Tiger Woods: A Good-ish Season

Tiger Woods makes his final appearance of 2013 this week at the Northwestern Mutual World Challenge in California, an event he hosts.

But next week, when he has the opportunity to sit down and really reflect on his year, how will Tiger assess the season?

Publicly, he will no doubt talk up the positives: five wins, two of them in World Golf Championships, another in the Players Championship at a venue where he has traditionally toiled (TPC Sawgrass). He’ll also no doubt remind people that he returned to the top of the world rankings for the first time in two-and-a-half years and secured the winning point in the Presidents Cup.

By anybody’s standards, that’s a helluva season. But that’s just the thing: nobody measures Tiger Woods against ‘anybody’s standards’. He can only be compared to one person. Himself.

So, by Tiger Woods’ standards, how do you sum up 2013? Honestly? It’s probably a six out of ten. Maybe a six-and-a-half. And here’s why.

The five wins are great, especially the one at Sawgrass. But the two WGCs he’s now won seven and eight times respectively. He also won the Farmers Insurance Open for the seventh time and the Arnold Palmer Bay Hill Invitational for the eighth time. The Players Championship aside, Tiger won this year on courses where he has always done so.

Had one of those wins been a major, I’d be more inclined to give him a nine but, once again, he came up short in the tournaments where, traditionally, he left all others in his wake.

By Tiger Woods‘ standards, how do you sum up 2013? Honestly? It’s probably a six out of ten. Maybe a six-and-a-half.

He finished tied for fourth at the Masters and tied sixth in the Open but, on both occasions, squandered decent opportunities to win. That’s not the Tiger Woods we know, of course. ‘Tiger Woods circa 2000’ would have capitalized on those winning positions and left the field trailing. But the ‘post-scandal Tiger Woods’ can’t. His ageing body is hindered by an even more fragile mind. At least, that’s how it seems.

As for the Presidents Cup, you can more or less write off his contribution to that as an irrelevance. I mean, let’s be honest, in the context of Tiger’s career as a whole, who is really going to remember – or, for that matter, care – how he did in the world’s second biggest team matchplay event?

Of course, you can’t reflect on Tiger Woods’ season and not talk about his rules infractions. Three times, he fell foul of the laws of the game, with another contentious incident at the Players Championship going unpunished.

Now, to make one blunder is bad enough. But three? Maybe four? That raises eyebrows. Unlike some others, I’m not going to insinuate that he is a cheat – given that I never tried to bend the rules in a schools maths test, I’m perhaps not best qualified to do that – but I will say that he has been careless. And you can’t win majors being careless.

No doubt, the 2000 season was as close to a perfect ten for Tiger as we’ll likely ever see. Nine wins, three of them majors. Awesome.

By comparison, this year just doesn’t come close. It was good, yes. Just not great.

Tiger’s Season, Your Thoughts

Do you agree with Michael McEwan’s assessment of Tiger Woods’ season? Leave your thoughts in our ‘Comments’ section below.

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Michael McEwan is the Deputy Editor of bunkered and has been part of the team since 2004. In that time, he has interviewed almost every major figure within the sport, from Jack Nicklaus, to Rory McIlroy, to Donald Trump. The host of the multi award-winning bunkered Podcast and a member of Balfron Golfing Society, Michael is the author of three books and is the 2023 PPA Scotland 'Writer of the Year' and 'Columnist of the Year'. Dislikes white belts, yellow balls and iron headcovers. Likes being drawn out of the media ballot to play Augusta National.

Deputy Editor

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