Tiger Woods: How gracefully will his game age moving forward?
By Bill Felber
Of the four major skills areas affecting a professional golfer’s score, Strokes Gained Off The Tee is the least likely to be affected by aging.
The peer group of 20 players averaged .085 Strokes Gained Off the Tee during their age 43 seasons, virtually identical to – in fact infinitesimally better than — the .081 Strokes Gained they averaged during their age 42 seasons.
Eleven of the players in the control group actually improved their Strokes Gained Off the Tee performance at age 43, although in no cases did the movements exceed a half stroke. The most successful was Cink, who took his Strokes Gained Off The Tee from-.249 in 2016 to +.242 in 2017, an improvement of nearly half a stroke.
Vijay Singh took the worst fall, from +.096 Strokes Gained in his age 42 season of 2006 to -.339 one year later. But even that only amounted to a decline of less than half a stroke.
Tiger Woods registered .061 Strokes Gained during 2018, ranking 100th on tour. That was virtually mid-pack among the 193 players with enough rounds to compile a stroke average. The group average of the 43-year-old cohort suggests he could hold steady at that level in 2019.
So while driving is no longer, as it used to be, a major Woods asset relative to his tour competitors, it’s not likely soon to become a liability either.