Tiger Woods: How gracefully will his game age moving forward?

In finite but still measurable ways, this is where age begins to take its toll on tour.

Of the 20 players comprising the control group, more than two-thirds saw declines in their performance between their age 42 and age 43 seasons. The average hit to the group amounted to a loss of .11 strokes attributable to their skills approaching the green.

This is not to say that aging players are poor in their approaches, merely that they are worse than they had been. In fact the average age 43 performance of our cohort was .202 Strokes Gained relative to the field. That contrasts, however, with the average .312 Strokes Gained during their age 42 seasons.

The performances of only a half dozen actually improved between age 42 and 43, only one by more than one-quarter stroke. The exception was Jeff Maggert, whose Strokes Gained Approaching the Green improved from -.090 during 2007, his age 42 season, to .425 in 2008.

Although performance declines were far more common, none were especially abrupt. Numerically the steepest was the .444 stroke less suffered by Steve Stricker between his 2010 age 42 season and his 2011 age 43 season.

Strokes Gained Approaching the Green has been a Woods strength. In 2018 he ranked third on the tour in that category, behind only Henrik Stenson and Keegan Bradley, at .883. If Tiger Woods follows the group pattern in 2019, his Strokes Gained will fall to .773, although that is still likely to land him among the top 10 in the category.