Limit the Tiger Woods Expectations at Oak Hill

Tiger Woods has courses where he should have personal ownership of the course. There are a few that belong to Tiger like Torrey Pines, Bay Hill, Muirfield and Firestone. Hell, those four should build statues saying 'Personal ownership of one, Tiger Eldrick Woods.'  While golf is probably as loaded as it has ever been, Woods is the only one where there are courses he pulverizes and is always near the top of the leaderboard.  Tiger ran away with the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational on Sunday winning by seven strokes and completely dominating the field.

The highlight of the weekend was Friday afternoon. Woods came out on complete fire going four under in the first three holes and came in reach of getting golf's greatest round, 59. Tiger did absolutely everything right from driving the ball, approach shots and putts. The last one might be the biggest one moving forward. Tiger had mostly one-putts on Friday and ensure the mistakes he made throughout the weekend did not come back to haunt him on the scorecard.  After he finished the second round, the tournament became who is playing for second as Tiger ran away with the tournament.      

Woods is easily the Golfer of the Year if the PGA season ended today. Woods has five wins on the year and they are not minor ones either winning two World Golf Championships and a Players Championship.  No one comes close to those numbers for the full year, but Woods is missing the one elusive win, a major.  While the hype will be at an all-time high for Woods to win at Oak Hill at this weekend's PGA Championship, it should not be a big deal if he does not win.

People measure golfers like they do with quarterbacks in the National Football League and playoff wins. Both get judged if they fail to achieve milestone, the national media comes crashing down on him. People will always bring up Woods inability to win majors in the last couple of years. People make generalizations about Woods' failure to win a major without looking at a few bad breaks in different rounds of the major tournaments. Could Tiger win at Oak Hill?  Yes, but it should not come as a shock if he does not even though he golfed like the 2001 version of himself last weekend.

There are couple things going against Woods this week at Oak Hill.  He has never won a major on a Par 70. While he has done better in years past and Bridgestone is probably his favorite Par 70 course he plays regularly, he still has never won a major on a Par 70 course. When Tiger gets more Par 5's, he has more opportunities to not only take risks, but also atone for the mistakes he might make on a Par 3.  The other part is he struggled mightily in 2003 when Oak Hill last had the PGA Championship.  Woods went 12 over shooting over par in every round. For whatever it's worth, Tiger won four tournaments before the PGA Championship in 2003, but none of them were majors; he also won one more time following one of his worst majors of his career.

It is still hard not to root for a situation where Tiger is leading or tied for the lead heading into Sunday's round. Even if you are the biggest diehard golf fan, there is something special about seeing Woods in the lead heading down the back nine at a major in contention. In two of the three majors this year, Tiger found himself hanging around the leaderboard at some point of the weekend and this week will probably no different.

Charlie.