Tiger Woods and ‘missed cut’ are two things that you’ll rarely ever see in the same sentence, but this is one of the rare times that you will, as rounds of 71 and 74 have seen Tiger miss out on being part of the British Open field this weekend.
It’s only the second time that Tiger’s missed the cut at a major as a pro, with the previous time being in the 2006 U.S. Open. When he missed the cut at Winged Foot, it was the first tournament that he was playing after taking some time off after his father’s death the month prior.
Over the past couple of days at Turnberry, not a lot went right for him. In the first round, he had three birdies, but he countered that with four bogeys that put him at 1-over going into today’s round. Today, he actually moved to even with a birdie at the 7th, but that’s when the wheels started coming off, and three bogeys and two double bogeys over the next six holes put him in a hole that two late birdies couldn‘t get him out of.
There are many who’ll look at Tiger’s missed cut at Turnberry as a sign that he’s on the decline, that he doesn’t have ‘it’, that his pursuit of Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 majors is sputtering. Never mind the fact that Tiger’s won three times this season and had finished in the top 10 in all eight stroke play tournaments he’d played in this season prior to this week.
As it happens, all of the reasons to not underestimate him or exaggerate one bad weekend are the same reasons why people overreact when he doesn’t do well.
Tiger goes into every tournament he plays as an overwhelming favorite, because we all know that if he’s brought his best (or his very good), then he’s going to be tough to beat.
He’s raised expectations to the point where we don’t expect Tiger to make as many mistakes as he did at Turnberry, and even when he has a mistake-filled round, we often expect him to find his way out of the mess. He actually almost did that today, with birdies on 16 and 17 putting him back at +5 and within a shot of making the cut, but in the end, that stretch from the 8th to the 13th proved to be his undoing.
But is one missed cut the end of the world? In the end, Tiger’s as human as everyone else (I think…), he’s going to have bad weeks just like everyone else, and every now and then, he’s going to miss a cut.
If you’re a betting man, you might normally stay away from Tiger, because there’s not exactly a lot to gain unless you put a lot of money on him, but you can safely bet the house on him coming back strong from this disappointing showing.
Just go back to the last time he missed a cut in a major. Tiger shot 18-under at both the British Open and PGA Championship to win both of those tournaments as part of a stretch in which he won six tournaments to end the season with eight wins.
So, enjoy a rare weekend without him in the field, and if you need a reason to tune in without Tiger in the field, just check out the British Open leaderboard, and there’s another TW in the field that stands to capture a lot of attention this weekend.
