When I made my Masters picks a month ago, I mentioned how conservatively Tiger Woods has been playing off the tee. I felt that would work against him at Augusta, where distance usually takes reign over the course. However, I feel that this conservative strategy and style of play will have him primed for a U.S. Open victory at the shorter Merion Golf Club. And this was on display this past week at Sawgrass.

First, let’s go over a couple of key metrics that appear to mean the same thing, but are very different in what they describe.

• Driving Distance
• Driving Distance – All Drives

The PGA Tour now measures two different forms of driving distance. The first is the way it has measured driving distance since 1980. It simply takes one hole on each side of the course that is fairly wide open where the golfer will almost certainly hit driver off the tee. The Tour then measures the distance of each drive.

The second driving distance measurement is performed through ShotLink. Almost every tournament on Tour has ShotLink, which uses lasers to measure the distance of each drive that is hit by the golfer.

I like to examine both metrics because it can tell me how far a golfer can hit his driver off the tee as well as how aggressive he is off the tee. It can also tell how good the golfer is at laying up off the tee if the hole calls for that.

Below is a chart where I took the difference between the rankings in Driving Distance (distance no laser) and Driving Distance – All Drives (distance laser). Here are the 10 players on Tour with the largest discrepancies:

Currently, Tiger is the “most conservative” golfer off the tee on Tour, because he has the biggest discrepancy between his measured Driving Distance and the Driving Distance — All Drives stats. And we saw plenty of that at Sawgrass when he opted to hit 3 wood or 5 wood off the tee much more than driver. This worked because of a few factors:

1. Tiger can hit his 3-wood and 5-wood very long off the tee.
2. Sawgrass is a course that favors accuracy off the tee rather than distance.
3. Tiger is an incredible iron player.
4. Tiger is No. 1 in Strokes Gained — Putting.
5. Tiger is No. 3 in percentage of putts made from 15 to 25 feet.

Tiger can easily hit his 3-wood 280 yards off the tee and find the fairway. If he loses yards off the tee to longer hitters because he is using a 3-wood, his iron play can often make up for that. And if he does not stick the approach shot close, he is an elite putter on putts from 15 to 25 feet and deadly from inside 15 feet.

This raises an obvious question: Why don’t more players use Tiger’s conservative approach?

Every bit of research I have done on the subject has shown that typically golfers are better off NOT leaving their driver in the bag on the par-4s and par-5s unless it is simply not feasible to hit driver on that hole. They should NOT use Tiger’s conservative approach, and furthermore Tiger should avoid using his conservative of a strategy as well.

The main reason is that Tour players see their expected score values change dramatically when there is a 20 to 25 yard difference in their approach shots. No. 4 at Sawgrass this past week was a great example.

While the difference of 0.254 strokes may not seem like much, if a golfer is able to drop that much in their scoring average for the year, that is worth anywhere from 20 to 45 spots on the money list. So on Tour, simply by hitting the ball closer to the hole off the tee is very likely to lower the golfer’s expected score on that hole. That is why golfers cannot simply hit 3-wood off the tee instead of their driver.

But the other reason is that most Tour players are not as adept at hitting a 3-wood off the tee as well as Tiger hits his 3-wood off the tee.

While I could not compile what golfers were using driver off the tee versus what ones were using a 3-wood on No. 4, generally it appeared that the golfers who were more than 120 yards or more away from the hole were laying up off the tee. Tiger had no problem finding the 4th fairway off the tee with his 3-wood and 5-wood. The other players struggled quite a bit to find the fairway.

I believe all of this will lead up to Merion where the course is set to play at only 6,996 yards and should have super tight fairways with penalizing rough. Tiger can simply continue his conservative strategy off the tee, find fairways, hit greens and make long birdie putts. The others will be put at a sizeable disadvantage if they try to play that game.