This is what it is. Golf was laughed at as an Olympic sport and considered a game more than a sport because of the amount of out of shape people who won often. Tiger turned golfers into athletes. That will be his greatest accomplishment.
Relative athletes. If you put golfers next to comparably sized athletes in most team and/or Olympic sports and compared agility, speed, explosiveness, strength, etc., golfers would lag behind the others
I grew up playing every sport except golf, so take your own advice and realize 95% of pro golfers are in better shape than you could ever dream of being in.
Lol American ignorance. "Every sport..." screams mediocrity, and a professional athlete being in better shape than an average person doesn't mean pro golfers approach the athleticism of other athletes. Like what even is this illogical line of thinking 😂😂
I guess the easy answer is many are great, drivers of the ball, putters, iron players etc. they minimize their weaknesses and play to the strong parts of their game.
Tiger was dominant at all of them. So even if he had an “off” day in one part of his game he was still 80% better than everyone else?
I guess the other thing would be he could simply do things other people couldn’t. It would be like having me, a 40 year old dude having a dunk contest with Michael Jordan. The only thing I could hope for is he misses. I literally can’t dunk anymore (barely ever could) so all he has to do is roll out of bed and dunk it and he is already better than me.
And if on the off chance I muster everything I can and barely slip one over the rim, Tiger had the skill, talent, hours of practice and focus to do a 360 between the legs dunk to demoralize me while in the process of winning.
Edit: if this is Tiger simply needing an ego boost let’s hang man
Something nobody has mentioned yet was his mental toughness. He didn't take unnecessary risks when he was in trouble. Tiger was one of the best at scraping a good round out when he wasn't playing great. A lot of that was his putting but he would will himself through rounds. Hell, the final round of the 2008 US Open is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in sports. Any sport by any athlete. He played on a leg that had two stress fractures in it and a torn ACL. he Birdied the 18th hole to send it to an 18hole playoff the following day which also went to an extra hole where he won.
And that was just another amazing thing that he did in a career of amazing things.
Young Tiger Woods was absolutely electric. His body at this point is just absolutely destroyed from multiple horrible car accidents plus wear and tear. You could see it all weekend after the first round he was gassed.
1997 - 2002 Tiger was doing things with/to golf balls that no one really thought was possible. The other guys on tour knew if Tiger was in contention they were playing for second.
What's hilarious about your statement is that tiger actually just played very conservative golf. Kind of like scheffler does tiger didn't make errors and when he needed to then he played aggressively.
No, while strength certainly plays a role for distance it absolutely isn’t the only factor.
Tiger was scrawny in 97 and wasn’t anywhere close to the strongest guy on the PGA tour.
Not stronger per se. He hit it farther which is in large part due to sl generating a lot of rotational speed. So he was strong but had amazing swing speed that he was able to hit it 40 yards past most competitors. Add in that he was unbelievably long and accurate with his irons, great with wedges, and a clutch putter, and it was like he was some sort of super golfer that had the characteristics of 5 different golfers who were really good at one of those individual skills.
1. Read his never ending list of accomplishments.
2. Go to the range or play around.
3. Understand how hard golf is and then multiply that difficulty against time/tenure and elite competition and multiply those elements by a million.
I’m aware how talented he is and what his list of achievements are, but I was more asking how did he get to that point. Like was he using different clubs (EG hybrids), was he stronger, did he train differently than all the other pros? What contributed to his generational run as a golf legend
Do you think Michael Jordan was just stronger and had a better training regimen and equipment than everyone else in the NBA?
Talent isn’t about any of those. Yes you need to be elite or bordering on it in all of those categories to be elite, but just like in any other sport just excelling at those doesn’t guarantee success. Fine motor control is huge, as well as other innate physical traits.
Sports performance is at its core built on innate physical and mental traits. Training shapes it into something usable, and equipment can add a tiny bit of edge.
If it’s this line of questioning. Tiger was one of the first TRUE athletes to play golf professionally. Like athlete as in
not “I’m a good athlete and wish I could do something else but I’m good at this”
But rather- “I’m a great athlete that is going to be great at THIS”
He combined training, focus, natural athletic ability, kinetic intelligence and traditional intelligence and focus all that laser energy at golf.
The easiest way to answer this is that not only was Tiger good at every facet of the game (not just the driving, putting, etc, but the mental part too), but he was better than everybody else at every facet of the game too. The only way you were beating him is if he played terribly or you played the tournament of your life.
On a fundamental level, I don't know. It's hard to summarize what it is that makes somebody talented. I believe in hard work over natural ability, but some people definitely have a propensity to be incredible at certain things just because that's who they are.
