The Greatest FAILURE of Tiger Woods’ Career

The Greatest FAILURE of Tiger Woods’ Career

This is Tiger Woods walking with Phil Mickelson, his partner, during the 2004 Ryder Cup. That year, the Americans thought they were shoeins to win, being the highest ranked golfers in the competition by a very large margin. However, that never happened. They lost and then lost again as the US team eventually watched Europe win for the second cup in a row. This is just a piece of a much larger story about the essence of a man who I consider to be the greatest offer of all time, but who could also just never figure it out in the biggest international competition in the world. And today, we’re going to try to figure out why he could just never put it together. All the while going through his incredible history in the competition to try and put the pieces back together. But to understand all that, first let me paint you a picture of how Tiger Woods did by using his numbers. Through eight Ryder Cup appearances, Tiger Woods has only one title, a 39.1 percentage and only ever came out of the tournament twice with a positive record for his matches that week, despite being one of, if not usually the best golfer in the world at the time and at the event especially. However, that event is much different than what most golfers, Tiger Woods included, are used to. During the RDER Cup, which is a three-day tournament, the best Americans and best European golfers in the world, compete in three main events: forsome or alternate shot, four ball or best ball, and singles matches match play. And with normal PGA Tour events being stroke play with golfers competing for the best score over four days, it can be challenging for many to adjust to this new platform, which I could imagine being a reasonable explanation for some golfers not necessarily living up to their expectations. But for Tiger, it’s a little bit more than that, especially since he did play very well in the events that golf fanatics expected him to. Match play. Throughout Tiger Woods’s career, he’s been regarded by many as one of the greatest matchplay golfers of all time. He is able to step on that tea box, no matter his competitor, and slam them into the ground, being resilient to whatever they are doing and playing great golf while he’s at it, winning hole after hole until finally his enemy is defeated without ever saying a word to him. Throughout his junior career, Tiger dominated everyone in these matchplay events, winning three US junior amateurs, following that up with three straight US amateurs and having a career singles record throughout all events in progolf of 54 wins, 20 losses, and two draws. Often winning by a lot of holes while he’s at it, and very rarely losing by more than two or three. staying in the competition, staying in the match for as long as possible, as you would expect from one of the best matchplay golfers of all time. And the funny thing is, he kept that consistency, at least kind of in the RDER Cup, still being very good at those matchplay events. In the competition, Tiger had four wins, two losses, and two draws in single matches, only losing his first against Roka at the 1997 RDER Cup and his last in 2018 against a young and upcoming John Rom, gaining a total of 62.5% of points available to him during those single matches, which is very solid, but not as good as it could have been because single matches just aren’t that important in the Ryder Cup. There are just about twice as many forsome and fourball competitions in each event of the RDER Cup than there are single matches each year with each player only able to compete in one singles match and up to four team play events. Meaning those final day single matches are only 20% of a player’s potential score if he competes in all events possible to him. And it’s in those two other events where Tiger Woods is disappointing. to try to answer what happened here. I watched pretty much every RDER Cup event that Tiger Woods has available online. The Ryder Cup does a very solid job of making that available on YouTube. However, despite watching some pretty good golf, Tiger’s results aren’t very good. In fourball, which is again best ball, where you both play out your shot and whoever gets the best score for your respective team is your team score. Tiger’s record was five wins and 10 losses. In forsomes, so alternate shot, Tiger went four wins, nine losses, and one draw. They call it half in the golf world. I have really have no idea why, but this isn’t the golf world. This is ro golf, and I do what I want. However, these poor performances come often while being paired up with some of the other great golfers in the world, oftentimes who outranked the other members of the other team that they were playing against. All the while, Tiger Woods had that same game that was winning him a decent amount of matches in those single events at the RDER Cup. And throughout the years, it was those team events that the team would look to Tiger Woods to lead them on to win because that is the majority of the points that can be grabbed throughout the tournament. So having a cruising Tiger could create some momentum and lead them all to win. However, that only happened once in 1999 in Brooklyn, Massachusetts. I’m going to leave y’all at one thought and I’m going to leave. I’m a big believer in fate. I have a good feeling about this. That’s all I’m going to tell you. Going into Brooklyn, the US team had lost two RDER Cups in a row and desperately wanted one back. And this year, they would get it in pretty epic fashion, coming back from four points behind on the final day by winning a bunch of single matches and putting on a show, celebrating like winners. However, it wasn’t all great for Mr. Woods. Tiger would finish the week with two wins and three losses. Not a spectacular showing from a guy who in that year was about to go on and do everything, win everything possible. There were other times where Tiger’s win percentage was better or it was worse, but the team just could never put it together. Could never rally and win while Tiger was on the team besides that one year in 1999 where Tiger Woods wasn’t even that spectacular, only winning 40% of points possible to him in the matches that week. and he only ever won more matches than he lost twice in his entire career at the Ryder Cup. At the K Club in Ireland in 2006 where he won three and lost two and then at Celtic Manor in 2010 when he went three and one and then he didn’t win a single event in the next two Ryder Cups and the last two Ryder Cups he competed in going 03 and 1 at Medina in 2012 and 04 and 0 at Legolf National in France in 2018. And then all the while throughout all of these years, he was winning all of those tournaments on the PGA Tour, all of those majors up until 2019, still playing well in 2018 despite not showing it pretty much at all at the RDER Cup. So what happened here? Why was Tiger not impressive at all? Theory one, his training. Tiger was molded to be a golfing machine by his father from a very young age. You have to uh make a putt, you make a putt. you have to hit the shot. You hit the shot. You would just sort of like drop into another zone and uh you block out everything. He was taught