The day before last week's PGA Championship Nike Vapormax Flyknit Shoes , Tiger Woods told reporters he expected to win the tournament. -Instead, he shot a six over par for the first two rounds and missed the cut by an astounding five shots.
Confidence is a funny thing when it comes to athletes. Those who openly exhibit bravado look foolish when they perform badly - as was the case with Woods.
But confidence is also a prerequisite for athletic success. In fact, some of the most successful athletes of all time have also been the most brash and outspoken.
Joe Namath famously guaranteed -victory for his New York Jets in Super Bowl III. To the amazement of sports fans all across the US, Namath and his team delivered an unbelievable upset.
In 1988, Larry Bird walked into the NBA All-Star locker room and asked his fellow three-point shooting competitors, "All right, who's playing for second place?"
Two hours later Nike Vapormax Shoes , with his final shot arcing toward the basket and the outcome very much still in doubt, Bird raised his index finger toward the Chicago Stadium rafters. When the ball swished through the hoop, Bird was once again a champion.
The fact that Woods missed the PGA cut is far from surprising. Since returning from major back surgery earlier this year, he has played like … a golfer who had major back surgery.
In the four tournaments since his surgery, Woods has missed the cut twice, withdrawn once, and finished 69th in the one tournament he actually finished.
Fellow PGA golfer Padraig Harrington Nike Vapormax Flyknit 2018 , never one to mince words, perhaps said it best: "[Tiger] looks like he needs to play some golf. He looked kind of raw."
In other words, Tiger would have been better off skipping the final two majors of the year and working on his golf game in obscurity, far from the glare of TV cameras.
American sports fans have an -expression that pertains to this situation: "It ain't bragging if you can