"This is not Tiger’s issue, but a Tour management flaw."

That inevitable commentary you've been waiting for that analyzes the strange relationship between Tiger and the PGA Tour?

Naturally, just as she did with the technology issue, you finally get to read about it in provocative and fresh fashion from the New York Times' Selena Roberts.

Either way, Tiger is in charge. How do you please the host with the most? No event is cheap. As it is, the Tour donates about $240,000, according to tax documents, to Tiger’s Target World Challenge, an unofficial event. To co-sanction official Tour stops, PGA officials supplement the purses. The AT&T National and Deutsche Bank could run the PGA about $8 million this year, according to industry experts.

The payoff for Tiger is tucked in the pocket of his charity. Last year, his foundation received an estimated $1.5 million from the Deutsche Bank Championship.

Is there a money trail to Tiger’s heart? What’s wrong with buying Tiger’s affection, anyway?

It contradicts every tenet of golf’s righteous culture of integrity. “This is golf,” Finchem said repeatedly during an interview last week, as if the sport’s virtue inoculates it from scrutiny.

The PGA Tour doesn’t drug-test, because that would imply a steroid problem exists. Who knew willful ignorance was a marketing strategy? The Tour applies this see-no-evil approach to glaring conflicts of interest, too.

Whoa. Roberts didn't get the memo that you are no one in golf unless you have a conflict of interest!

More tough stuff...

Tiger has played only five events in four months. This weekend’s Byron Nelson is not among them. For years, Tiger played out of deference to Nelson. Now Nelson is dead and Woods is a no-show.

Woods is a schedule recluse, the J. D. Salinger of golf.

It's okay Damon Hack, Tiger'll talk to you again sometime this century! When you've won your Pulitzer, retired from the Times and write lucrative books!

As disturbed as Roberts is by Tiger's selective schedule, it's the PGA Tour she blames.
Now Woods is a Beltway power broker. He already legislates to the PGA.

“It’s only leverage if you use it as leverage,” Finchem said, adding, “I don’t have a concern about that.”

And Tim it's only murder if you kill someone!

But Tiger does exploit his sway, if passive-aggressively. Other voices are ignored on issues, but a suggestion by Tiger is processed as a demand. In 2000, Tiger complained that the Tour was taking financial advantage of him, that Finchem ignored him. Voilà, Finchem and Woods met and love was in the air.

Tiger wanted a shortened season. Tiger received a FedEx Cup race that ends in September. Tiger wanted a tournament like Jack’s. Tiger received the D.C. gala, which was delivered, as desired, with a reduced field of 120 to enhance its prestige, and, as Woods mentioned, to speed up play.

Don't forget driver testing.

Wasn’t Tiger supposed to bring inclusion to the game? Instead, the Tour is more polarized than ever, between the haves and the have-nots. Several tournament officials say privately that they are tempted to barter for Tiger with a donation, but others refuse to abandon their community aid.

“You have to ask, how long is Tiger going to be out there?” said Dave Kaplan, the tournament director for the AT&T Classic in Duluth, Ga. “Is it till he’s 50 or 35? Who knows? If he catches Jack Nicklaus, does he say, ‘That’s it’? And you’d hate to think it, but Tiger, like anyone, could get hurt tomorrow. Stuff happens.”

Stuff makes it a lateral hazard for the Tour to wrap itself in one player. The Tiger Boom could vanish as quickly as the dot-com high. Sports wither all the time, from American pro soccer after Pelé, to boxing after corruption, to a National Hockey League with a puny television deal.

For the Tour to empower Tiger above all is to create a petri dish for an abuse of fame, to lose the ability to tell its rock star no, to sanction its own tumble from virtue.

This is not Tiger’s issue, but a Tour management flaw. What is best for Tiger is not necessarily a 2-foot gimme for those below. It was, after all, a tiny turtle squeezed beneath the pond king that, with a wiggle, toppled Yertle.

What's Tiger Studying On Tape?

Not to wear out this Tiger-plays-Oakmont thing, but a reader who would rather not be associated with this wretched site made this point: 

One thing left unsaid in the Woods item is that he obviously studies videotape of past events at a course before seeing it for the first time. That's the only way he would have thought about Oakmont as a tree-lined course and then have been surprised when he arrived.

To the inkslingers out there considering a Tiger question at Wachovia, how about asking about this instead of about the due date or the new dog.

What's he looking for on old tapes of majors? Has he learned stuff from video that has helped him in any of this 12 wins?

"It's not even close. It's this one.''

