I won’t say everyone is “hatin” on his game, just his driver. Yes, his stats look good for the overall driving category but how many 3 woods/2iron stingers did he hit to get to that? Don’t forget they only measure 2 holes a day to get that stat. Seems like his recent wins have been when he minimizes using his driver and maximizes his fairways hit. I think most of us look at his iron swings and they are almost completely different than his driver swing.
Has he improved? Absolutely. Could he improve more? Absolutely. What he may call his B game, is most everyone elses A game, so his 3 wins this year puts him at his B- game. Wait till he gets to his A game.
Most of us here commenting think he needs a better driver. That Nike too upright, too long, too light POS is hurting his game, not helping it at all. Of course it’s not limited to Nike drivers, the modern driver is all about clubhead speed and distance. Accuracy is just an afterthought.
The thing that gets us is he practices with a persimmon driver and should know better. The fact that he now has to hide from his own driver should be telling him something. It’s either he’s got a mental block or maybe there is an equipment issue. One is an easy fix and should be tried, the other? Well, that might take time.
“The thing that gets us is he practices with a persimmon driver and should know better.”
Tiger knows better. Besides the obvious contractual equipment obligations, he’s an admitted tech junkie, accepts and embraces the way the gear is in the modern game. He wants to play on a level playing field like everyone else, beat the crap out of the field, take the trophy and go home. It’s his job, day’s work done. I don’t think he sits around moaning that he didn’t use a persimmon driver.
What’s funny is that most of the modern Tour spends countless hours in the gym lifting serious weight, working hard on getting more fit and muscular. So then they go and pull driver and irons which now feel even lighter and can’t keep them in play. What they should be doing is laying around eating donuts and drinking milkshakes so when they use the lightweight modern stuff maybe it feels heavier and they can keep it in the fairways.
Or even crazier. Use heavier flatter equipment and keep up the weight lifting and hit fairways and greens.
Nike has their “Oven” R&D lab. Is it that difficult to get a titanium driver with a flatter lie angle than the 2 degrees of adjustment built it? Is it that difficult to add weight to the driver head? Would it be that difficult to switch out the graphite shaft with a steel shaft? Most of this I can do in my own garage. Imagine what they could do in theirs.
He doesn’t have to compete with a persimmon. He could do it with properly setup modern equipment. It’s actually painful watching him go from his last iron shot with a good looking swing totally under control to the next tee box where he’s playing the part of a crazy axe murderer when he has that driver in his hand.
Here is his approach shot on 18 at the AT&T National.
This is getting good now… Ironsmith, I totally agree with you… If you have a lie angle change during the swing that much with a driver, it will affect the flight of the ball, can go anywhere, plus it forces you to stand up and flip… As far as a steel shaft goes, I tried the frying pans with graphite, they SUCK!! I’ve had many experiences with good players and they asked me why I used a smaller head with a steel shaft, “because I’ve gained distance and accuracy”… Think about the misses with modern drivers, they balloon the crap out of the ball into the trees and you lose a ton of yardage… Now matter what BS hype the big companies have, a shorter steel shaft will overall, (I’m talking about over several rounds), you’ll be longer and more accurate… If I make a bad swing the ball still goes hard off the face and don’t balloon it… Don’t underestimate some mass behind the ball while you’re hitting the sweetspot instead of all over the face… Last week, was hitting persimmon on a classic track, and a guy who I was playing with had the new white driver… I tried it and compared to my persimmon and hit several balls… Same distance, yet the white driver shots were all over the place… These experiments don’t lie, the launch monitors do…
Very calm day indeed out there today & soft greens after 10mm overnight rain, not really Open conditions at all. The bunkering on the course is pretty spectacular & make it a great visual course, I’m sure it looks great off the tee with plenty of strong par 4s. I’m surprised the scores weren’t lower today, maybe there are a bunch of subtle borrows in the greens because we didn’t see a great lot of putts holed. Faster fairways & wind would make this a completely different test I expect making the fairways tougher to find & brining the bunkering & rough more into play.
In general we saw some decent driving in the calm conditions, guys knocking it out there 280 is not something I see up close every day & most of what we saw was impressive enough & we didn’t see a great lot that was wildly errant. The landing areas were mostly pretty generous & the rough whilst certainly serious in places suffered from the walkways, where it was regularly the case of 10yds of good rough then 15 yds of trampled rough meaning a 20yd miss was better than a 10 yds miss, no way round that but eg we saw VJ make birdie from the hospitality area on 17 when clearly bogey was the number he should have made.
