Emotional Cameron Champ hangs on to win Safeway Open

Last year's ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP was Tiger Woods' record-tying 82nd victory on the PGA TOUR. This week, he defends that title in the ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP @ SHERWOOD. It will be the first time since August 2014 that he will play an event as the defending champion. This will be Woods' eighth attempt at his 83rd PGA TOUR victory, an achievement that would move him ahead of Sam Snead and into first place alone on the career wins list. RELATED LINKS: 15th Club | Tiger and Sherwood are a perfect match Of those first 82, which were the most impressive from a statistical perspective? What parts of Woods' game shined brightest in the biggest moments? Some answers were tougher to deduce than others, but I tried to answer those questions. Here are Woods’ best statistical performances from his 82 wins. Off the Tee: 2009 Memorial Tournament Woods' performance at the 2009 Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide was a statistical masterpiece off the tee. He led the field in Strokes Gained: Off-The-Tee, but didn't do it how you may think. Woods hit 87.5% of his fairways, tying his highest percentage as a professional in a PGA TOUR event. That included a run of 18 straight fairways hit to conclude a one-shot victory over Jim Furyk. Non-ShotLink division: 1997 Masters: To this day, partly because of the course changes that came after Woods’ 12-shot win, a 21-year-old Woods holds the Masters Tournament single-week average driving distance record, at 323.1 yards. Woods' advantage over the field average that week was an incomprehensible 46 yards per drive (277.1). For perspective, Bryson DeChambeau averaged 322.1 yards off the tee in 2019-2020, 25.7 yards further than the TOUR average for the season. Woods also hit 47 fairways for the week, one fewer than he hit two years prior as an amateur. Since statistical tracking began about 40 years ago, there are two instances where a player averaged 310 or more yards and hit 45 or more fairways in a Masters. Both were Woods (1995 and 1997). Approach Play: 2006 THE NORTHERN TRUST Woods' performance in the 2000 U.S. Open is the most dominant in the game's history, and his iron play was a huge part of it. We'll get to that tournament in a moment, but first we'll look at his best approach performance in the ShotLink era: the 2006 THE NORTHERN TRUST at TPC Boston. That week, Woods racked up a staggering 14.6 Strokes Gained: Approach, six strokes more than anyone else in the field (Robert Karlsson was second, at 8.31). It's the most Strokes Gained: Approach for Woods in any single event in his career. The 2006 season saw Woods reach iron play levels not seen by anyone since: he averaged a TOUR-best 2.07 Strokes Gained: Approach per round, a mark not bettered since. Non-ShotLink division: 2000 U.S. Open: During a week in which the field hit less than 50% of the greens in regulation (48.4%), Woods hit 70.8% for the tournament. His 51 greens hit in regulation were seven more than anyone else (Fred Couples and David Toms each hit 44) and translated to a field-best 21 birdies. Arguably the most dominating performance in pro sports history, Woods' 2000 U.S. Open victory is nearly impossible to top from a ball-striking perspective. Short Game: 2009 Arnold Palmer Invitational At Bay Hill in 2009, Woods lost strokes to the field on his drives and approach shots (-0.43 for the tournament), yet still got to shake Mr. Palmer's hand and lift the trophy that Sunday afternoon. He did it through sensational short-game play, getting up and down for par 24 times, his most across 79 stroke-play victories on TOUR. Woods led the field for the week in Strokes Gained: Around-The-Green, at 1.69 per round. Non-ShotLink division: 1999 Walt Disney World Classic: Honorable mention here goes to another Orlando-area win 10 years prior, at the 1999 Disney Classic. That week, Woods was a perfect 13-for-13 scrambling and claimed a one-shot victory despite seven three-putts. In the last 35 years, it's one of just four instances where a player had a perfect scrambling percentage for 72 holes (with ten or more attempts) and went on to win the tournament. Putting: 2013 Arnold Palmer Invitational Woods' legacy of clutch putts makes this category maybe the most difficult to lock down. From ‘Better Than Most' at the 2001 PLAYERS to ‘Expect Anything Different' at the 2008 U.S. Open (both victories, by the way), memories of big moments abound from Woods' halcyon days. The most complete putting performance, statistically speaking, might have come at Bay Hill in 2013. Woods had 11.2 Strokes Gained: Putting for the week, by far his most in a win since ShotLink tracking began in 2004. He led the field in approach putt performance (a stat that measures lag putting ability) and made nearly 100 feet of putts per round. Woods' 14 putts made outside 10 feet that week are tied for his second-most in any single PGA TOUR event. Best Comeback: 2000 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am While one triumph at Pebble Beach in 2000 has already been mentioned, what Woods did earlier that year at that same site was awe-inspiring, as well. At the 2000 AT&TPebble Beach Pro-Am, Woods trailed by seven strokes with nine holes to play. After a hole-out for eagle at 15, Woods birdied two of the last three to card a bogey-free 64 and win by two strokes. The previous year at Torrey Pines, Woods was tied for 36th place entering the third round, nine shots behind leader Ted Tryba. Woods shot 62-65 on the weekend to win by two strokes. It marks the only time in Woods' career he has won when outside the top 25 through 36 holes. Most Dominant: 2000 U.S. Open There are only two instances since 1900 where a player won a major championship by double digits. Both of those performances were turned in by Woods before he turned 25. Three years after the unthinkable 12-stroke runaway at Augusta National, Woods' 15-shot destruction of the field at Pebble Beach re-wrote the top lines in golf's record books, seemingly in uncrackable stone. While the 2000 U.S. Open (+29.21 Strokes Gained: Total) and 1997 Masters (+25.86) are easily listed as the two most dominant victories of Woods' legendary career, the intrigue comes when pondering what win is next on the list. By Strokes Gained: Total, it's the 2008 Farmers Insurance Open (+23.51), an eight-stroke romp at Torrey Pines where Woods led the field by a wide margin in Strokes Gained: Approach. By simply margin of victory, there are two others vying for the bronze: the 2003 Arnold Palmer Invitational and the 2000 WGC Invitational, both won by eleven strokes. Woods accounts for more than half of the double-digit wins on the PGA TOUR over the last 30 seasons (four of seven). In the 2000 PGA TOUR season, Woods had more wins by 11 strokes or more (two) than rounds of 74 or higher (one). How about the 2005 Open at St. Andrews? Woods won wire-to-wire (no ties after any round) and ended with a five stroke margin of victory - the only player to do both of those things at an Open Championship since World War II. For the most dominant player of his era, the choices seem endless.

