Tiger Woods is giving people like me a little hope. Today during the Buick Open he had a few tee shots that reminded me of my own struggles off the tee. What’s crazy is that despite the bad tee shots he’s in the lead heading into the final round. That just shows how good he is and how strong his mental approach is to the game – bad tee shot? No problem.
Probably my favorite tee shot was on the Par-4 18th Hole where he pushed the ball right onto another hole’s fairway. For his second shot he had to hit it over the trees dividing the 18th fairway and the fairway he was on. He hit a solid shot right at a tough pin location, but he came up short and barely landed in a bunker. That didn’t faze him either – a great sand shot and a short 3 foot putt later, and Tiger was sitting with a par to finish the day. It was ugly, but it worked.
Granted, the phrase “bad tee shot” is relative for Tiger Woods. As long as he doesn’t have a tree trunk two feet in front of the ball he can find a way to get the ball to the green. That’s just talent.
Regardless, Tiger gives us non-pros some hope. We hit it into the trees, bunkers, and sometimes on the next hole’s fairway on a regular basis. We dip our head on the downswing and push the ball, as Tiger has been doing this weekend. Sometimes we get frustrated that we can’t just hit the ball straight, but Tiger is showing that it’s okay if you can’t hit the ball straight off the tee – as long as you can recover quickly and play with a strong short game you’ll be fine.
The importance of the short game is probably the one thing Tiger has demonstrated most this week. If he didn’t chip, pitch, hit out of the sand, and putt well then he wouldn’t be near the top of the leaderboard right now. He’s probably be somewhere in the middle of the pack or worse.
As for myself, I’ve put a lot of practice into my short game during two practice sessions at the end of this week. That’s a good thing because my driver just hasn’t been working during practice. I’m not entirely sure what happened there. My irons have been pretty solid, but I’m starting to push the ball more than usual. To compensate I’ve moved the ball a little more forward in my stance. I haven’t quite found the sweet spot there, though – too far forward and I pull the ball.
My next round is tomorrow. I’m not feeling super confident in my swing right now, so it could be a hit or miss kind of day.
From the mental standpoint I’m taking a slightly different approach. Already I’ve decided that I’m playing to break 80. I’m going to play and make decisions with that goal in mind. We’ll see if that makes a difference.