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Focus should be on Tiger Woods winning
(AP)
Updated: 2006-03-08 09:14
Woods finishes second far fewer times, which speaks just as much — if not
more — to his will to win.
In their first 10 years on the PGA Tour, Nicklaus and Woods either won or
finished second about one-third of the time. The difference is Woods won 48
tournaments and has been runner-up 19 times; Nicklaus won 38 tournaments and was
runner-up 30 times.
Woods can be an intimidating presence, no doubt.
Still, some people make it sound as though Toms was standing on the 18th
green at Doral when he looked over his shoulder at Woods in the fairway and
started shaking.
Toms had a 4-iron from the rough with a pin cut over the water to the left.
His only choice without doing anything stupid was to play to the fat part of the
green and take his chances. He was left with a 60-foot putt that, once it starts
to break, goes swiftly with the grain toward the water. The best he could have
done, without the hole getting in the way, was to leave it about 4 feet below
the cup. His putt slid 10 feet by and he missed it.
Toms made only five bogeys all week. Three came at the 18th hole, a monster
for everyone but the Herculean hitters on tour. Par was no small task in the
final round, when the average score was 4.5.
Woods caught a decent lie in the rough and had 170 yards to the hole. Odds
were that if Toms made his par putt, Woods hits his 9-iron to the middle of the
green and makes par.
That's what he does — whatever it takes to win.
Whenever someone makes a mistake, it is too quickly written off as the Tiger
factor.
If Els was so spooked by Woods in a playoff at Dubai, how to explain what
happened to Woods on the same course four years ago? He was tied with Thomas
Bjorn going to the par-5 18th, hit into the water and made double bogey to lose
by two shots.
Few players are more crafty with a wedge than Olazabal, and his bunker shot
on the 16th hole in the playoff at Torrey Pines was scary good. Trouble was, he
left himself 4 feet straight down the hill and breaking sharply to the left on
greens that will never be mistaken for what one might find in Phoenix.
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