The obsession with Tiger Woods' long game means the obvious deterioration in his putting gets overlooked.
Forget the long game, it's Tiger's troubles on the greens that are really hurting him says Dave Tindall
The obsession with Tiger Woods' long game means the obvious deterioration in his putting gets overlooked.
For years Woods has, quite rightly, been described as the best clutch putter in the game but over the last two seasons he appears to have dropped back into the pack.
We've seen the evidence on television but the stats are even more revealing.
Strokes Gained - Putting is now the official stat used by the PGA Tour and the explantion of how it's compiled is this:
"The number of putts a player takes from a specific distance is measured against a statistical baseline to determine the player's strokes gained or lost on a hole. The sum of the values for all holes played in a round minus the field average strokes gained/lost for the round is the player's Strokes gained/lost for that round. The sum of strokes gained for each round are divided by total rounds played."
In other words it tries to isolate just how effective the putter is if everything else were equal. It's therefore a much more useful guide to putting prowess than say Total Putts Per Round where the numbers can be skewed if, say, a player one-putts a lot due to missing the green, knocking a chip close and tapping in.
The official PGA Tour website has Strokes Gained - Putting stats dating back to 2004.
Tiger's rank between 2004 and 2009 reads: 2nd, 9th, 22nd, 3rd, 3rd, 2nd.
Tiger's rank in 2010 and 2011 reads: 109th, 60th.
It's also worth noting that the player who topped the Strokes Gained - Putting stat in 2010 and is ranked first again in 2011 is none other than Luke Donald.
It's slightly oversimplifying it, but that's a big reason why Donald is now the world number one and why Tiger has slumped to 51st.
Worst putting
"That's probably one of the worst putting rounds I've ever had. I can't putt the ball any worse than I did today," said Tiger after shooting a two-over 73 on his return to the US Tour on Thursday.
To many observers though it just seemed like another poor round of putting from Woods rather than some sort of crazy extreme.
The fact he expressed his frustration in such a way though may have been telling.
Woods knows his putter is costing him. It's putting pressure on his long game at a time when he doesn't need it and it's stopping him winning titles in one of the ways - via brilliance on the greens - that he used to.
There is one obvious solution of course...
But could you honestly see Tiger pulling out a long putter?
