Are There Reasons For Tiger’s Lack of Competition?

The Sports Economist has a post on Tiger’s lack of competition.  He has two suggestions:

“1) Maybe the income effect is working here on motivation as it might be in regard to the relative paucity of “hour ahead” low Sunday rounds .

2) Maybe the overall depth and parity of “the field” makes winning majors more difficult (for all except Tiger). Even if this competitive influence is at work, it does not explain the seeming inability of the just-below-Tiger crowd to really go shot-for-shot with Tiger and beat him once in a while.”

I personally think that most of the so-called competition is just too comfortable. When you can make a million plus a year and never really contend in any tournament, there’s no reason to push yourself. All you have to do is place in enough events to stay in the top 125, and you’ll keep your meal ticket.

Reducing the cut line to 60 (as is apparently being considered by the Tour), might have an effect on that. At least it would make the players work harder on Thursday and Friday. And since fewer players would be making the cut over the course of a season, there would be incentive to finish as high as possible in those tournaments where you did make the cutline.