A Tiger Woods Stat That Will Blow Your Mind

The stat comes courtesy of Shane Bacon at Fanhouse.

Tiger Woods has never won a U.S. Open when arriving at the championship with less than two previous wins that year. Ever.

He has three U.S. Open titles, and his first, in 2000, came on the heels of four wins prior to the USGA event. In 2002 he already had two wins to his credit. Last year, during that gutsy victory at Torrey Pines, Tiger had already accumulated three wins before heading out to San Diego.

In other words, Shane says that - historically speaking - Tiger needs a win this week at the Memorial if he intends on having any chance to win the US Open at Bethpage in three weeks' time.

Update 6/3 @ 12:10p:

Doug Albers at 14Stix read this article and retorts with a stat of his own that he would like to share with you.

[D]oes Tiger need to win this week?  Not really.  The 'two-win' stat is a little misleading  Tiger has more than one win heading into the week of the Open every year he has been a professional on the PGA Tour except for 1998 and 2004.  That means he's had at least two wins heading into 10 of the 12 U.S. Opens he's played as a pro ('97, '99-'03, '05-'08).   If anything the more intriguing stat is that Tiger has only won the Open three times in the ten years where he has two or more wins heading into that week.

It's a stat fight!

I'm not really sure one way or the other how Tiger has fared to this point in the season (or any) correlates to Tiger's finish in the US Open given that the Open is so different than what the players generally see.  But, given how Jack has set up Muirfield Village in the past couple of years, I would think Tiger's performance this week might be a great indicator of his Open finish.  Ron Green Jr. agrees in the Charlotte Observer.