Tiger Watch 2012

Mine, Rock is winning

Robert on the green at 4 .. if 2 putts will win the tournament .. u think he will 3 putts ? hehehe

Yup, he lags it close for a gimme 2 putt to win.

Robert Rock left a 2 inch putts ... it is his this time

Tiger misses his putt, so Rory is alone at 2nd place.

Whoa, Rock is so cool and I think he will win.

Not the result I expected, but it was certainly exciting to the very end and full of drama.

Learn a lot about course management, especially Robert's decision at the strong advice of his caddy to take an unplayable drop at the last.

confirmed Rock will win..

Robert Rock wins! Now Tiger gotta go back and polish his much-improved swing just a bit more so that it can last all 4 days instead of 3.

1 14 117 - 1 ROCK, Robert -13 18 -2 69 70 66 70 275
1 -- 3 ↑+1 2 MCILROY, Rory -12 18 -3 67 72 68 69 276
1 -- 13 ↑+8 T3 MCDOWELL, Graeme -11 18 -4 72 69 68 68 277
1 26 39 ↑+8 T3 BJÖRN, Thomas -11 18 -4 73 71 65 68 277
1 -- 25 ↓-2 T3 WOODS, Tiger -11 18 Par 70 69 66 72 277

Actually, for Tiger such a close finish is not bad, considering his changing swing and injury ridden body

I agree, Tiger's game and swing looks to be much better. And considering he is playing here for the first time compared to the rest of the field, he has done well. He is let down by his swing going off in day 4, apart from that, he was looking in good shape for most of the way.

But overall, certainly showing a lot of progress, with signs that the next win won't be too far off. I look forward to his next event with positive anticipation.

Nice story w Robert Rock, been struggling a while to crack world top 100, with this win at one stroke, he jumps to world top 60.

I saw him limping during the Chevron event, so I think his knee must have been still not 100%. He needs a lot of rehab and come to a point that he can swing without worrying of re-injury.

Tiger's new swing working w Sean Foley puts less stress on his left knee, so that should help. No sign of his left knee giving any problem today. Esp since he was in the rough basically all day today and had to use A LOT of power to hack it out. On a weaker knee of old, that would have been punishing.

TW needs to hit more fairways to take full advantage of his near immaculate iron shots...

Anyway that Rock guy was cool thru 'out the final round... at the end of the day, the one who played better won.

Today, he tried too hard. He wanted to win so badly that he forced his shots. He spent more time in the thick rough and in the sand than I've seen before. Notwithstanding that he managed to salvage his game, he really had to score more FIRs and GIRs. I think he only had 2 FIRs?

Rock was rock solid. He played to his strength. Remained calm (except for his last driver shot) and did not get too aggressive. It became a game of attrition. The more the other tried to catch up, their mistakes consumed them.

All that said, Rory was stunning. I didn't know that he suffered a 2 stroke penalty on day 2. If he hadn't, he would have won a stroke ahead of Rock. But that's the game of golf. All in all, it's too bad that Rory didn't win. I think he played well and his 2nd place finish is just a sign of things to come in 2012.

Thank God Woods didn't win...
That's all I can say.

By the way, was Rock using a RBZ driver?

Agreed on Rory, he put up an impressive round.

He was long off the tee and accurate as well, finding a high number of fairways. If he had a touch more accuracy in his approach and converted it to a lower number of putts like he did on day 1, he would have won by a comfortable margin.

Highly impressive output from him.

Thanks to Lee for the impressive update and narrative. I missed the game but through your thread, I still managed to feel the heat...

Itsuki wrote:

Thanks to Lee for the impressive update and narrative. I missed the game but through your thread, I still managed to feel the heat...

You're most welcome, Itsuki. It's for hardcore golfers like yourself that I do this, so it's nice to be appreciated.

Too bad the Golf Channel did not carry this on HD, else the quality of the videos would have been better, but the slo motion was very instructive for me nonetheless.

TheFocalPoint wrote:

Thank God Woods didn't win...
That's all I can say.

By the way, was Rock using a RBZ driver?

R11.

Titleist bag

JL apparel

Here's a great slo mo video lesson of how to cut a shot out of the rough.

Tiger swing is like what Bradley Hughes (and Paul Tudor in this forum) has been arguing he should do.

Wow. As I looked at these numbers, 3 highly different strategies emerged.

Lets's look at the day 4 stats of Rock, Woods and McIlroy.



A picture derived from those numbers showed 3 different sets of strengths and weaknesses from these players.

Tiger, tee shot long, but often inaccurate, great short game, strong putting.

Rory, tee shot long and accurate, strong short game, strong putting.

Robert, the shortest of the 3 off the tee but accurate, weak short game, strong putting. And seems very familiar with the course.

This is how they played out.

Robert missed 4 greens, and only scrambled 1/4, a success rate of only 25%, dropping 3 shots.

Tiger missed a whopping 12 greens, and scrambled 9 /12, an amazing success rate of 75%, dropping 3 shots also.

Rory missed only 3 greens, scrambled 2/3, an impressive 66.6% success rate, dropping only 1 shot.

Since Robert has such a low scrambling rate, it was critical for him not to miss the greens, which he pulled off successfully, by hitting a high number of fairways, 8/14, which led to hitting 14 GIRs. And he had good knowledge of the course, down to which way the grain was running on the greens, and placed his approach shots intelligently for easy putts.

Rory did an even better job, both length and accuracy, hitting 10/14 fairways, and impressively, having the longest drive of the three, averaging 300.5 yards, and therefore had the highest number of GIR at 15.

But Robert, despite being the shortest of the 3 at 277.5 yards, hit just one GIR less than Rory, which is impressive despite giving up 22.5 yards to Rory.

Tiger in contrast, was pretty long (297 yards) and extremely inaccurate, hitting only 2/14 fairways, which led to hitting only 6 GIR, putting his shortgame under tremendous pressure. To be sure, some of his tee shots were good, but carried or rolled more than he thought, and rolled into the rough or fairway bunkers. Seems he also struggled with the wind, another factor in playing this course for the first time. And finally, he was not as familiar with the green as Robert, so he was not as close in his approach shots as Robert.

Look at Tiger's putts, he took only 24 putts, compared to Robert's 30 and Rory's 29. This is impressive, but remember Tiger missed 12 GIRs, so many of those putts were 1-chip 1-putts just to make par. His short game is tremendous but he simply missed far too many greens.

As a result, Tiger played par, went for distance aggressively, counting on his short game to back him up, but his inaccuracy off the tee took too heavy a toll.

Rory played the best at -3, was both long and accurate, and putted well. Without his 2-shot penalty for an infringement on Day 2, he would have won.

But Robert played smartly to overcome both his lack of distance and relative lack of short game prowess by focusing on hitting fairways and greens, and his -2 today was enough to win.

So, lesson learnt for me, when unfamiliar with a course, or on the days when I'm not that accurate, leave the driver in the bag and just focus on hitting fairways and greens instead of going for hero shots. And always polish the short game to keep it constantly sharp.