From Doug Ferguson's lengthier follow up on Tiger's practice rounds at Oakmont:

He also had heard the debate whether Oakmont or Winged Foot was the toughest championship course on any given Sunday morning for the members. "Of all the tournaments I've ever played, no golf course was harder than Winged Foot,'' Woods said late last year.

He was reminded of that comment when he walked off the 18th green Sunday morning after his first trip around at Oakmont.

"It's not even close,'' Woods said. "It's this one.''

And that was with the green bumping along at about 10 1/2 on the Stimpmeter (the course was under snow a week ago). It usually runs in the neighborhood of 13 for some of the members' tournaments.

"Every green is pitched one way or another,'' Woods said. "If you do miss on the high side, it's impossible.''

"I can't recall many golf courses where you don't see the fairway and green on the same hole."

Wow, imagine the coincidence of Tiger Woods practicing at Oakmont and just spontaneously deciding to give a clinic to American Express suckers guests on U.S. Open Preview Day. And lo and behold the AP writer is there to cover it.

Praise the Lord!

Woods spent the last two days at Oakmont, the premiere championship golf course in America that had been somewhat of a mystery to him. He didn't qualify for his first U.S. Open until the year after Ernie Els won at Oakmont in 1994, so this had been a course Woods only knew from newspaper clippings and television highlights.

"I like it," he said. "I can't recall many golf courses where you don't see the fairway and green on the same hole. Maybe at St. Andrews, but that's about it."

I guess that's a nice way of saying "it's all NOT right in front of you."

Monday also turned into quite a mystery for the 82 people who didn't know they would get to tag along.

They were American Express card members who paid $900 for an event called "2007 U.S. Open Preview Day," not realizing that it would include more than a round of golf and free lunch until Woods entered the room from a back door to stunned silence, followed by high-fives and then a standing ovation.

They were told they would get a seminar on how to prepare for a U.S. Open.

They had no idea their instructor would be the world's No. 1 player, with ABC Sports anchor Mike Tirico as the emcee.

"I hope you guys didn't get slaughtered out there," Woods told them before inviting them along for his third and final practice round.

"He hit a lot of 'stingers'"

Michael Dudurich talks to Oakmont's Bob Ford about Tiger's practice round.

This item would seem to be bad news for anyone hoping to watch him spray that lovely Nike driver all over the lot:

For the most part, Woods hit 5- and 3-woods off the tees.

"There aren't too many driver holes for him out there," Ford said. "He hit a lot of 'stingers' with both of those clubs. He's a very strategic person, no doubt about it."

"I refuse to hit driver. It's against my religion."

About the only highlight of Tiger's first tour around Oakmont was his refusal to use driver on the 8th hole's absurd 288-yard tee. Someone from AP spills the beans on his practice round...

Woods played the back nine early Sunday morning with members and swing coach Hank Haney, then stopped for lunch and played the front nine in the afternoon.

The U.S. Open, to be played June 13-16, returns to Oakmont for the first time since 1994. It is one of the few classic championship courses in the United States that Woods had not played. He first qualified for the U.S. Open in 1995 as an amateur.

Woods said he thought Oakmont as a members' course was far tougher than Winged Foot, where last year he missed the cut for the first time in a major as a pro.

On the par-3 eighth, he played the back tee at 288 yards, and hit 3-wood to the middle of the green.

"I refuse to hit driver," Woods said, smiling. "It's against my religion."

"Or that Tiger Woods will ever play tournament golf again in Texas?"

The Star-Telegram's Gil Lebreton realizes that if Tiger isn't coming to the Nelson this year, he probably won't be coming back ever again.

The message this time, though, seems unmistakable. If the tributes planned for Byron weren’t enough to lure Woods back this year, what makes anyone think that he’ll come back next April? Or the year after?

Or that Tiger Woods will ever play tournament golf again in Texas?

His first and last appearance at Colonial came in 1997. A disappointing final round left Woods steamed and tied for fourth place, and he has never returned.

He played in the Texas Open, a fall tour event in San Antonio, in 1996 and came in third. He has never returned.

Woods has never played in the Shell Houston Open.

The Nelson, however, was supposed to be Woods’ tournament. The tournament where Fergie, the Duchess of York, once came to see Tiger play. From 1997 to 2004, Woods played in the Nelson Championship seven times, shooting a combined 77 under par.

Tiger's House Plans

Thanks to Steven T. for spotting this Jose Lambiet story in the Palm Beach Post about Tiger's house plans.

Golfing god Tiger Woods unveiled the look of his yet-to-be-built Jupiter Island home this week with the filing at town hall of a first batch of documents to support his upcoming building-permit applications.

