04/26/24
May 13, 2005
Tiger has the weekend off.: For the first time since 1998, Tiger Woods misses the cut.
posted by mr_crash_davis to golf at 04:51 PM - 9 comments
I would have loved to have seen the old tiger challenged, but this feels less like he is being challenged and more like he has regressed, which is a lot less enjoyable.
posted by tieguy at 09:24 PM on May 13, 2005
When I read Woods say that he "over-shaped" a shot, it makes me think he's pressing too hard. As a record, making 142 consecutive cuts should loom larger in sports than it does. I think it deserves as much acclaim as the consecutive-hit record in baseball.
posted by rcade at 06:29 AM on May 14, 2005
Bear this in mind, however: Byron Nelson for years held the record, 113 consecutive cuts during the 1940s. Woods broke that at the 2004 Tour Championship, one of 31 events during his streak that had no cut. I'd sure like to know how many free passes Byron Nelson got during his streak. Woods actually made the cut in only 111 tournaments.
posted by wfrazerjr at 09:46 AM on May 14, 2005
Woods actually made the cut in only 111 tournaments. Hopefully, Clyde Jr., you're being sarcastic with the "only" comment, and if you are, then I apologize. What Woods faces these days is much more demanding than what Nelson faced in the '40s. PGA players are ALL career golfers today due to the incredible amount of money they can make. So many players, on any given week, are capable of going so low for the first 36 holes that making the cut this many times, such as Woods did, is one of the most amazing things anyone will ever see in sports. As for the "free passes" thing, I guess I need some further explanation. If you mean exemptions due to the fact he's won so many times in the past several years, then I don't exactly consider them "free". Some individuals are seemingly taking Woods for granted nowadays since he set the bar so high for himself initially.
posted by dyams at 06:33 AM on May 15, 2005
I'm being somewhat sarcastic. It's mythbuilding on the part of the media to say he "made the cut" in 142 tournaments when 31 of them had no cut at all. Does it detract from the streak? Not at all. It's still incredibly impressive, and it shows Tiger's ability to play well even when he isn't physically or mentally completely up to snuff. I can remember a couple of occasions where Tiger barfed during an early round and still finished three under. I'd also agree with your assessment of today's PGA being deeper and tougher than in the 1940s. But to include no-cut tourneys in the streak is a lie.
posted by wfrazerjr at 10:48 AM on May 15, 2005
And the Tiger spin machine rolls on - we don't talk about how many cuts he made anymore, we now talk about the fact that he's only missed two cuts in his whole career (and we don't mention him not coming back to complete at Pebble that year, OK?). We talk about how many tournaments he played without missing the cut, and we don't need to bring up piddling little details like the fact that more than 20% of the tournaments we're including in that figure had no cut to avoid missing. We dont' talk about Tiger in a negative way - we use the information to belittle the opposition by highlighting the fact that the new consecutive cuts leader is Ernie Els... on 20, and we throw in the fact that, even if he can hold it together and never miss another cut, it will take him until 2012 to beat Tiger's record. Is anyone offering odds on Woods running for President at some stage in his life? He (or his team) seems to have a sound grasp of how to manipulate the facts until they read like a Nike commercial.
posted by JJ at 04:38 AM on May 16, 2005
Of those 31 tournaments that had no cut, Tiger finished in the top 10 in 26 of them, and won 10. Say what you want about Tiger and his "team," as has been said many times before, he's done more to boost the PGA's viewership and popularity than anyone could have ever imagined.
posted by dyams at 07:30 AM on May 18, 2005
And that, of course, makes it right that the 142-tourney streak is a fallacy.
posted by wfrazerjr at 07:46 AM on May 18, 2005
Wow. He's really teasing us these days- win the Masters, then this... a part of me wants to see the 'old' Tiger, the one that dominated so heavily, winning by double digit strokes in the British Open, etc, to keep going until he's smashed the Nicklaus record at a young age.... and a part of me likes that he's getting challenged, that he's not a shoo-in every time out.