AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2008 > February > 26 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USWoods putts distance between himself, world
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
For the longest time, I have thought that Jack Nicklaus was the surest pressure putter I’d ever seen. Over the weekend, in fact, I saw him roll in a few, delivered by television, in the Skins Game played in Maui, and he is now 68 years old.
As it turned out, Tiger Woods was finishing off a show of his own in the desert suburbs of Tucson, devastating the field in the World Match Play Championship. This was, I’d presume, another step in Woods’ concentrated campaign to make this his year of the Grand Slam. This was no stroll in the park, at first. In fact, J.B. Holmes, the rustic from Kentucky, had him down by three holes with five to play. It was then that Woods snapped out of it, as if somebody had pushed his button. He putted Holmes into submission, and they weren’t tap-ins. Some were cross-country putts that left Holmes gasping.
The Arron Oberholser match was routine, “barely raising a sweat,” in the words of Doug Ferguson, the Associated Press golf writer. It is not to say that Woods rode a gravy train into the championship. He can be vulnerable. Last year, a left-handed Australian, the somewhat lank and ungainly Nick O’Hern with the broomstick putter, took him out in the third round. This time, here came Aaron Baddeley, a younger and handsomer Aussie. Twice Baddeley had his chance to close out the match, but twice he missed putts of some 10 or 12 feet that would have ended it.
From that point on, Woods turned the thing into a train wreck. K.J. Choi, the Korean who won Woods’ Washington tournament last summer, fell next, and the less one dwells upon the match with Stewart Cink, the better for the Georgia Tech alum. Back here in Georgia there was a colony of Cink believers who, with an ear to history, thought that this was his time to give his career a fresh launching.
You see, when they were collegians, the Stanford golf team came to Georgia for competitions. Woods was a freshman at Stanford, Cink an upperclassman at Tech. They were matched twice, and Cink won both. Nothing more realistic than fairy tale hope. Years have passed since collegiate days, and the two have taken off to different altitudes, one soaring, the other living happily ever after.
Woods turned it on once again Sunday against Cink. He sank putts halfway across Gila County. Even when the match was long since beyond a competition, he completed a week of putting the likes of which I don’t think I’ve ever seen. When he needed them, he made them. When he didn’t need them, he made them.
Then I opened the latest issue of Golf Digest, and there I found his recipe. “Making Putting Natural,” is the title. (Natural for him, maybe, but you and me?)
“Let your putter release to the hole with your right hand.” (That’s first. The problem is, I play left-handed.)
“Grip pressure varies from player to player.” (Mine is fairly light.)
“The shape of the stroke-path is another choice.” (This is heavy scientific stuff.)
“The key is to find what works for you.” (Now you’re talking.)
“I’ve started to monitor my stroke on a computer to make sure of my mechanics.” (This is sort of rising to another zone.)
“To practice the release, I focus on my right hand. I’m most consistent when my stroke path is one degree in to out through impact, with the putter face releasing.” (Now you’re way over our head?)
“I swing on an arc with the face rotating from open to closed.”
Well, there you have it. That’s about the best I can do for you. You have all his secrets. Most all. You don’t think it might be his readjusted eyes, do you? You know, the new vision he advertises.
Whatever, when it comes to that last great putt of all, I’ll go with Tiger.
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