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NASSAU, Bahamas – Tyrrell Hatton kept his cool as he was called a furious elf. Rory McIlroy overheard a quip about his tiny head and cracked up laughing. Collin Morikawa played along as he was told of a fan-generated, Transformers-inspired nickname for him: Optimus Fine. Oh, and Scottie Scheffler was rebranded Scott Scheffler and made to sell an imaginary car. You know, in case the professional golf thing doesn’t work out. The first big collaboration between the PGA TOUR and DP World Tour content teams was semi-scripted lunacy. Actor John C. McGinley was at the center of it all as he gave tongue-in-cheek performance evaluations before the Hero World Challenge at Albany Golf Club. The two-day shoot highlighted the strategic alliance between the TOUR and the DP World (former European) Tour and utilized the signature subversive style perfected by European content creators. “I think it’s a great move,” Jordan Spieth said. “I think the TOUR is going to do some more stuff like that; it’s something that the European Tour has done well, especially socially. It was fun to go in in character and act like it was a year in review.” Added a laughing McIlroy: “It was good fun; if I had to do stuff like that on my own, in front of a camera, I’d be terrible. But having someone there to do it against makes it so much easier.” McGinley, most famous for Scrubs but boasting a long list of film and TV credits, made sure this was no standard Q&A. Forgoing a salary in lieu of a donation to the Global Down Syndrome Foundation, he brought a gonzo sensibility to the evaluations. Think Sacha Baron Cohen (Ali G, Borat) or Zach Galifianakis (Between Two Ferns) if they worked for the Golf Channel. “The most fun moment was the same with every single player, which was when I could get that hook in their gums a little bit,” said McGinley, an avid golfer. “I got Scottie Scheffler to sell me a car, and he was great. It was improv, where the conceit is there’s an initiator and a reactor. You can’t have two of one, none of the other, that’s when improv goes nowhere.” Scheffler caught on quickly. “It was fun,” he said. “I’m glad the TOUR started doing stuff like that. I wouldn’t really consider myself to be too funny of a person, so hopefully it turns out alright.” McGinley, seated behind a desk, smacked it hard to emphasize his points. It got players’ attention but the Europeans, especially, were hard to shock. DP World Tour content creators are the people, after all, who made a video in which Padraig Harrington and Ian Poulter give nonsense swing tips to baffled amateurs. Hatton had just played a long pro-am round at the Hero when he sat for his interview. Still, he couldn’t be rattled. “Some bits were funny,” he said. “I started laughing and put my head down once. It’s good fun.” Henrik Stenson, at the end of a lackluster season, said he felt he got off easy. McIlroy was familiar with McGinley and enjoyed spending time with him. “My favorite part was just meeting him,” he said. “It’s really, really cool. I’ve seen Scrubs but not Platoon. I was expecting, like, off-the-wall. He mostly stuck to the script.” Well, for McIlroy, anyway. With the others, those scripts turned out to be more fluid than set in stone. “The great thing is this was the first time the tours have come together to create a single piece of content,” said Will Pearson, Head of Content for DP World Tour and one of four creatives from that tour at the shoot. “It shows the alliance is working in different ways across the business.” The PGA TOUR and DP World Tour had been collaborating on the project all year, but with the pandemic complicating things it was unclear whether it would get done in 2021. “It was great to see players let their guard down and go with the unexpected,” said Michael Riceman, Vice President of Original and Social Content for the PGA TOUR. “To go toe-to-toe with a Hollywood actor and embrace the character and sometimes revel in the awkwardness, that was fun and not something you see much. We really wanted to showcase how the two tours are committed to working together and doing big projects together. This is just the beginning.” Added Sam Davis, Lead PGA TOUR Social and Digital Content: “This was a true collaboration and that’s been the spirit of the project the entire time. It was so cool. I’m so happy we did this.” Whether entertained, bewildered, or both, the eight players who sat for the video left smiling. “I thought he was going to make fun of me a little more,” Scheffler said, “but I don’t think he knew me well enough to get after me. He had me dying laughing when I left, because his last words, he held up a picture of me and said, ‘This guy is DEAD. Your name is Scott now.’” Spieth, who was familiar with Scrubs, having watched it with his brother, enjoyed a few laughs. “I broke character a couple of times,” he said. “The more we can do that, the more fans can see more of who players are, because there’s a lightness to it, more so than typical interviews.” You can say that again. Click the video to see for yourself.

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