'Choking' Tiger Hidden Numbers

Tiger Woods let another opportunity slip at Muirfield on Sunday and immediately the pundits latched onto his inability to break 70 in the final round of a major.

It sounds like a plausible explanation, the world number one hasn’t won a major since 2008, but does the evidence stack up?

Sunday Scoring Average

The first thing to note is breaking 70 on the Sunday of a major is difficult. Since the start of 2009, the average final round score in a major is 72.7, which means to break 70, you have to outperform the field by 2.7 shots.

Compared to his peers Tiger Woods is only marginally worse off. Adam Scott averages 71.4 strokes on the Sunday of a major, only half a stroke better than Tiger.

Adjusted Sunday Scoring Average

Negative number = a lower (better) score than average

Looking at aggregated data can be slightly misleading as tournaments are played on courses of varying difficulty. The most important statistic is a player’s scoring average compared to the tournament average, this is known as the ‘adjusted scoring average’.

Of the recent major winners, Phil Mickelson comes out on top, he betters the mean Sunday scoring average by 1.32 strokes. Tiger Woods is fourth in this mini league, but with an adjusted Sunday scoring average of 1.03, he outperforms the field and is only 0.29 strokes behind Phil Mickelson.

These small margins can make the difference between winning and losing but there isn’t any overwhelming evidence to suggest Tiger Woods is ‘choking’ on Sunday. He outperforms the field and is closely matched with other recent major winners. 

The only negative is his inability to shoot the exceptionally low round Mickelson, Scott and McIlory have all achieved enroute to victory. You could argue Tiger has become too conservative on Sunday but perhaps it is just a matter of time before he fires a major winning round.