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Friday 5 June 2015

It's All in Your Head

Golf has to be the ultimate head game. To what degree golf is mental, compared to physical, will always be debatable, but it's definitely a head game. There are loads of guys who can hit it great, but those who can get the ball in the hole when it counts are a different breed.

Watching Tiger Woods again this week makes me, and probably millions of others, wonder about what is happening with Tiger mentally. When Tiger was at his best, he was perhaps the most dominant, intimidating player ever to tee it up. He was physically dominant, but his mental toughness, and self belief made his opponents, men who were mentally tough in their own right, seem to fold like cheap suits. 

Once he secured the lead, Tiger expected to finish the job. It seemed inevitable. He believed he'd win, and his opponents seemed to believe it too. Just what sort of impact Y.E. Yang had on Tiger's psyche, when he went head to head with him in a Major and took him down, is also debatable. But I suspect it was almost as big a turning point in Tiger's career as his very public personal problems. Yang took him down. He wasn't invincible after all. It sent a message to Tiger and to everyone else. Tiger really was human after all. He actually coughed up a lead in a Major.

Tiger's swing changes continue to be the main subject of interest and debate. It seems to be Tiger's focus, or obsession, as well. Jack Nicklaus said yesterday that it's in Tiger's head. He was speaking more about Tiger's driving woes at the time, but I think the "it's in his head" remark runs deeper than that. We'll never know how Tiger is mentally, whether his confidence is shaken or not, because he isn't going to tell us. I'd be shaken. Most people would be shaken, but Tiger is not most people.

All the signs are there. It shows in Tiger's driving, his chipping, and especially his putting. This was a guy who could win a Major on one leg. Who can forget the putt he made to get into a playoff with Rocco Mediate? When he made it, he knew, and Rocco knew, it was game over. Tiger was that mentally dominant. 

Those days are gone. Tiger's mental edge is gone. He is visibly nervous with the driver, and he misses putts he never missed in the old days. Jack seems to think Tiger will get it back, at least in terms of figuring out how to get the driver in play and stop the two way miss, but I doubt Jack believes he will get that mental dominance back. I suspect Jack knows; the other players know; and, I fear, even Tiger knows that he will never dominate the game again.

This is, after all, as it should be. Every great player eventually loses his edge and moves over to allow the next great player his time in the limelight. It is the way of the world. Tiger's record speaks for itself. He is one of the greats of the game. His name will always be mentioned in the same breath with Jack and Bobby Jones as the greatest champions of golf's modern era. Tiger may not beat Jack's record for Major championships. He may not even beat Sam Snead's record for total victories, although I think it likely he will. He will definitely never win eleven in a row, or eighteen in a season, like Byron, but his record speaks for itself. He was great. 

We can debate about the swing changes. Should he have made them? Will his current search result in a better swing? We can argue about whether he'll win another Major, or whether he'll win twenty Majors. We don't know. What will be, will be. What Jack knows, and I'm sure Tiger knows, is that, at the end of the day, it's all in his head. Just like the rest of us. Golf is the ultimate head game.

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