When you come to think of it that is the secret of most of the great holes all over the world. They all have some kind of a twist. C.B. MACDONALD
Thanks to reader Tuco for the Mirror story on Tiger Woods renting a 19-room hotel near Royal Liverpool, complete with a helipad so that he can make the 60-second...yes, 60-second ride over to the course each day. That has to be a typo! No?
You may have noticed that AP story about Tiger Woods saying he may not play until the U.S. Open because of his dad's health?
Well, so far the vigil has included a 440-deep bungy jump (what a great idea!) and a $500k night at the MGM Grand's "Mansion" tables.
From the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
Playing blackjack in Las Vegas was more profitable over the weekend for Tiger Woods than his recent Masters appearance. Woods, who won $315,700 for sharing third place in the Masters, told friends he won more than $500,000 on the green felt surface at the MGM Grand's Mansion.
Seems "Fist Bump" Bradley wasn't a big fan of Richard Sandomir's critical take on the 60 Minutes-Tiger Woods interview.
A Different Standard for TV?
To the Sports Editor:
I was surprised by the Tiger Woods article by Damon Hack ("Raising a Child First, Then a Champion," April 3).
It wasn't tough on Woods, and it seemed as if there was nothing new to report. It conveniently omitted the glares Woods gives fans who speak or click cameras when he swings, and the confrontations his caddie, Steve Williams, has had with those in the gallery who interrupt Woods at his work. Lest we forget — because Hack, a New York Times reporter, did — the times when Woods has punctuated bad shots with expletives or whacks at the tee box.
Those are criticisms leveled at me and "60 Minutes" by Richard Sandomir ("On '60 Minutes,' No News Is Woods's News," March 31). He was appalled that '60 Minutes' could run such a "puffy profile" without, for example, "pressing Woods on what he paid" for his house and boat.
Can we expect a column in The New York Times critical of Monday's Tiger Woods article? And if not, why not? Do you hold us at "60 Minutes" to a different standard than you hold your own newspaper?
Ed Bradley
New York
Bradley looked to be enjoying himself too much as he smiled and chuckled along with Woods in various locales, conjuring comparisons to the buddy act of Ahmad Rashad and Michael Jordan, who, like Woods, surrenders so little to journalists but whose consent to be interviewed is deemed an occasion to send a camera crew.
This puffy profile reminded me of a "documentary" about Woods — "Son, Hero, Champion" — that preceded CBS's fourth-round coverage of the Masters in 1997. It was produced by IMG, the agency that represents Woods, so you know how objective and unconflicted it was.
From Larry Stewart in the L.A. Times, writing about 60 Minutes producer Rick Schwartz:
Schwartz and a camera crew visited Earl's home in Cypress, as well as the home of Woods' mother, Kultida, in Tustin Ranch. After the crew was done shooting in Tustin, Kultida invited Schwartz in for lemonade and showed him her shrine to her son — pictures, trophies and lots of memorabilia.
"One picture stood out," Schwartz said. "It was of Tiger the night he won his first Masters. He was curled up in bed in a rented Augusta house, sound asleep, arms wrapped tightly around his first green jacket.
"I asked if I could bring our cameraman in just to shoot that one picture. Kultida smiled and said there was more of a chance of me winning the Masters."
Doug Ferguson deftly handles the difficult subject of Earl Woods' health and Tiger's understandably distracted game.
Translation: yuck, very yucky.
Amazingly (or is frighteningly), I read all of Tiger's press conferences and continue to marvel at his ability to answer the same questions over and over again. He's also become quite good at acting like he's enjoying some lame question about a player he's played with twice. And he can be so positive when talking about a course he probably thinks is mediocre at best.
So I think it's safe to say--lacking much in the way of complimentary talk--that this is a not-so-flattering assessment of Augusta:
Tiger at Bay Hill:
Q. Speaking of The Masters, now that you've had a chance to play the course firsthand, what do you think of the changes?
TIGER WOODS: Interesting, very interesting.
