An appreciation of Tiger Woods’ mind-bending ‘duck slice’ shot at WGC Mexico

A shot so good, so inconceivable, and so vintage Tiger that it’s worth discussing and appreciating in full.

We’re two months into a golf year that’s been noteworthy for many reasons, few of them having to do with golf shots. It’s been a traveling circus of bad behavior and mistakes and controversies. Tiger Woods hit a golf shot at the WGC Mexico Championship late in his second round on Friday evening. The high from it will not last more than 24 hours, but it was nice to marvel at an actual golf shot for little bit and have that be the biggest story of the day.

The shot is a piece of art, worth celebrating on its own for eternity. Here are 10 thoughts about a 9-iron from 132 yards.

1. This is “vintage Tiger,” a term that’s been thrown around haphazardly in the last year, because it has it all. There’s the aggression and gumption to even try it. There is the artistry to conceive it. There is the mind to calculate how to do it best. And the obvious talent to pull it all off. This is the full package reminiscent of his peak powers and illustrative of the greatest golfing specimen the world has ever seen.

2. You are not supposed to be able to bend the ball that much from that close in range. Every pro can shape the ball in a variety of ways. The big banana cuts happen with room and space, not from this distance and angle and rarely from the sand. This was from just 132 yards, from the sand, behind a tree, and he got it up and out and able to curve that much in that short amount of distance.

3. Tiger’s greatest shots come from the most precarious positions, and many of those spots have been in the sand. There’s the shot from the fairway bunker at Hazeltine, which he has gone on record to call the greatest of his career. There’s the shot from the fairway bunker over water at Glen Abbey. And now this from the fairway bunker in Mexico.

This is not an original point and far smarter golf minds have made it in recent years but: this shot is another reminder in an era obsessed with distance and exclamatory shouts about speed and power that the best highlights are never the latest 400-yard drive. Power may be as important as its ever been, but the best highlights come from the fairway or around the green, the spots that remind you it can still be a game of skill and art and touch.

Tiger is the greatest of all time in that area and here, at 43-years-old, was another demonstration. How many of these career highlights are the booming 330-yard drives? The greatest shots in the history of golf, the ones seared into our memories, are not tee shots.

4. I’m not sure if the shot is best appreciated through video, with the ball dramatically darting across the green. Or in still image. Because the photos were as engrossing as the live action.

Photo by Hector Vivas/Getty Images

I will take a slight diversion and say that golf produces the best photographs of any sport (I will hear arguments for the NBA). This is an incredible image but it’s one of dozens that I know I’ll be able to instantly recall just from the last five years alone. Between the setting and the characters, the photos and photographers out there chasing are as good as it gets in sports.

5. The finish. This is an obvious one and close Tiger watchers, especially here late in his career, have become familiar with the maaaaaaybe-sometimes-slightly exaggerated finish on a shot that he needs to dig out of the rough or shape in one extreme direction. The image of this finish should be the new PGA Tour logo.

6. The easiest thing to do in sports analysis is to say it used to be better or more challenging in the past. Not to go all “in my day I walked uphill both ways to school” but this kind of shotmaking may be lost, or at least endangered, in the new generation of pure power and Trackman-data-fed automatons. You’ll hear stories about Tiger teaching the next generation how to control the ball in ways they’d never even conceived. And then show them how to hit shots that seem like they’re out of a video game. These aren’t some scrubs at a clinic — they’re the best players in the world and at the very top of the rankings.

I want to believe there’s no one under 30 playing the game right now that would attempt this and execute this and only a few who even understand how it works. Maybe Jordan Spieth? And I’m not sure how many there are over 30 who would even try it or understand it. I’m probably being too dismissive of all the other incredible talent, but like I said, it’s what I want to believe dammit.

7. Two days ago, Tiger said during his pre-tournament press conference that “The ball just doesn’t curve at this altitude.” It curved pretty well here. So maybe this thing would have been an even more extreme bender had we been at sea level? As Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee pointed out, however, it does still spin at altitude and this WGC Mexico had the highest spin rate of any event on Tour last year. That certainly helped once the ball got on the ground and decided to race over toward the pin.

8. It is a pleasant shot of dopamine to watch Tiger be happy to talk about the shot and what went into it. He is always at his most valuable and insightful when he gets in the weeds on golf, from shotmaking to styles to course setups. Also, here we get the term “vintage duck slice.”

9. I do not care that he missed the putt, although he seemed pretty pissed about it. It does not matter. The shot is the shot in a vacuum and talking about the putt is like nitpicking about some potential travel call before a legendary in-game dunk. Phil Mickelson’s shot from the pine straw at Augusta was not diminished by the missed putt and neither is this.

10. I wrote this approximately 250 times last year during that incredible comeback season, but the fact that this highlight exists after the prior five years is still staggering. And, whatever you think of Tiger personally, it’s a gift. It’s a gift to watch the greatest golf mind and creative talent execute this kind of shotmaking when it seemed almost certain that he would never play on the PGA Tour again. It’s OK to be saccharine and cherish it.