[Evan]

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Tiger has said time and time again that he is always trying to get better. After he won the 97 Masters by 12 shots or whatever, he changed his swing, and eventually catapulted himself to a level that promised to be beyond what anyone has ever seen.

It began paying off at the 99 PGA where he won his second major. Then in 2000 he accomplishes the Career Slam at a sickeningly young age (24 or something) and wins the 2001 Masters to complete the Tiger Slam... all within an 18 month period. IMO, this is arguably the most dominant individual sports performance of the last 50 years.

Then he went out and changed his swing again. Not to say that the last 5 years have been terrible or even mediocre for Tiger, but he hasn't had a stretch that has come close to equalling his fall 99-spring 2001 performance.

It doesn't take a statistician to see that Tiger's edge over the field has gradually decreased since this period. I guess my question is, had Tiger not changed his swing after 2001, how much better would he have been? Thoughts?

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A couple things I think you need to take into account.

First, the rest of the field is getting better too. Since they're starting from a much lower spot, they can get better faster. If you have one guy that's a 10 and one guy that's scratch and they both work just as hard, the gap is going to close fast.

Second, Tiger has been pretty freaking dominating. Two majors in 2005 (which I think is a fair time to say the new swing changes started to take effect) and pretty damn close to winning 4 majors in a row (1, 1, 2, 2). It's not 2000-2001 style, but that had to be a bit of running hot combined with phenomenal play as well. That being said, it's not really THAT far off of that level either.

Third, nothing ever looks as impressive in the moment. I'm sure that my fellow Yankees fans are not quite as impressed with ARod's production this year as fans of other teams. I watch every strike out and double play instead of just seeing home runs on Sportscenter. As time goes by your selective memory takes over and it's easier to push the bad and mediocre out of your mind. If you look back in 2 years at 2 wins ans 2 seconds in 4 consecutive majors it will probably look pretty sweet.