Hey, at least he didn't say it was the best of its kind! Sorry, continue...
I didn't hit enough club to No. 4. I needed wood to get to 4. 7 is certainly changed. It's a totally different hole now. 1 is 300 yards just to get to the bunker now. If we get any kind of cool north wind like we have today, you won't be able to see the flag. You won't be able to see the green. Some of the changes are pretty dramatic and certainly going to be very interesting if the wind ever blows.
Q. Do you think they accomplished (inaudible)?
TIGER WOODS: I've talked to some of the older guys who played there back in the '50s, '60s and '70s and they never had to hit wood into 4 before, but you'll see a lot of guys hitting wood in 4 this year.
Q. What do you think will happen if there's rain?
TIGER WOODS: It will be brutal because now you're hitting some really long clubs into the holes. Again, we haven't seen the greens hard and fast either. With the rain, with or without rain last year, we were thinking in the practice rounds that over par is going to win the tournament. If you can keep it around even par, you're going to win it easily.
So, you know this, year, if it stays dry, probably the same thing.
Q. Did anyone ask you about Jack's comments, and do you agree that there's only ten or a dozen or so guys that are capable of winning because of the changes, because of the length?
TIGER WOODS: It eliminates a lot of guys, yeah. If you hit it low and rely on your game that way to get the ball out there and hit your irons not so high, if you have a flatter ball flight, you're going to be struggling there.
Q. If even par were to win there, is it a shame in a sense that you guys already have a U.S. Open?
TIGER WOODS: It's just different. I think it they should get rid of that second cut and get rid of and bring the pine needles and the pine trees back into play. But they see it differently than a lot of us do as players.
I remember pulling that ball off the first tee and it's going straight through the pine trees. Now you have a chance of it stopping in that second cut. They think it's harder to play out of that than it is out of the trees.
Q. Ernie was saying how The Masters used to be most fun major and now it's become the toughest, do you think it has gotten up to that?
TIGER WOODS: Without a doubt, it's gotten so much more difficult now. With the added length, with those greens being the way they are, it just makes it so hard out there. You're hitting clubs that, granted, they are trying to get you to hit clubs like the older guys used to hit, and yeah, but the greens were not running at 13 on the Stimpmeter either. So it just makes that much more difficult now.
With the speed of these greens now, each and every year, it all depends if they are firm. I mean, if they are firm, that golf course is probably the most difficult golf course you'll ever play.
Q. Could you have imagine them dialing some of those changes back a little bit, get rid of the rough or move the tees forward a little bit?
TIGER WOODS: They may move tees around. I think that's what they did with some of the tee boxes. Like on 4 and 7, they are really long tee boxes, so they have the ability to move it around and play with the tee markers a little bit. Because if you get soft, yeah, you can go ahead and move the tees up a little bit and give the guys a chance. So I think that's one of the smart things they have done.
Gary Van Sickle writes:
I apologize if I'm jumping the gun here (or trying to start a bandwagon), but is there any good reason why Tiger Woods won't win the calendar-year Grand Slam this year?
No reason I can think of.
Somehow I don't envision Hogan or Nicklaus getting the kind of questions Tiger faced after winning at Doral again.
JOE CHEMYCZ: The front nine, statistically the computer said zero fairways but nine greens hit and still 3 under par.
TIGER WOODS: Yeah, I didn't hit a fairway, but hit like I guess
Q. You hit two fairways. ShotLink was wrong.
TIGER WOODS: Okay, cool. (Laughter) 3 under, there you go.
Q. How aware were you of the situation when you were playing 17, did you know you were two ahead?
TIGER WOODS: I knew that there was a board there, and after I knocked it over, I looked over at the board and saw that DT had made par, so I had a two shot lead, yes.
Q. Why were you missing left early? Because you had missed right, your misses had been right all week.
TIGER WOODS: Correct.
Rich Hodge at Eat-Golf has this very interesting look at the silhouette on Phil Mickelson's web site and its uncanny resemblance to Tiger's swing.
Maybe during Saturday's round Tiger can ask Phil about it?
