The money list, alas, does not respond
to charm. To get his game back, Stricker
had to work hard on his swing and find
ways to control his occasional outbursts
of temper.
"The biggest thing was slowing down my tempo and thinking," he says.
The next biggest thing was figuring out how to stay in the game, because by 2006 he needed sponsors' exemptions and top 10 finishes to qualify for tournaments.
"Steve is a process type guy," says Tiziani. "Everything has to line up."
And here it gets interesting, because Tiziani doesn't buy Stricker's argument that he fixed his game by slowing himself down.
"He had to speed up his decision-making," Tiziani says. "There was too much analysis."
Tiziani doesn't dispute that confidence is important, but he asks, "Which comes first, confidence or good shots? I say neither. Fundamentals come first."
Thus, the mirror — a plane of silvered glass or plastic with reflective properties and no tolerance for b.s.
"All Steve needed to do," Tiziani says, "was walk into an old trailer in Levi's, a sweaty T-shirt and a baseball cap, and look into the mirror."
Sounds easy, but you know it wasn't. "I was having a hard time making cuts, let alone thinking about winning," Stricker recalls. "After every round I felt beat up and drained. It was hard to hold my head up high."
He considered quitting golf, "but I couldn't come up with anything that would give me the time with my family that I enjoy now."
So he kept grinding, and gradually he began to resemble the Stricker of yore, the hotshot who finished second to Vijay Singh at the 1998 PGA Championship and won the 2001 Match Play.
In '06 Stricker made 15 of 17 cuts, had seven top 10s and tied for second at the Booz Allen Classic. His peers voted him comeback player of the year — an honor previously bestowed on Paul Azinger, John Daly, Hal Sutton and Scott Verplank, to name a few.
Winning the award again in '07, however, reflected the severe degree of difficulty in jumping from 34th to fourth on the money list.
"Every player has ups and downs," Stricker said recently. "I guess my downs just got a lot better."
That's another way of saying that he has become one of the Tour's most consistent performers. Stricker opened 2008 with a playoff loss to Daniel Chopra at the Mercedes Championship. He followed up with a tie for fourth at the Sony Open, a missed cut in Phoenix, and an 11th at the Northern Trust Open.
"The biggest thing was slowing down my tempo and thinking," he says.
The next biggest thing was figuring out how to stay in the game, because by 2006 he needed sponsors' exemptions and top 10 finishes to qualify for tournaments.
"Steve is a process type guy," says Tiziani. "Everything has to line up."
And here it gets interesting, because Tiziani doesn't buy Stricker's argument that he fixed his game by slowing himself down.
"He had to speed up his decision-making," Tiziani says. "There was too much analysis."
Tiziani doesn't dispute that confidence is important, but he asks, "Which comes first, confidence or good shots? I say neither. Fundamentals come first."
Thus, the mirror — a plane of silvered glass or plastic with reflective properties and no tolerance for b.s.
"All Steve needed to do," Tiziani says, "was walk into an old trailer in Levi's, a sweaty T-shirt and a baseball cap, and look into the mirror."
Sounds easy, but you know it wasn't. "I was having a hard time making cuts, let alone thinking about winning," Stricker recalls. "After every round I felt beat up and drained. It was hard to hold my head up high."
He considered quitting golf, "but I couldn't come up with anything that would give me the time with my family that I enjoy now."
So he kept grinding, and gradually he began to resemble the Stricker of yore, the hotshot who finished second to Vijay Singh at the 1998 PGA Championship and won the 2001 Match Play.
In '06 Stricker made 15 of 17 cuts, had seven top 10s and tied for second at the Booz Allen Classic. His peers voted him comeback player of the year — an honor previously bestowed on Paul Azinger, John Daly, Hal Sutton and Scott Verplank, to name a few.
Winning the award again in '07, however, reflected the severe degree of difficulty in jumping from 34th to fourth on the money list.
"Every player has ups and downs," Stricker said recently. "I guess my downs just got a lot better."
That's another way of saying that he has become one of the Tour's most consistent performers. Stricker opened 2008 with a playoff loss to Daniel Chopra at the Mercedes Championship. He followed up with a tie for fourth at the Sony Open, a missed cut in Phoenix, and an 11th at the Northern Trust Open.
){kind=link}