Woods definitely did not deserve to win.
I am not as critical of his conservative play as others because it kept him in contention up until the last 6 or 7 holes. But that triple was as much the result of constantly leaving himself 220+ yard approach shots into greens surrounded by bunkers as it was a poor decision to try to blast out of it ( 3 putting didn't help either). He had one approach earlier in his round that was 262yds on a par 4!!!. He managed to hit a great shot and leave himself a solid birdie putt but for much of the day he was just too far away to make birdies. And his wedge play from 120yds in sucked big time.
And then to top it off, his conservative play got him a couple of bogeys when he missed the fairway with an iron off the tee just as it seemed he was making a charge on the back 9. There have been tournaments where he felt comfortable with driver but this was obviously not one of them. He is not the golfer he once was in large part because of his lack of confidence with the driver. For goodness sakes he would not even hit 3 wood off the tee in this tournament.
Certainly a tactical error in strategy for sure - but I think it goes deeper than that. The analysts talked a lot about how he's playing his wedges, ie. everything 120 and in, and it's just not where it used to be. Even when he was hitting wedges for his 2nd shots, he wasn't playing them well.
Tiger used to just kill everybody because for him it was driver-wedge-driver-wedge-driver-wedge. And if need be, 3w-wedge, or 2i stinger-wedge. He's regained accuracy off the tee with his driver somewhat (though you wouldn't have known it here :doh
, and his putting hasn't been horrible, but his repertoire of approach shots was put to the test, and didn't come through in the crunch.
A few swing-related things were pointed out throughout the tournament; it may be time for him and Foley to hit the drawing board again.