First observation: The home will be seen by only a selected few, unless there's trespassing involved. The 9,729-square-foot, two-story main house is smack-dab in the middle of a 12-acre tropical forest that stretches from the beach to the Intracoastal.

"Obviously, this is someone who likes his privacy," said town building boss Jeff Newell. "Whether from South Beach Road or the Intracoastal, no one will know whether he's there or not. No one will even know that there's a house."

Second: The home is modest, almost nondescript, at least on paper. No Palm Beach-style castle. No McMansion. No flourishing Mizner job. The artist's rendition shows a simple, yet modern-looking building with giant windows on one side and barely any on the other.

The main home will be connected to a 6,400-square-foot gym-media room-bar with a glass-covered walkway. There's an elevator. A reflecting pond. A library and a children's playroom. A weirdly skinny lap pool. And a steel roof.

But from the outside, the place looks like a northern European part-brick, part-concrete motel or government building.

Clearly, his Swedish wife, Erin Nordegren, had a say in this.

"Can't comment," said the architect, Jupiter-based Roger Janssen. He declined to allow Page Two to publish the sketch.

Woods last year bought four adjacent properties in the tony Martin County enclave for a total of $44.5 million, and named his new place "Sand Turtle." His plans call for the late-summer leveling of the four homes currently on the land. There's no price tag on the upcoming construction as of now.

And from what Newell says, it sounds as if Woods won't have problems getting his way.

"By our standards here, this is a modest project," Newell said. "He's not pushing the envelope like some residents do when they build here."

Woods' lawyers have a mid-June date with the town's Impact Review Board.

The Snap

Well it was mentioned earlier on the live blog that plenty of editors were surely waiting anxiously to see if their shutterbugs captured the shot of Tiger breaking his club on one of those silly 11th hole pines. SI's Jim Herre surely was pleased that Robert Beck delivered. From golf.com:

 

"Trivial Inquiries"

The Telegraph's always entertaining Martin Johnson wasn't the only one bored by the media's Tuesday fawning over Tiger the soon-to-be-dad. Don't miss this column.  The highlights, for when the link disappears:

Until now, Mrs Tiger has not had much to disturb her in married life, apart perhaps from those infuriating moments when the old man is hogging the bathroom again. "Darling, I know you've got to put your game face on, but do hurry up. I want to do my nails." But all this is about to change.

It comes as no surprise to learn that the Woods' have already declined a request from an American television company to film the birth live. However, given that Tiger himself was almost as much a designer breed as his new pooch - making his first TV appearance on The Bob Hope Show at the age of three - we can hazard a guess at what the viewers might have witnessed had CBS been allowed to break off from their six o'clock news bulletin on the latest events in Iraq to go live to the maternity ward.

Soon after Woods Junior emerges from the womb, the midwives will marvel at how his hands clasp hold of the umbilical cord, using the Vardon grip of course, before taking aim at a ball of cotton wool and propelling it into a wastepaper basket for the youngest ever hole in one.

Woods himself says that he has no idea whether fatherhood will alter his legendary approach to business - he has a focus which makes Nicklaus in his prime look like a man having a carefree Sunday morning biff round the local municipal. Woods has already said, though, that he will not be playing golf when the birth is due, and we could see him at this year's Open at Carnoustie carrying a beeper on his belt. If there is a God, please let it go off on the top of Colin Montgomerie's backswing.

Comparing The Competition

Daniel Wexler takes on the tricky task of comparing the quality of Tiger's primary competition vs. Jack's in an ESPN.com piece.

I thought this was interesting from Al Barkow:

 "The players giving Tiger his competition are just as good as those who Jack faced in terms of pure talent, but they don't have the heart, the guts, the tenacity, maybe even the sense of pride that the [Tom] Watsons and [Lee] Trevinos had."

Why, one wonders, would such things be lacking?

"It has to do with money," Barkow continues, "although no one likes to say that. But today's players are so rich they don't have the real need for money the previous generation had, and are also so incredibly pampered and spoiled from the day they took up the game that they don't know how to respond to the dominant player. Watson, Trevino et al, gave Jack a good go and took him a few times head-to-head. I can't see anyone out there today giving Tiger that sort of competition. They don't need to."

"The courses I like are the ones where you have the option to play different shots."

Sports Illustrated featured two classic only-SI-can-do-it features that made weeding through the usual mishagoss of player profile stuff worth the effort. If you love baseball, don't miss Tom Verducci's piece on umpiring for a day, and if you love golf, definitely check out John Garrity's Tiger 2.0 cover story.

Highlights from the Garrity piece:

But here is Tiger, elbows on the table, working me like a cold-call broker. His business goal, he says, is to get to "a place where my family can be financially secure."

