The Secret That Tiger Knocks Extra-Stiff

There are a lot of guys on Tour who are longer than Tiger (28 players ranked ahead of him in Driving Distance when he shut down his season after the 2008 U.S. Open) and there's even more who are more accurate (Tiger finished his 2008 season ranked No. 154 in Driving Accuracy). Golf clubs has little effect on it.

But when Tiger finds the fairway and leaves himself with a short approach, he's in a class by himself, knocking the ball 4.5 feet closer to the hole from 100 to 125 yards than the average Tour player.

Four and a half feet might not seem like much, but it positions Tiger just inches outside the range where Tour players tend to make a lot of putts (and at a range where Tiger excels). The likelihood of a Tour player sinking a putt 4.5 feet outside the spot Tiger hits his short approaches drops nearly 10 percentage points. That's why you see such a disparity in the scores relative to par between Tiger and the field from 100 to 125 yards. Since 2002, Tiger has gained nearly a stroke on the field every five times both he and the field hit from short range. Nike clubs really are good.

This is your easiest chance to score like Tiger. Short shots don't require muscle, and the greens you're playing are much easier to hold and stop shots close to the pin than the ones on Tour.
The secret is to control that first bounce when you hit a short iron or wedge into the green, because the ball never stops dead in its tracks. It's either going to jump forward and sit, jump and spin back, or jump and roll. Tiger wasn't very good at this when he first arrived on Tour, often spinning the ball too much (and sometimes off the green after it hit close to the pin). Now he's amazing at controlling height, distance and spin. If one of his short-iron shots doesn't spin, it only means that he didn't want it to.Titleist AP2 Irons 3-9P just costs $289.99, you can have a try.