An article about Seve Ballesteros’ recent retirement from competitive golf got me to thinking about how long Tiger is going to be able to sustain his greatness. Here’s the paragraph that piqued my interest:

He won 56 times on the European Tour, all over the continent. He was known for his wayward drives and his amazing acts of recovery, but perhaps it all caught up with him. Ballesteros turned pro at 16. By his early 40s, when many players are still at the top of their games, he was a physical wreck with back problems. His last victory came in the 1995 Spanish Open at age 38.

The author might also have added that Seve won the last of his five majors at age 31.

“I just don’t have the desire,” Ballesteros said of his retirement.

Fires that burn so brightly require a lot of fuel. In several places, I’ve read quotes from Jack Nicklaus saying that his interest in competitive golf began waning at age thirty five. And Jack apparently didn’t play his first full regular round of golf—in competition or otherwise—until he was a teen.

But Seve , who turned PRO at sixteen, obviously was playing golf seriously as a child.

Which brings me to Tiger. Like Seve, he’s been playing golf from a very young age. While he didn’t go pro at sixteen, Tiger was nonetheless playing golf at a very high level, winning national junior titles. (Tiger turned pro at 20; Nicklaus at 22; Palmer at 25).

Will Tiger, like Seve, be a physical wreck in a few years? Given his attention to fitness, it doesn’t seem likely. But then Johnny Miller has observed that the modern golf swing—with its emphasis on torque from the core—creates much more stress on the body than the swing of twenty years ago. Tiger is the poster boy for the modern swing.

More than physical breakdown, though, I wonder about mental wear. Jack says he was losing his focus at thirty five—although he held enough of it to win the Masters at 46. Seve apparently lost it sometime in his mid thirties. Palmer won his last major at 35 and had his real burst of excellence from age 30 to 35.

That means that Jack was able to sustain his intense focus for around thirteen years; Palmer for ten; Seve for perhaps sixteen (it’s possible it was longer because of lesser competition on the European Tour). If Woods has a similar thirteen to sixteen year window, then he may now be nearing the end of his run.

On his thirtieth birthday, Tiger was asked how much longer he intended to play. “Not as long as you think,” was his reply.

I wonder if he knows more than he’s letting on.

This post is from 2009. For an update, visit this link.

Because of the time differences, broadcasts of the British Open Championship are at unusual times for US viewers. Coverage on TNT begins at 7 am all four days of the Championship.

British Open Television Coverage

Thursday 7/16/09: 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. ET on TNT
Friday 7/17/09: 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. ET on TNT
Saturday 7/18/09: 7-9 a.m. ET on TNT; 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. ET on ABC
Sunday 7/19/09: 6-8 a.m. ET on TNT; 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. ET on ABC

The Official Open Championship Site has a nice flash-based guide to Carnoustie, site of the 2007 British Open. If offers a lot of information, showing distance from the tee, and from various swales, depressions and gorse patches.

Riding a cart is NOT faster than walking. Walking with a partner at a local course, we recently finished in two and a half hours.  And when walking a few days later with two guys in a cart, it was me waiting on them, not the other way around.

Every serious golfer knows that, for healthy people, walking is faster than riding. You take your shot and walk directly to your ball, and everyone else is doing the same. It’s a continuous flow. In a cart, you drive to your partner’s ball and wait while he hits, and then drive to your ball and he waits while you hit.

But shop pros and managers insist on perpetrating the lie that carts are faster. It has nothing to do with carts, though. It’s all about making some extra money.

The biggest evidence for this has always been the “mandatory carts” courses that will let you walk—IF you pay for the cart anyway.

Long Island Newsday reports latest course to fall victim to the “carts are faster than walking lie” is the Eisenhower Red on Long Island. Now I’ve never traveled to Long Island, and likely never will. But there was something in the article that caught my eye—the tacit admission that carts are about boosting revenues, not speeding play.

“County officials say making cart use mandatory will speed play—though some golfers disagree—and raise $100,000 to $150,000 in revenues.”

That’s the crux of it, isn’t it. Courses got rid of caddies because they ultimately were an expense. And they added carts as a revenue enhancer. I’d love to know what the profit margin is on a golf cart.

When last we saw Sergio Garcia at Carnoustie, he was crying in his mother’s arms after a first round 89.

It’s a safe bet that won’t happen again. He’s now an experienced player on the world scene and still has to be considered a threat at the Open—in spite of having failed to live up to his enormous potential. I think that, like Phil Mickelson, he’s just a good round or two away from breaking through and winning that first Major.

The Daily Record has a nice feature on the swashbuckling Spaniard.

Carnoustie Golf Club Ball Marker

With this, you could convince your friends that you were there.