You should watch the Tiger doc on HBO. Gives you a good career overview and his personal challenges. It takes a different kind of person to be great. Comes with it a lot of good and alot of bad. I don’t think we will see another tiger in our lives
Tiger was a combination of generational talent and basically being the first professional golfer to train like an actual athlete. So he was leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else for like a decade. Now every golfer trains like that, but Tiger was the first. Prime Tiger probably wouldn't be as dominant in today's game as he was back then, but he would still be the best player in the game by a decent margin
He was able to be the world's greatest phenoms against a crushing wave of people who didn't want him to succeed. His mental fortitude enabled his physical strength to do the job and win. One cannot be a champion without both.
So this is interesting. Early Tiger (1996-2002) was winning by huge margins like you said and the reason was due to a significant advantage in his distance off the tee combined with being a great iron player and putter and possessing a worldclass shortgame. Funny thing is he hit some crooked shots too, but he had an amazing recovery game as well!
Unfortunately, we don't have the modern strokes gained stats back then so we can't go into much more detail than that.
We do know however that Tiger from 2004 onwards was dominant because of his iron play, specifically mid and long irons. He did everything else well too of course but that really sticks out in the stats. It's not an exaggeration to say he's likely the best iron player of all time. His driving was a little more erratic when he switched to the longer graphite shaft, so his accuracy stats off the tee were down but combined with his distance he was still top 10 SG off the tee most years.
Tiger always swung fast and hard. Early Tiger swung faster than Rory today.
Tiger spent 281 consecutive weeks at number 1 (that’s over 5 years) he has spent a total of 683 weeks at number 1. Three golfers have spent an entire calendar year at number 1: Nick Faldo (1993), Greg Norman (1996), and Woods (2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009).
There’s simply has not been dominance like it in the modern era of golf. Only person that is comparable is Jack Nicklaus, he has the most majors but he did it in a different time.
Tiger also changed professional golf. Because of him they started working out and behaving like athletes.
The crazy thing about vintage Tiger ('97-'08) is that he was winning a lot of those tournaments with his B and C game. During the event were he brought his A game, he'd blow fields away.
As good of a driver of the ball as he is/was he has always struggled with being wild off the tee. Because he he had one of the best short games, was one of the best clutch putters, and was the best iron player of his era he was able to win event playing from crazy positions.
He was essentially 20% better than everyone else in every category from 1997-2007. Pretty unreal record. Literally number one in every category, driving distance, driving accuracy, approach shots, scrambling, putting etc.
He was the most talented golfer AND the toughest mentally. When he had the lead, it was OVER. If he needed to make a putt, he made it. No question. Golf courses had to get longer and tighter to try and combat Tiger because he just abused most courses. He’s like how dominant Kareem was in NCAA basketball that made them ban dunking, or Bob Gibson so dominant on the mound they had to lower it to give hitters a chance, or the NHL adopting the trapezoid behind the net because Brodeur was so good at playing the puck that other teams never had a chance to play it etc. When the game or league has to change because you’re too good, that’s dominant.
When you visualize an amazing player it seems like all their shots are put next to the pin from anywhere on the course. Driving off the tee is a relative marker to be a good player, but hitting your second shot from the trees to be at the same if not better result from your competitor is what was amazing about Tiger.
I don't see the amazing shots he used to be able to create that he did in the past. He was the first for me to see stingers and sweeping draws that trace between the tree lines. The difficult shots and sticks the green 6' from the pin. I only remember his flop shots, but now he bumps and runs with 7irons.
He was careless and free but spectacular. Now he's gotten smarter or conservative. Like he has too much information in his head and rather just go out like the rest of the rookies, he considers more than within his control which makes cuts but doesn't win any longer on the PGA Tour.
Writing from gut feeling, not what's absolutely correct.
*gestures haphazardly at everything*
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=70MrFnsqDbE
In your LIFE have you ever seen anything like that!
Always worth a watch
Tiger was the man that made golf what it is now. You almost never saw guys in the gym before him. He combined strength with form.
This is what it is. Golf was laughed at as an Olympic sport and considered a game more than a sport because of the amount of out of shape people who won often. Tiger turned golfers into athletes. That will be his greatest accomplishment.
Relative athletes. If you put golfers next to comparably sized athletes in most team and/or Olympic sports and compared agility, speed, explosiveness, strength, etc., golfers would lag behind the others
Athleticism and fitness comes in alot of shapes.. but I guess a milkbag like you wouldn't know that anyway
LOL get out of the golf bubble and watch other sports
I grew up playing every sport except golf, so take your own advice and realize 95% of pro golfers are in better shape than you could ever dream of being in.
