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AUGUSTA. – Nick Faldo has been critical of Tiger Woods and his game in the past but the Englishman believes the 14-time major golf champion is poised to launch a significant challenge at this week’s Masters.
Over the years Faldo has questioned Woods’ swing, approach to the game and temperament.
Despite all that, heading into the year’s first major, Faldo has earmarked the 42-year-old as a considerable threat.
Faldo has won at Augusta on three occasions and so his view carries some weight in the golfing world.
With three top-15 finishes in his last three events and a club head speed as fast as it has ever been in his career, Woods has garnered Faldo’s respect for how he has bounced back from a serious back problem.
“He’s going to threaten,” Faldo said at Augusta.
“He has the potential. His game is amazing. I think he’s ahead of schedule. He’s been in there competing for the last couple of events.
“That’s the most important thing, you’ve got to climb that ladder and scare yourself. How he’s found five more miles per hour in club head speed in his 40s after a fused back is unbelievable.
“It still comes down to nerve. We can play beautifully and swing beautifully and all that, but it is the guy who really has the bottle to hang on or make it happen.”
Meanwhile, Jordan Spieth, Masters Champion in 2015 and runner-up in 2014 and 2016, knows as well as anyone that Augusta National’s greens are not for the faint-hearted.
Fortunately, the 24-year-old Texan has shaken off the spectre of a first-round 76 at the Valspar Championship and gained some confidence in his game. “I made big strides in the last two weeks to get from a kind of a panic place to a very calm, collected and confident place,” Spieth said on Tuesday.
“It’s difficult to do in two weeks. Sometimes it takes years. And I feel like I’ve been able to speed that process up a lot over the last couple weeks.”
Spieth’s disastrous Valspar outing, where he opened with a 76 on the way to a missed cut, was a low-point for the three-time major winner, who had thought he was turning the young season around.
Spieth has ranked in the top 20 in putting on the US PGA Tour in three of the last four years, but he’s 185th in strokes gained putting so far in 2018, a campaign that got off to a slow start after he battled illness in December.
“It has not been the greatest start to the year of any that I’ve had,” said Spieth, who admits impatience to improve worked against him in the early going. – Reuters.
Online Reporter