Kessler: A Game With Which We Are Very Familiar

by Peter Kessler

TIGER CONTROLS THE FOURTH DIMENSION, AND WE CAN ONLY DREAM WHAT HE’LL FIND NEXT

Bobby Jones said of Jack Nicklaus after Jack hit short irons into most of the 4-pars at Augusta National in 1965 that he “played a game with which I am not familiar.”

Jones meant no such thing. He was just saying the kind thing. He was on his southern company manners. Jones was more than familiar with the game Jack played because it was exactly the one he played in his prime years of 1923 through to the end of 1930, when, after having no more worlds to conquer, he quit the scene upon which he had demonstrated the best golf anyone had ever played. Jones was the longest, straightest driver of his time. Jack was the longest, too, was but crooked much more than one might imagine of the man with the most majors — hence his use of the 3-wood for most tee shots in his 18 professional major championship victories.

Jones was the best long-iron player. Walter Hagen said they looked like grapefruits falling from the sky. Nicklaus was the best long-iron player of his time, too. His long irons fell like grapefruit, too. His dropped softly from left to right and Jones’ fell softly from right to left. They didn’t curve the ball throughout its journey; their shots simply fell to the side at the end of their flight.

Jones was the best fairway-wood player in his time, especially with his brassie, which later became known as a 2-wood. Nicklaus was the finest 3-wood player of his time, an advantage he enjoyed in his palmist days on 5-pars. Nicklaus’ secret weapon, rarely mentioned, was his ability to hit high, soft shots with his irons into 3-pars with less club than his competitors. Jones, on the other hand, hit the ball softer than Jack and used more club on 3-pars than many of his peers, but Jones was the master of taking an extra club and hitting shots that fell so softly they rarely released, even on the rock-hard platforms at U.S. Opens and Open Championships. Jones used to say that he could often hear his spikes crunch on the greens of USGA and the Royal and Ancient setups, yet his ball didn’t bounce forward very far, even with his 1-iron, a club he also loved to use for driving.

Jones was a great pitcher with his short clubs, except for his 8-iron, which later proved to have a different swing weight than the rest of his clubs. There were no machines in Jones’ heyday to measure weight accurately; it was really done by feel and trial and error. Jones discarded thousands of hickory shafts until he found the ones by feel that would find their way into his bag. Only his 8-iron would prove to be inconsistent from the rest. Nicklaus was weakest with his pitching clubs relative to the rest of his game, but “weakest” is a relative term. Jack had more short shots into 4-pars than anyone of his generation, and you don’t win 18 pro majors by slopping wedge shots into the greens. His short-iron play was more than adequate, just less majestic than the rest of his game. It’s true that his bunker play was only decent, but Jack missed so few greens it hardly mattered. Jack was not the best chipper of his time either, but again he missed so few putting surfaces in regulation that his chipping never hurt his scores. And since Jack was the best putter of his time inside 10 feet, an indifferent chip rarely sullied his scorecard.

Jones had to play pitches and bunker shots with his 9-iron until the wedge was invented in 1930.

The sand wedge also made its stunning debut that year when Jones used one made and given to him by Horton Smith (who would win the first Masters in 1934) on the 70th hole of the 1930 Open at Hoylake. He played a dangerous shot with a club he wasn’t familiar with, nipping the ball perfectly to within two feet of the hole for a tap-in birdie, which helped him win by two. Like Jack, Jones missed very, very few greens and was the best putter from every distance of any of his peers. No one left themselves less work on putts outside 40 feet than Jones and Nicklaus. They always played the ball to come to rest at the edge of the cup — no four-foot comebackers for these two champions. That’s what they were: championship players. They didn’t come to win tournaments; they came to play and win championships. That’s two different brands of golf.

And so we come to their equal, one Mr. Tiger Woods. As we witnessed this summer, with an appreciation reserved only for those very rare, breathtaking geniuses so special that, if you knew nothing about the game they played right in front of your eyes, you wouldn’t need a translator to explain that something magical was happening, we saw a different version of Tiger.

And there have been many versions. There was the prodigy who won his first Masters by a dozen shots with a swing he later discarded as too reliant on timing.

Then there was the version he exhibited when he won four majors in a row starting with the U.S. Open in 2000, which he won by 15 shots. It too was set aside in a search for a swing that Tiger “would own.” He tried to find that one on his own but since he couldn’t watch himself swing and coach himself at the same time, he sought change and perfection with a little help from a friend.

For a while it was less consistent, less balanced and less reliable on tee shots with his driver. When it did work it was brilliant, more rounded and a bit flatter than the swings we had become accustomed to. But it still looked (even as he was winning majors at a staggering pace, including five of the last 12 played) as though he wasn’t quite comfortable, that he wasn’t playing in the fourth dimension consistently — a place only Jones, Nicklaus, Hogan and Tiger have visited.

Ah, but the second half of 2007 was something new, something even more special, more graceful, more consistently a work of art of the highest order. His routine was much less time-consuming, but not in any way hurried. There was no series of practice drills before each shot, no checking of positions before settling into his stance. Tiger was relaxed, secure in his pre-shot routine, less tense over the shot and never off-balance during it. No shot presented a problem he couldn’t solve with an easy, calm demeanor. No lie could force him out of rhythm or balance.

He did everything better than everyone else. He drove it straighter and longer, his iron play so perfect that we felt we would burst if he didn’t miss at least one approach shot. He rarely did. He was that good. Tiger’s short game is much, much better than anyone else’s, and we’re not forgetting that Phil Mickelson is still on Tour. Tiger may be the greatest putter who ever lived, especially from 15 feet and in. From five feet, it’s a given; from 10, it’s 70-30. He is now the best lag putter when it matters, where as recently as a year ago he was at the bottom of the statistical ranking.

And now he enters his prime.

Now he intends to ratchet it up another notch.

What can he improve? Control over his emotions? Hardly. Control of his swing or his course management? Hard to imagine. But he’ll find something and we’ll be there to discover it. He plays a game with which we have become familiar but never take for granted. Tiger is golf. And golf is Tiger. FG