Some PGA players don't win five tournaments during their career. Tiger Woods has won five tournaments this year alone. There are six players tied for second place with two wins. He has ten top ten finishes this year in only twelve events. Second place is occupied by two people, the first being someone you probably have never heard of, Kevin Na, and secondly by Steve Stricker. They needed twenty-one and seventeen events each to get there. However, there are rumblings that if Tiger Woods doesn't win the PGA Championship going on at Hazeltine this weekend that 2009 is a failure and the most laughable whisper that is going around is that he is losing his grip on the rest of the PGA Tour.
Tiger has a scoring average of 68.15, which leads the PGA Tour. By the way, that is more than a full stroke better than the person in second place, Steve Stricker at 69.22. Tiger has made about three million dollars more than the next closest player on the money list. He is four and a half points better (12.93) then the next closest person in the world golf rankings, Phil Mickelson is a distant number two (8.27). However it still seems that there is the thought out there that somehow Tiger is slipping. Oh, I forgot to mention one more thing. He had major knee surgery last year and shouldn't even be playing this well right now. Most people wouldn't even be on a golf course right now.
Is Tiger Woods slipping? Is he losing his death grip on the PGA Tour? Tiger hasn't lost his killer instinct yet. He is number one in scoring average, 68.35, on the back nine of tournaments. He still gets into his opponents heads, just ask Padraig Harrington when Tiger was down three last week at Firestone going into the final round and he chased him down and by the turn had the lead and never looked back. Is Tiger on the downside of his career? The fact that we are asking these questions and that Tiger has to read about them should keep the rest of the players on the Tour up at night. So what if Tiger doesn't win this week? Well, that might just be the motivation he needs going into next year. Don't look now though, Tiger is up one on the field after the first round. Did I mention that his first round scoring average this year is his highest of all his rounds.
Good luck field, you're going to need it!
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I think it's probably a slightly bad year by Tiger's standards (i.e., expectations the public has for him based on the past 10-12 years) if he doesn't win a major. However, I think if he loses this week (and if he does, it won't be by much), but then goes on to win half of the fed-ex cup events, and the fed-ex cup itself, it's a pretty solid year even by the standards he has set!
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