Tiger Woods: How gracefully will his game age moving forward?
By Bill Felber
Logically, this ought to be the area of greatest age-related decline. What ‘s the first thing to go on a player? The nerves, right? And what’s the chipping game all about? Nerves.
Except it’s not true, at least not on tour. Our cohort of 20 players averaged .049 Strokes Gained in their age 43 seasons, only eight one-thousandths of a stroke worse than the .057 strokes gained they averaged at age 42.
Theoretically, this may prove what many of us have suspected all along, that pro golfers don’t have nerves. Realistically, what it proves is that the short game is mostly about technique, an area that often refines with age rather than receding.
The performance of 11 of the 20 improved between age 42 and 43, although none by much more than a tenth of a stroke. Phil Mickelson, legendary for his magic around the greens, was actually typical. Mickelson’s Strokes Gained Around the Greens increased between his age 42 (2013) and age 43 seasons, but only from .260 to .266. At the same time, the performance of only one player (Maggert) declined by as much as one-quarter stroke.
The statistical bottom line was that Strokes Gained Around the Green simply wasn’t influenced very much in either direction by aging, at least not at Tiger’s age. For the record, Tiger Woods gained an average of .385 strokes per round around the greens in 2018. If he replicates the group average by receding fractionally in 2019, he’ll gain around .377 strokes per round and rank about where he did in 2018, just outside the tour’s top 10.