Great fun to be there & the circus & pressure especially around the top players was something interesting to see & feel. Looking forward to tomorrow though another calm day is on the cards I think.
If he really practices with persimmon, we can’t blame it on the Nike driver. I played several months ag with a friend on his course from the tips after a redo. 7300…and I couldn’t reach three par fours. So I liked the way the Nike looks at setup, and bought a used on on eBay. It is easy to hit I can’t miss a fairway with it…straight and long. I don’t use it much…just when I get on a course over 7,100, but, using persimmon, it is so easy to hit. It’s Tiger’s swing with the driver that is the problem.
I would say it has been a long long time since TW practiced with a persimmon driver. I know he used to hit some at Isleworth on the range but that was many moons ago, probably in mid/late 90’s at best…so a long time between drinks.
The interesting thing (which I have posted somewhere before) is that TW’s driver is actually almost 3 degrees more upright than his 3 wood, which is basackwards. I would think he would look at that and see something is off with his setup of equipment, but someone is in his ear or someone isn’t getting that simple thing that could help him with regards to that club.
The setup of his driver enables him to miss both ways…Flatter and in sequence with the rest of his set should at least help eliminate the left shot and give him a bit more confidence to aim left if need be and not fear it going left…His bad shot with driver is left…and that brings about the block also because of the fear of left.
I can’t find the club spec for Tiger right now…maybe someone knows where I posted it and can repost it here
From memory his 5 wood was 57 his 3 wood was 56.5 and his driver was 59…to work in proper sequence his driver should be 56 minimum to match his set as when the clubs get longer they also get flatter
I don’t understand why Tiger doesn’t put the titleist steel shaft driver back in his bag. IMO, his best year driving the ball was 2000. I am sure his confidence would get better just by using a club that he used to win a bunch of majors. Here is some good footage of Tiger in 2000. You can fast forward to 7:24 to see him hit some drivers. What a great swing. youtube.com/watch?v=iKYIkUBeYrU
It seems The Open Championship is the only major that still looks like a major despite the technological assault on the game.
The majority of the players look unprepared having a limited arsenal of shots in their bag to play the ground game. I don’t know how many times I saw players lofting SW from around the greens when clearly the old fashion ground bump would be the higher percentage shot.
The Open remains the only event, that more often than not, crowns the more experienced or seasoned players. This American version of target golf across extremely calculated homogenized conditions that seems to have infected the golf world over, suddenly doesn’t apply and leaves many of the so called worlds best scrambling for answers. A bit of wind kicks up and their games quickly blow away like beach umbrellas.
I think I heard the commentators cite that Ernie led the week in greens in regulation, and was well down the list in putting stats. An anomaly in today’s game.
I don’t think bomb and gouge works so well here. The rough, heather or gorse in places is high enough to send a bit of terror running through some viens. It’s a major and should play that way.
18 played like a real golf hole. Risk and reward. Take the risk, pull it off like Ernie did and that was just wonderful classic golf execution. Miss your drive into a pot bunker and lose the event.
I don’t think I ever saw Nicklaus make a mistakes like that coming down the stretch. The reason he won so many of them.
Could he have laid back with a 3 or 4 iron off the tee and had enough confidence to still get one on the green with a mid or long iron? How would Peter Thomson have played the hole?
This style of golf is fun to watch, but I suspect there are just not enough events like this anymore to motivate the players to
learn the shots required to prepare themselves for such an undertaking.
It must be a thrill for Ernie to win a major again.
I agree with Lag that this really highlighted a lot of the player’s weaknesses, perhaps even more than the US Open when it comes to shotmaking abilities. To me it’s a shame that it didn’t blow a bit more for the whole week. The wind only really got up on Sunday, wasn’t as strong as it usually is around there and most players still fell apart. We grew up playing those courses without all the trampled down rough from spectators and hospitality units to bail us out. Perhaps pro golf is too easy nowadays and players don’t continue to develop their games?
I know it’s just an interview Ernie was doing, but they already are using extremely similar golf balls, that’s not the issue. They should just be using the old balata that spins more and requires more skill.