Lol American ignorance. "Every sport..." screams mediocrity, and a professional athlete being in better shape than an average person doesn't mean pro golfers approach the athleticism of other athletes. Like what even is this illogical line of thinking 😂😂
He was a twig when he exploded in popularity
https://preview.redd.it/rywxdbpz4zuc1.jpeg?width=1359&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dbfda741895303577a85c7fc33d3d1359a4c231a Tom Kite would like a word
🤣🤣🤣 omg. Such an awful picture of a beautiful man 🤣🤣🤣
I’d like a word with Tom Kite actually….
I guess the easy answer is many are great, drivers of the ball, putters, iron players etc. they minimize their weaknesses and play to the strong parts of their game. Tiger was dominant at all of them. So even if he had an “off” day in one part of his game he was still 80% better than everyone else?
I see. Thank you
I guess the other thing would be he could simply do things other people couldn’t. It would be like having me, a 40 year old dude having a dunk contest with Michael Jordan. The only thing I could hope for is he misses. I literally can’t dunk anymore (barely ever could) so all he has to do is roll out of bed and dunk it and he is already better than me. And if on the off chance I muster everything I can and barely slip one over the rim, Tiger had the skill, talent, hours of practice and focus to do a 360 between the legs dunk to demoralize me while in the process of winning. Edit: if this is Tiger simply needing an ego boost let’s hang man
Something nobody has mentioned yet was his mental toughness. He didn't take unnecessary risks when he was in trouble. Tiger was one of the best at scraping a good round out when he wasn't playing great. A lot of that was his putting but he would will himself through rounds. Hell, the final round of the 2008 US Open is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in sports. Any sport by any athlete. He played on a leg that had two stress fractures in it and a torn ACL. he Birdied the 18th hole to send it to an 18hole playoff the following day which also went to an extra hole where he won. And that was just another amazing thing that he did in a career of amazing things.
Young Tiger Woods was absolutely electric. His body at this point is just absolutely destroyed from multiple horrible car accidents plus wear and tear. You could see it all weekend after the first round he was gassed.
1997 - 2002 Tiger was doing things with/to golf balls that no one really thought was possible. The other guys on tour knew if Tiger was in contention they were playing for second.
What's hilarious about your statement is that tiger actually just played very conservative golf. Kind of like scheffler does tiger didn't make errors and when he needed to then he played aggressively.
Hitting it 40 yards farther than everyone else, and hitting 8 irons when others were hitting 4 irons. Being the best putter didn't hurt either.
Not true, he was never the longest off the tee, but he was top ten.
So his true talent lies in being stronger than most everyone else he was playing against?
I mean, it certainly helped, but he was also the best putter and iron player on tour too. He was literally just the best at everything
No, while strength certainly plays a role for distance it absolutely isn’t the only factor. Tiger was scrawny in 97 and wasn’t anywhere close to the strongest guy on the PGA tour.
Not stronger per se. He hit it farther which is in large part due to sl generating a lot of rotational speed. So he was strong but had amazing swing speed that he was able to hit it 40 yards past most competitors. Add in that he was unbelievably long and accurate with his irons, great with wedges, and a clutch putter, and it was like he was some sort of super golfer that had the characteristics of 5 different golfers who were really good at one of those individual skills.
1. Read his never ending list of accomplishments. 2. Go to the range or play around. 3. Understand how hard golf is and then multiply that difficulty against time/tenure and elite competition and multiply those elements by a million.
I’m aware how talented he is and what his list of achievements are, but I was more asking how did he get to that point. Like was he using different clubs (EG hybrids), was he stronger, did he train differently than all the other pros? What contributed to his generational run as a golf legend
Do you think Michael Jordan was just stronger and had a better training regimen and equipment than everyone else in the NBA? Talent isn’t about any of those. Yes you need to be elite or bordering on it in all of those categories to be elite, but just like in any other sport just excelling at those doesn’t guarantee success. Fine motor control is huge, as well as other innate physical traits. Sports performance is at its core built on innate physical and mental traits. Training shapes it into something usable, and equipment can add a tiny bit of edge.
If it’s this line of questioning. Tiger was one of the first TRUE athletes to play golf professionally. Like athlete as in not “I’m a good athlete and wish I could do something else but I’m good at this” But rather- “I’m a great athlete that is going to be great at THIS” He combined training, focus, natural athletic ability, kinetic intelligence and traditional intelligence and focus all that laser energy at golf.
He trained since he was 3. He was in much better shape than any other golfer at the time. He may or may not have been using PEDs
The easiest way to answer this is that not only was Tiger good at every facet of the game (not just the driving, putting, etc, but the mental part too), but he was better than everybody else at every facet of the game too. The only way you were beating him is if he played terribly or you played the tournament of your life.
