There were nine holes left in the Masters on Sunday afternoon and it was over. Spieth had a five-stroke lead in a tournament he had owned for two years…
This wasn’t a competition, it was a coronation.
(Los Angeles Times, April 12, 2016)
In fact, Spieth entered the homestretch (aka the back nine) on a hot streak, having birdied four consecutive holes (6,7,8, and 9). And even though he bogeyed the 10th and 11th, he began the 12th with a two-stroke lead.
In other words, Spieth still appeared headed for a coronation; so much so that the CBS commentators were already comparing him with the greatest players of all time.
Spieth was going to become the youngest player in the Masters era to have claimed three majors. He was going to become the game’s first back-to-back, wire-to-wire major winner. He was going to win a second Masters in his third appearance after it took Tiger Woods seven appearances to win his second, and after it took Jack Nicklaus and Palmer six appearances to win their second.
(ESPN, April 11, 2016)
Except that a funny thing happened on the way to Butler Cabin and his second green jacket. Spieth quadruple bogeyed the 12th and left it with a three-stroke deficit. Even worse, he was clearly reeling from the psychological trauma of knowing that he had just become the biggest choke artist in PGA history.
I am on record pledging never to watch a Tiger-less Golf tournament again. Therefore, I feel obliged to clarify that I was watching on Sunday only as payment on a silly wager.
In any event, as I watched this unfold, I texted an old friend that Spieth was having a “Normanesque” meltdown. (If you don’t know what that means, google it!) My friend thought he could still come back. But, try as Spieth did, he had to have known there was no coming back from that. He ended up tied for second … still three strokes back.
As badly as I felt for this 22 year old, his meltdown only reinforced the Tiger-centric interest most fans developed for Golf over the past two decades. After all, this would never have happened to the 22-year-old Tiger. And key to the triumphalism that made us cheer for him back then was that
- no lead was safe from his charge in the final round;
- if he were atop the leaderboard going into the final round (as Spieth was on Sunday), other players knew they were only playing for second place.
Yet, somehow, Tiger-less tournaments are still all about Tiger. In this case, the scuttlebutt was about him announcing, just days before the Masters got underway, that he’s still not physically fit to compete. But I suspect he was unwittingly admitting that he’s not mentally fit.
Whatever the case, here is how I presaged his debilitating rehab in “Tiger, Tiger, Losing Fight,” August 15, 2011.
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It’s plainly disingenuous for Tiger to suggest that chronic injuries have prevented him from winning. For this is belied by the fact that he not only seemed just fine throughout his winless 2010, but actually won his ‘last’ major, the 2008 U.S. Open, while in obvious pain caused by a knee injury…
Frankly, one does not have to be a trained psychologist to diagnose that Tiger’s problems are more mental than physical. Because it’s self-evident that the public humiliation he endured following that domestic incident, which exposed his Charlie Sheen-like penchant for prostitutes, sapped him of the self-esteem and confidence that not only fueled his game, but instilled self-defeating fear in other players.
Unsurprisingly, the media have focused on the fact that he lost his wife and a half billion dollars in divorce payments and commercial endorsements. It’s arguable, though, that an even greater loss was the mental strength that gave him that invincible swagger, but which depended so much on reverence from fans and fellow players alike…
Furthermore, that a physically fit Tiger announced, after missing the cut, that he won’t play another tournament until November is testament to how mentally vulnerable he has become. Indeed, one can be forgiven for thinking that he’d rather nurse his wounded pride than risk another ignominious cut.
Except that this avoidance strategy will only make his performance anxiety more acute. And, given his now-notorious sexcapades, how’s that for irony of ironies…?
Tiger is 35. So he can probably compete for majors, physically, for another five years. But if he still hasn’t won his 15th by this time next year, I fear he will never be able to compete well enough, mentally, to dethrone Jack Nicklaus as the king of the majors with 18 wins…
To appreciate how difficult it is for one player to dominate the majors the way Tiger did, bear in mind that 13 different players have won the last 13 majors.
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The majors, of course, are the four most prestigious annual tournaments in professional golf. They include the Masters in April, U.S. Open in June, British Open in July, and PGA Championship in August. And this trend – of no player dominating the majors the way Tiger did – continued when a relatively unknown player, Danny Willet of the UK, rose up from Spieth’s meltdown to win his first Major.
Unfortunately, CBS had spent so much of its coverage following Spieth that Willet appeared like a skunk at the garden party when the network had to begin following him.
Apropos of this, coverage of Spieth included allowing viewers to eavesdrop on his purportedly private chats with his caddie. It should have betrayed a harbinger of things to come that, long before that fateful 12th hole, we could hear Spieth agonizing over every shot as if it would make or break his entire tournament. But am I the only one who found this inside-the-huddle coverage annoying?
Anyway, perhaps an even more telling measure of Tiger’s 14 majors is that 45-year-old Phil Mickelson has the most among all active players with just 5.
That said, it might be helpful to recall that Tiger made a similar announcement last year about his debilitating rehab, which ESPN reported on as follows:
For the third time in his past nine tournaments, Tiger Woods has withdrawn with a back injury…
Woods, who started his round on the back nine, bogeyed two of his first three holes, again showing signs of the short-game woes that plagued him last week when he missed the cut at the Waste Management Phoenix Open.
(February 6, 2015)
I duly pooh-poohed that announcement in “Tiger’s Back, but His Back Won’t Let Him Play?! Puhleeeze,” February 6, 2015, which includes this pithy diagnosis:
Theories abound about why Tiger can’t find his game. But he needs to find himself before he can find his game.
Of course, the irony is that, at 40, the physical excuses Tiger has been making for his mental shortcomings are becoming self-fulfilling….
But I cannot overstate that Tiger was already a 33-year-old winner of 14 majors in November 2009. That’s when suffered the public humiliation that sapped him of his mental edge, which is so indispensable to winning in Golf.
Spieth is a 22-year-old winner of 2 majors. Therefore, one can only hope that he does not have the same kind of difficulty recovering from this public humiliation that Tiger is having with his….
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