How Tiger Woods Help Your Poker Game

One of the most interesting things in life is the way that insights and lessons gleaned from one activity can be transcribed and applied to others. While watching this year's PGA Championship, I was struck by the valuable poker lessons to be learned from watching Tiger Woods. Never mind that the game he plays is so very different from poker, or that comparisons between golf and poker are less than perfectly analogous. Watching Tiger is like attending a clinic in game management – and there isn't a poker player out there who couldn't benefit from it.

In golf, many a young gun has come to the PGA tour with a variety of shots in the bag – but without having put it all together. They arrive with a ton of talent, and even some maturity. They're already experienced enough to know that there will be days when their swing or putting stroke is off, but the trick is to cash in when everything is clicking. It's all about scoring. They've been watching the top pros on TV for years, and aspire to develop what they have developed – that knack for converting the "on" days into 63's and 64's on the scorecard, consistently. That's the key to the kingdom.

They're right, of course, that the key to success lies in scoring. But the smart ones discover eventually that the real secret lies in managing their scoring. They learn that the ability to turn a great day of ball-striking into a 63 is less important than the ability to turn a bad day into a 73 – instead of an 83. Why "less important," rather than "equally important"? Because in golf, just as in poker and life, the days of struggling and grinding will far outnumber those few magical days when everything comes together perfectly. And those 73's can keep you around for the weekend – they keep you in the game.

In the third round of this year's PGA Championship, just about every aspect of Tiger's game had a glitch in it. He struggled badly off the tee, missing fairways, and many of his approach shots to the green had to be played from the rough. As a result, he hit only six of 18 greens in regulation. Six out of 18 greens may be OK for me, but by Tiger's standards, it's absolutely dismal. What compensated for it? Nothing – at least, nothing readily apparent. His round featured no highlight-reel iron shots, no impossibly long putts snaking their way into the cup, no spectacular recoveries from the sand. He struck the ball poorly all day long, yet managed to hold things together well enough to record a respectable 73 – on one of the most difficult golf courses in the world.

More than anything, what enables Tiger to do this is an iron-willed commitment to never, ever throw away strokes. For all of his notoriety as the most spectacular golfer in the world, the truth is that Tiger, like Nicklaus before him, is also the greatest grinder of his generation. He is as prone to frustration as any golfer (more so, probably, considering his peerless standards), but he never allows his frustration to cloud his judgment or force him into bad decisions. If a good shot yields an unlucky result, he doesn't try to muscle a low-percentage play in order to "make up for it" – he doesn't compound his tribulations with a rationalization like, "I can't win with good shots!" When a bad bounce results in a lost stroke, he doesn't do something foolish in an attempt to "get his money back" all at once. When he appears to have made a painstakingly patient comeback, only to have it wiped out by golf's equivalent of a bad beat, he doesn't give up and decide that his round doesn't matter anymore – or that the next shot doesn't matter. He sorts his long-term goals from the specific realities of the moment. He thinks ahead, but operates in the present. In other words, he never goes on tilt on the golf course.

Given his dazzling abilities, Tiger probably faces more temptation than anyone to force the action or buck the percentage play – after all, if anyone can make the impossible shot, he can. But the risks he takes are always calculated and appropriately timed. He doesn't always pull them off, of course – that's why they're called "risks." But, he chooses to take them on his terms, and those terms are always strategic and well-considered.

As things turned out in that Saturday round, the leaders didn't come back to Tiger; in fact, they continued to pull away. It would be easy to conclude, then, that in this particular instance, his discipline didn't actually make a difference. But that would be a foolish conclusion, for his commitment to play his best even when there was no payoff in sight became that much more fortified, that much more ingrained. Indeed, it became that much more an indivisible part of his identity. And he knows, deep in his gut, that there'll be days when that commitment will pay off. In fact, one has to think back only a few weeks earlier – to the opening round of the British Open – for just such an example. After looking forward to that tournament for months, Tiger opened with a triple bogey on the very first hole. Three strokes lost to par right out of the gate! Even for many seasoned champions, such a disastrous beginning would have caused the wheels to come off. But Tiger didn't abandon his discipline or become impatient. He didn't allow himself to be seduced by any compulsive shot-making decisions that he might end up regretting. (And he certainly didn't delude himself into thinking the next hole could be "bluffed.") Instead, he clung to the golf maxim that says: "The scorecard doesn't ask when or how – it only asks how many." The result? Coming down the stretch three days later, Tiger was within two shots of the leader – and thus gave himself a chance to win.

In poker, as in golf, the most significant measure of a player lies not in how well he plays when he's winning, but how he continues to play when he's getting the stuffing knocked out of him. I see many talented poker players who can "shoot 63's" when things are going their way, but who've never learned to shoot that 73 when they're running salty. They think they're entitled to 63's all the time, and allow frustration to turn what should be small, manageable losses into big ones – and big losses into outright catastrophes. By refusing to accept bogey when bogey is what's dealt them, they end up with poker scorecards littered with double and triple bogeys. Those ungodly numbers add up.

The golf course has no memory, and neither do the cards. They don't care about your reputation, your mood, or your sense of entitlement. Every poker session features its own version of deep rough, bad lies, sand traps, and water hazards; there's trouble lurking everywhere, and you don't win by winning any particular hole or hand – the key to successful scoring lies in tending to your aggregate total.

In golf, strokes saved are equal to strokes gained, and in poker, bets saved spend just the same as bets won. The most consistent winners in poker miss the fairway regularly – they just make sure to keep it within sight.