to obsess over everything and never let anything deter him or get into his head. And while his father did it, he always had Tiger Woods look to Jack Nicholas and all his unbelievable records as the goals for him, the milestones he wanted him to break, the things he wanted to accomplish. But you know what’s not really in that collection of goals of milestones of accomplishments of Jack Nicholas? Rder Cup wins. Jack was unbelievable in the RDER Cup, winning in all six of his events pretty much except he tied one time in pretty controversial fashion by conceding his opponent’s putt on the final hole instead of making him putt it because the US team would have kept the trophy either way with a tie and ending his career 168 and three in the tournament as a whole. though it’s not remembered in the same way as all his other wins are. It just doesn’t have the same lasting power in the way Jack Nicholas is thought of today. And I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t used in the same way by Tiger’s father to push Tiger further to set goals for Tiger. So Tiger probably wasn’t as hungry for this competition. However, I don’t think that’s the whole story. mainly because Tiger played decently in his single matches, winning 60% of the points while guys like Phil Mickelson only won 45%, Jordan Spe only won 20% and Sevy by Steros only won 37% of his. Tiger was pretty good in one event, which makes me want to get more into those other specific events that he wasn’t so good in to understand likely what was more of the problem here potentially with it not just being the insignificance to him potentially of the tournament. Theory two, the Tiger effect. Throughout his career, many times announcers would refer to this effect where Tiger’s competitors would grumble the moment they saw Tiger’s name rising to the top of the leaderboard that they could just throw in the towel at that point because they’d never have a shot to catch him. And many times that was true. But in the RDER Cup, that same effect, or I guess you could say aura, well, it was less potentially of a strength and maybe more of a weakness because of the hectic nature of the event with fans all over the place and energy at a higher level than most golf events in the world. In that environment, I think a lot of competitors are able to feed off of a challenge in a way that may be harder in normal tour events, too, where everything is quiet, everything is calm, and honestly, you’re very much so in your head. Especially considering that in those events that Tiger Woods isn’t great at, they have a teammate to work off of and work with against this god, this figure that they want to take down and help their team win a major trophy against. And on the other side of that token is the reason potentially that I hear so many ex- Rider Cup captains say that Tiger’s teammates just kind of let him down. He intimidated his own teammates. You know, he had there’s guys on the team who were nervous around him. Guys on the team who didn’t know him, didn’t understand him, didn’t want to play with him, you know, because they didn’t want to be the one to be with Tiger. That same aura that could be used by his opponents to try and take Tiger down during the Ryder Cub also potentially could put pressure on his teammates, especially when the team you are trying to beat is firing on all cylinders because of that aura. This idea that they’re fighting against this god of Tiger. This idea makes a little bit more sense to me, especially because even when Tiger was matched up with the other best golfers in the competition, like in 2004 at Oakland Hills when he was matched up with Phil Mickelson, but all that quality didn’t matter. Phil and Tiger lost both of their matches together. And Europe went on to win the highest margin of victory in the RDER Cup by any team since 1981. And while I was watching all of the events, I can say it’s kind of a mixed bag of either Tiger’s teammate not playing that well, their opponents playing unbelievably well, or Tiger also not playing well either. That happened a lot for Tiger and whoever he was with. However, put together a lot of stories on Tiger Woods, and so I have a theory of my own based on what I know that could also be a piece of this puzzle here. Theory three, Tiger is the problem. Tiger Woods has always been a fiery competitor, fist bumping on screens all over the world and celebrating like you would want a great player to celebrate. But he’s also incredibly hard on himself, cursing out bad shots, hitting the club into the ground, and being overall very reactive to his game of golf. And with a lot of these guys having Tiger as their idol, well, seeing him slam clubs and say, “Oh, Tiger,” when he slightly pushes an iron shot, I’m sure it’s frustrating. And I’m sure it can be difficult to build a good relationship with your teammate, something that you’ve seen good Rder Cup teammates do, and work off of each other to win. with Tiger’s frustration. That can make that a little bit difficult. But a lot of players get angry and get frustrated and can still be good teammates if they can put it together. Maybe if they could be one of the boys. But Tiger has never really seemed like that, especially in his rounds of golf that are serious. There’s no banter. There’s no fun and good vibes. He’s serious. He’s a machine. And that’s brought him so much success. but also in my eyes can be a bit of a hurdle to get over to try to build a relationship with your playing partner to work together, especially when the tournament asks you to strategize and play smart shots. Tiger has always been good at strategy at picking the right shot, but who knows what’s going on in his head, and that’s hard when you’re his teammate and you’re supposed to be working together to win. In a lot of these matches, Tiger Woods wasn’t underwhelming. He played great, hit some of the best shots in the matches every time with some unbelievable recoveries, but also hit a lot of bad shots. And it rarely came together, at least not enough, clearly only coming together 39% of the time to win all the points. And so that left us with a bit of a disappointing result with only one win in eight total appearances in the RDER Cup for what in my opinion is the greatest golfer of my generation and honestly of all time. Honestly, I think what really happened here is probably a combination of all of these things. There’s no one proper answer. But that difficulty that Tiger had, combining with the fact he probably didn’t have the same hunger in that tournament and the fact that people were able, his opponents were able to rally against him, all the while his teammates probably struggled to rally and potentially were hurt by that same effect that helps Tiger do so much in his career professionally. Now, if you enjoyed this video, please jump on over to this one about the crazy money behind the RDER Cup, especially this year. It’s going to be wild. The financials that’s going on at Beth Page, I’m really excited to watch. But check it out here or jump on over to this one about the day Tiger Woods mastered the US Open. Thank you for watching and I’ll see you in the next one. Peace.

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