US Open: Why is it so difficult to win a second grand slam?
We’re all familiar with the story of the day in which Tiger Woods won his fourth major tournament, the Masters, at Augusta; he became the first man other than Jack Nicklaus to win four. He accomplished the feat in an astonishing four-and-a-half-hour period in 1995, just a few months after he won the U.S. Open at Baltics. In that event, Woods turned in one of his most impressive performances of the year, shooting 65 on the day to capture his third straight major. In his next major, the PGA Championship, he won by 12 strokes.
So when Tiger is asked why Woods, the best player on the Tour, has had such a difficult time doing anything as simple as winning a second major, and why Woods has won only two majors in the last 16 years, he has an easy answer: He’s not the same player that won the Masters, he’s different. Tiger is different, and we are better. And that makes winning the majors a lot more difficult.
What makes him different? The obvious answer is the different equipment he uses. In 1996, Woods first used the 5-iron, the most powerful driver he had ever used, and that year he was 11-1-2. He won 10 straight tournaments without suffering a single loss. He also made the cut in his first 11 events, finishing in the top 10 in nine.
However, this was a different Woods. And what made him different again was that he used a new set of clubs as well: the 3-woods. They were used in only two events in his next five years, in 1998 and 1999, and Woods didn’t have to play for a major until 2008. And although this makes him more competitive by adding a new weapon and making him more aggressive, he still used the 5-iron more. In 1999, Woods spent only 11 percent of his round with the 3-woods. And his best tournament performance with the clubs came at the 2004 PGA Championship, when he made the cut in his first five rounds and finished in the top 10 in only seven.
The other key difference in Woods’s equipment that accounts for the problem he has had in winning majors is that he won them while playing with different