He's Back!

Over the weekend, the world's best golfer came from behind to capture his 6th career Arnold Palmer Invitational title, and 2nd in a row. This title, i would like to say was different from his win last year but, it was actually quite similar. Tiger again played in a final grouping with Sean O'Hair, who this year lead Tiger by 5 strokes going into Sunday's round. Tiger, similar to 2008 missed a few opportunities down the stretch to put the tournament away before the 18th hole. In 2008 he missed key birdie putts on both 16 and 17, and in 2009 he went par, bogey on 16 and 17 failing to capitalize on O'Hairs mistakes. This lead to the same situation as 2008. Tiger throwing a fairly good 2nd shot onto the middle of the Green at 18 on a beautiful Bay Hill course. Last year Tiger had 24 feet downhill with a slight break, and this year he had 16 feet uphill with slight break. Last year Tiger calmly stepped up and drained the put for a one stroke win over Bart Bryant, and this year Tiger calmly stepped up and drained the putt in the last minutes of daylight for a one stroke win over Sean O'Hair, who in both cases got a front row seat of Tiger's brilliance. Both years Tiger took all 72 holes before sinking his final putt of the tournament to get the win. This years was perhaps more impressive though. Coming off knee surgery Tiger was still trying to find his groove on tour and looked average through the first 3 rounds and sat at -2 heading into Sunday, a full 5 shots off the lead, but he was in the final pair, which usually spells doom for his playing partner. In his career when Tiger has played in the final pair, only 8 people hes played with have shot better scores than him, 8 people have shot the same, and a remarkable 68 people have scored worse than him. Everyone says the same thing: "I just have to play my own game and not worry about Tiger". Yea well apparently very few people can back that up, as clearly there is an intimidation factor. Tiger, almost impossible to catch when leading after 54, has now won 19 times coming from behind, an impressive stat to say the least. When Tiger is within 5 strokes of the lead, he has a final round scoring average of 68.5, meaning if you have the lead going into day 4...look the fuck out, cause Tiger is coming for you. This win should give Tiger some confidence heading into the Masters April 9-12 should he choose not to play in Shell Houston Open next week. This obviously does not bode well for the rest of the tour, so they can all thank Sean O'Hair for imploding vs. Tiger, shooting a final round 73, blowing a 5 stroke lead and greasing the wheels of the worlds best golfer heading into golfs biggest major.

Oh yea, by the way, how dirty was Tiger's celebration in 2008 after winning the Arnie Palmer? Good enough that most golfers chose to immitate it when finishing their weekend, most of them shooting over par. And props to Woods for another great celly this year. Heeee's Baaaack!