I think that’s kinda what he meant. Most pros, 75% or more, play Titleist ProV1 or ProV1x on tour today. I think he meant more of a “Tour” standard ball that doesn’t go as straight or as far as the current ProV.
Saddest part is the ball manufacturers would have no problem making a “Tour” ball spec that spun more with less distance and would be very Balata like. Hell they already did that before with the Synthetic Balatas they had in the mid 90s. Doubt it would cost them more than a few cents a ball or maybe even save them a few cents a ball since they wouldn’t need the latest and greatest polymers to maximize distance to build that ball.
All the PGA has to do is ask for one from the manufacturers and tell their players to use it if they want to play on the PGA tour. Problem solved, no USGA or R&A needed other than to cert the ball as conforming. Hell the ball manufacturers might even make a small fortune having “real” players want to switch to the “Pro” ball too. Everyone else can play their rocketballz all they want.
Something crazy about having 100s of different balls that you as a professional player could use in a tournament. Especially when you can change it from round to round. Windy day = low spin ball. Wet soft fairways and greens = high spin ball etc.
Hi everyone, just received this thought i’d share.Unfortunately they don’t quote Ernie’s lie angles but i found it interesting when he wanted more control he went flatter.
At the heart of Els’s clutch final-round 68 was the three utility irons he had in play for the course of the week that received some last-minute adjustments from one of the most renowned golf club designers in world golf, Roger Cleveland.
Els had the Callaway X Utility Prototype irons in play since the Byron Nelson Championship in May where, having been handed the 18, 21 and 24-degree clubs, asked of Cleveland, “Where’s the rest of the set?”
In order to adapt better to the windy conditions that would prove so treacherous in the final round of The Open, [size=150]Els had Cleveland flatten the lie angle of each of the three clubs by half a degree, seeking a more penetrating trajectory and greater control.[/size]Tour professionals have been largely reluctant to accept the hybrid technology so popular with amateur golfers but the shallower design of the X Utility Prototype maintains the playability the world’s best players prefer with a deeper centre of gravity for higher launch angle that is often difficult to achieve in longer irons.
Els’ ultimate success was not the only positive story coming out of The Open for Callaway’s X Utility Prototype irons with 2010 US Open champion Graeme McDowell also using an 18-degree iron throughout the week as he played in the final group on the last day on his way to a T5 finish.
Inside Ernie’s Bag: Callaway RAZR Fit driver (8.5 degrees); Callaway X-TOUR '08 (15-degree) fairway wood; Callaway X Utility Prototype irons (18, 21, 24-degree); Callaway RAZR X Muscleback irons (5-9, PW); Callaway JAWS wedges (52, 60-degree); Odyssey White Hot XG #1 Belly Putter; Callaway HEX Black Tour golf ball
Lytham head pro Eddie Birchenough, who has seen four British Opens pass through his gates, lives and breathes links golf and wants to see more of it to test the world’s best players.
After 25 years at the Lancashire course that hosted its 11th British Open last week, Birchenough retires at the end of the year and told Reuters that links-style golf needed to be embraced, not feared. “I’m not one for this American trait of controlling everything,” he said "The ground, the course, the weather. If you go down that line you’ll end up playing snooker. (great line )
"On Sunday afternoon the conditions here were as testing as you could want while keeping the game fair, so perhaps as a champion Ernie was examined better than on the courses, particularly in America, where everything’s controlled.
“I think it requires more fortitude and you need to be more resourceful when you play in all kinds of different conditions.”
“The overall thing that surprised me was around the greens, the short shots, they threw the ball up in the air and that’s just not how to play a seaside green,” he said, shaking his head gently.
“You need to get the ball on the ground and I thought several of them were guilty of not doing that.”
There was one shot that will live long in his memory however.
American 14-times major champion Tiger Woods, already out of the tournament and finishing up his final round, showed the rest of the field how to approach links golf with a sumptuous chip and run on the par-four 17th for a tap-in par.
“Tiger’s five-iron little run shot up the bank on to the green where he knocked it stiff had TV commentators in raptures. So was I,” said Birchenough.
“It was a wonderful links-type shot. We didn’t see enough of them this week.”
One of the highlights for me was when Uncle Ernie threaded a beautiful bump and run between two bunkers onto the 17th? green. If anyone can find the video of that and post it, it would be great to see again.
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