hard, or the argument falls apart. Some golfers "feed" off pressure, so they don't really have to deal with the negative power of pressure the way other golfers do. Neat trick, but it's not really comparing apples and apples to say Tiger Woods and Aaron baddeley have the "same pressure" in a Major when in contention. These two guys obviously have different mental experiences in these situations, and the "pressure" Tiger feels is envigorating rather than debilitating, so the comparison "as if" the two were exercising putting skills under the same sort of pressure is baloney.
Also, the notion that the "great putter" makes the putts "when they count" is so much nonsense. ALL PUTTS COUNT and ALL STROKES COUNT THE SAME. It's only the egotist who vests certain putts with greater emotional significance than others who is ultimately responsible for making certain putts tougher on himself than others. This mental self-handicapping is almost never a good thing, and almost always causes less success and more failure in putting, so on balance it's kind of stupid. The truly great putter has emotional equipoise throughout the round and faces ALL putts with the same demeanor and temperament. Even the four-footer to win the US Open -- which lots of Tour players would choke on. Tiger, specifically, makes "the ones that count" only when he's winning already, because his putting the first three days was good enough to get him in position where it "counts." But he has plenty, plenty of days and events where he clearly does NOT make them "when it counts" -- far more than he personally finds acceptable, so why would you ignore these poor days?
In Arnold Palmer's heydey, he considered 25 putts a good round and 28 putts not too good. His statistics were judged according to total footage of putts per round divided by total putts, and his putting was compared to lots of others in this era (late 1960s, early 1970s). His average putt length calculated this way was over 7 feet. Today, the similar tour average is about 4.5 feet. So Palmer in his heydey was nearly twice as good as guys today on a regular basis on greens that were hardly true surfaces using equipment that was hardly optimized. And Casper, Locke, Smith and company were generally better than Palmer.
And by the way, the pressure then was greater than the pressure now, since now there is so much money available for losers and also-rans that winning is not much about the money for the usual winners, whereas back in the day the top contenders needed every dollar and the pressure was immense in the Majors. Tiger makes more in event winnings in a single event with a top-10 finish than most players on the Tour before 1990 ever had a chance to win in a year. That sort of money kind of takes a bit of the pressure out. remember Vijay missing a two-foot putt that cost him $500,000? He just shrugged it off.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist
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