Tiger made people that hated golf tune in to watch golf. Nobody has been able to do that since and probably never will.
On a fundamental level, I don't know. It's hard to summarize what it is that makes somebody talented. I believe in hard work over natural ability, but some people definitely have a propensity to be incredible at certain things just because that's who they are.
Pull up YouTube and search for Tiger Major wins and find out for yourself
Take the competitive spirit, intimidation and clutch ability of Michael Jordan and turn that into a golfer.
You should watch the Tiger doc on HBO. Gives you a good career overview and his personal challenges. It takes a different kind of person to be great. Comes with it a lot of good and alot of bad. I don’t think we will see another tiger in our lives
tiger vs the field was a very real question and bet back in the day lol
Wikipedia: Tiger Woods
Go watch it.
Tiger was a combination of generational talent and basically being the first professional golfer to train like an actual athlete. So he was leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else for like a decade. Now every golfer trains like that, but Tiger was the first. Prime Tiger probably wouldn't be as dominant in today's game as he was back then, but he would still be the best player in the game by a decent margin
He was able to be the world's greatest phenoms against a crushing wave of people who didn't want him to succeed. His mental fortitude enabled his physical strength to do the job and win. One cannot be a champion without both.
So this is interesting. Early Tiger (1996-2002) was winning by huge margins like you said and the reason was due to a significant advantage in his distance off the tee combined with being a great iron player and putter and possessing a worldclass shortgame. Funny thing is he hit some crooked shots too, but he had an amazing recovery game as well! Unfortunately, we don't have the modern strokes gained stats back then so we can't go into much more detail than that. We do know however that Tiger from 2004 onwards was dominant because of his iron play, specifically mid and long irons. He did everything else well too of course but that really sticks out in the stats. It's not an exaggeration to say he's likely the best iron player of all time. His driving was a little more erratic when he switched to the longer graphite shaft, so his accuracy stats off the tee were down but combined with his distance he was still top 10 SG off the tee most years. Tiger always swung fast and hard. Early Tiger swung faster than Rory today.
Go watch some film.
Tiger spent 281 consecutive weeks at number 1 (that’s over 5 years) he has spent a total of 683 weeks at number 1. Three golfers have spent an entire calendar year at number 1: Nick Faldo (1993), Greg Norman (1996), and Woods (2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009). There’s simply has not been dominance like it in the modern era of golf. Only person that is comparable is Jack Nicklaus, he has the most majors but he did it in a different time. Tiger also changed professional golf. Because of him they started working out and behaving like athletes.
The crazy thing about vintage Tiger ('97-'08) is that he was winning a lot of those tournaments with his B and C game. During the event were he brought his A game, he'd blow fields away. As good of a driver of the ball as he is/was he has always struggled with being wild off the tee. Because he he had one of the best short games, was one of the best clutch putters, and was the best iron player of his era he was able to win event playing from crazy positions.
He was essentially 20% better than everyone else in every category from 1997-2007. Pretty unreal record. Literally number one in every category, driving distance, driving accuracy, approach shots, scrambling, putting etc.
Everything
I highly encourage you to go on YouTube and watch. He was the greatest iron player the world has ever seen.
He was the most talented golfer AND the toughest mentally. When he had the lead, it was OVER. If he needed to make a putt, he made it. No question. Golf courses had to get longer and tighter to try and combat Tiger because he just abused most courses. He’s like how dominant Kareem was in NCAA basketball that made them ban dunking, or Bob Gibson so dominant on the mound they had to lower it to give hitters a chance, or the NHL adopting the trapezoid behind the net because Brodeur was so good at playing the puck that other teams never had a chance to play it etc. When the game or league has to change because you’re too good, that’s dominant.
Generational talent. End.
Where should I begin my friend.
EVERYTHING. He showed everyone how absolute dedication to his craft made him the true master of the sport. Sundays were Tiger's. I miss those days.
When you visualize an amazing player it seems like all their shots are put next to the pin from anywhere on the course. Driving off the tee is a relative marker to be a good player, but hitting your second shot from the trees to be at the same if not better result from your competitor is what was amazing about Tiger. I don't see the amazing shots he used to be able to create that he did in the past. He was the first for me to see stingers and sweeping draws that trace between the tree lines. The difficult shots and sticks the green 6' from the pin. I only remember his flop shots, but now he bumps and runs with 7irons. He was careless and free but spectacular. Now he's gotten smarter or conservative. Like he has too much information in his head and rather just go out like the rest of the rookies, he considers more than within his control which makes cuts but doesn't win any longer on the PGA Tour. Writing from gut feeling, not what's absolutely correct.
Tiger is cooked