Tiger Woods won the Wachovia Championship today, as Steve Stricker, his closest competitor down the stretch, basically choked on 16 and 18. Tiger choked on 17 and almost on 18, too, but he had a 2-stroke lead to play with. Vijay Singh, Rory Sabbatini, and Phil Mickelson put up no fight.
OK, “choke” is a pretty strong word, especially when the finishing holes on 16, 17, and 18 were playing so difficult. They are great finishing holes! Perhaps the best on the PGA tour. But, if any of you saw the swings of Steve Stricker on 16 off the tee and 18 from the middle of the fairway, you could tell the guy had a huge case of the nerves because he had been tied or close to tying Tiger for the lead. That’s understandable for Stricker because the guy hasn’t won a stroke play event since 1996.
But Tiger’s balky iron play on 16 and 18 was pretty surprising. He grimaced after his swing on 18, clutching his knee, but who knows if that just wasn’t an excuse for his really bad swing. That’s one of the worst swings I’ve ever seen from Tiger — a huge hacker’s dip, with a lot of up and down movement. The announcers were all pretty baffled and tried to speculate that Tiger might be injured. Tiger’s so good, though, that he still made an up-and-down for par.
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