Lorne Rubenstein had this little backstory in his column previewing yesterday's Tiger bloodgeoning of Stephen Ames:
There's also some history between Ames and Woods. Ames was quoted in the Calgary Herald during the 2000 Masters as saying that Woods thinks he's bigger than the game, doesn't get along well with his fellow players, and doesn't act right on the course. He called Woods "a spoiled 24-year-old."
Ames wasn't playing that Masters, but his comments generated a stir. He said he was misquoted, while the writer maintained that he quoted him accurately.
The best thing about K.J. Choi not speaking any English? He can't piss off irritate Tiger.
Doug Ferguson reports on Tiger's 9&8 smothering of Stephen Ames, who made an unwise comment about his chances in light of Tiger's erratic ball striking. Tiger was asked about it after the round:
Q. Were you aware of Stephen's comments yesterday that you weren't striking
TIGER WOODS: Yes.
Q. I assumed you were.
TIGER WOODS: Yes.
Q. What was your reaction when you saw that?
TIGER WOODS: 9 & 8.
Q. Obviously you like challenges, the idea of someone saying you're not driving the ball well. It must have lit a fire under you.
TIGER WOODS: You might say that.
Q. It would be better if you said it.
TIGER WOODS: As I said, 9 & 8.
Later one of the scribblers revealed that he is attempting to become the last golf writer on the planet to write about Tiger entering his 30s.
Q. Even after today, Tiger, you're off to a good start. Do you think you can be as dominant through your 30s as you were through your 20s?
TIGER WOODS: That's ultimately what you want to happen. But you have to work. I've done a lot of things to put that together, but it's very exciting.
More from Tiger's Masters media day:
Q. I wanted to ask you about moving to new technology, getting more distance, is that a reflection of what was happening on Tour the last couple of years versus what you could see was going to happen with guys like J.B. Holmes and Bubba Watson coming up?
TIGER WOODS: Well, the guys -- I know I didn't use technology, the advances in technology for a couple of years. Guys were sacrificing some of the spins that they would normally have for distance, and they have gone longer and lighter in shafts, bigger, hotter heads and obviously higher launching and less-spinning golf balls. All of that equates to a lot more yardage. What I've always told the guys at Nike is that I've always wanted a golf ball that would spin around the greens. So can I actually hit the ball further? Yeah, there's no doubt about that, if I went to the golf balls that other guys are using. I decided to use technology in the driver only and not necessarily the golf ball. I've got more of an overall-performing golf ball than some of the other guys because my ball does spin a little bit more, but I am able to hit it further than the old golf balls I used to play.
This has to be scary for anyone dreaming of winning the Masters this year:
TIGER WOODS: I just have to my list of things I needed to work on is a lot shorter than it was last year at the same time. And I just felt like I didn't have this ability at this time last year to turn things around, because I had so many things to try and work onto get things to where I could do that, and my understanding of my new swing.
But after another year of experience with it, I had that ability now to turn things around because I have an understanding of ball flight and my swing and the mechanics that [instructor] Hank [Haney] has been trying to teach me.
And I'm not sure if this qualifies as a rally killer, a point misser, or a point missing rally killer?
Q. Did it ever cross your mind as you were going back on the 18th tee that you don't like that hole and Ernie Els has a fantastic record on that hole?
TIGER WOODS: No. I thought the hole was playing pretty easy for me today because it was into the wind. If I hit the ball on the line like I did earlier in the week, I can't get to the hazard. So it eliminates an obstacle for me. So even if I hit a straight ball, I'm still fine. I'm still going to be in the fairway. And so I don't have to turn it that much and the wind is coming off the right a little bit, just hit a straight ball at the indicate, kind of bring it over, and I can't run into the hazard. So for me, I thought it was playing easier being into the wind than it was downwind.
Q. Going back to memories, what is your fondest memory at Stanford?TIGER WOODS: At Stanford? [Here Tiger's thinking huh!? But you'd never guess it...] There's so many, there really are...
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