Sheesh, and I thought J.D. Drew talking about job security for his family was a tad much after he opted out of 3 years and $33 million!

His course-design work will be "a partnership between me and the owner of the property; I'm trying to provide a product they'll be happy with." His brilliantly successful endorsement deal with Nike, a multiyear contract recently renewed for a reported $100 million plus, is about "providing products that consumers will enjoy." He sums up: "We are in the providing business."

I wonder, for an instant, if Tiger is trying to sell me a fixed-rate annuity.

Beautifully stated.

There is understandable curiosity about Tiger's foray into course design. Typically, a champion golfer either partners with an established golf architect—Arnold Palmer with Ed Seay, for example, or Ben Crenshaw with Bill Coore—or hires a staff of practiced landscape engineers and architects a la Jack Nicklaus, whose design company has produced 310 courses in 30 countries. Tiger would seem to be leaning toward the latter model (he took advantage of Nicklaus's generous offer to let Bell visit his North Palm Beach offices to study the golf course operation), but he turns vague when asked who will actually read the topographical maps and produce the construction drawings.

In L.A., Tiger had assured me, "I will not be hiring some guy to design a golf course. I'll be hands on and involved in it." He was more forthcoming about his design philosophy. "My tastes are toward the old and traditional. I'm a big fan of the Aussie-built courses in Melbourne, the sand-belt courses. I'm also a tremendous fan of some of the courses in our Northeast."

"I'm not one who thoroughly enjoys playing point B to point C to point D golf," he continued. "The courses I like are the ones where you have the option to play different shots. I enjoy working the ball on the ground and using different avenues." "Like Royal Liverpool?" I asked, naming the English course on which Tiger won the 2006 British Open using a 19th-century arsenal of low, scooting tee shots (played almost exclusively with irons and fairway metals) and ground-hugging approaches.

He smiled at the memory. "Liverpool this year and St. Andrews in 2000 are the only times I've seen the fairways faster than the greens. You hit a putt from the fairway, it was running one speed. It got to the green, the putt slowed down." His smile broadened. "That's not like most golf courses, but that's what I like to see. It fits my eye."

Now, Nicklaus has been criticized for building holes that fit his game. Will Tiger be questioned for building designs that fit his eye?

"Tiger Woods is cherry picking his way into history?"

That's the question a bold (but unsigned) GolfWire commentary asks:

 Is it too late to change our mind on the question of whether or not Tiger Woods is cherry picking his way into history?

 A third straight victory at Doral Resort and Spa's Blue Course Sunday in the WGC-CA Championship suggests that Woods, smart man that he is, might be building a resume largely filled with tournaments he knows he can win.

Why is this bad? Well, we're not saying it is.

Doesn't he have a right, as an independent contractor, to set his schedule as he sees fit? Oh, yeah, he does.

Aren't there always horses for courses? Yep, and Woods is a thoroughbred on several of them, including that little old invitational next week in Augusta, Ga., where he has won four times already.

So why bring this up at all? Call it a gut feeling, akin to watching a waterfall. You know all about the path of least resistance. Water goes where it won't be impeded. Woods seems to be doing the same -- not that he is avoiding good competition on the way to winning 12 majors and 57 PGA Tour titles. In fact, he usually only competes in the tournaments with the best quality fields.

"Where do you come up with that?"

That's Tiger talking and it translates to, Doug, I think you've crossed under one too many airport metal detectors. Our beloved AP writer's unrequited love of the game led him to dig up a stat that reveals Tiger has had 50 different runner-up finishers in his PGA Tour victories.

The milestone even caught Woods by surprise, based on the fact he said nothing for a few seconds and even then had little to offer except for, "Where do you come up with that?"

Alright Doug, I admit it's amazing (and on behalf of everyone, I thank you for not quoting some player saying how it speaks to the extraordinary depth on the PGA Tour!).

But I thought this bit from Geoff Ogilvy later in the piece was more interesting:

"Here's a better stat," Ogilvy said. "Who's won the most times with him in the field?"

No surprise there, either - Singh with 13 victories, followed by Mickelson at nine.

Now, it doesn't always work both ways, because Woods has been a runner-up 20 times on the PGA Tour. He has been second to Singh and Mickelson three times apiece, with Lefty winning the tiebreaker.

Tiger's Pre-Masters Visits

After winning at Doral:

 Q. How many times in the years you've played the Masters have you gone to Augusta the week before you get there?

TIGER WOODS: Only when there's changes. Only when they decide to rebuild the place.

Q. So most.

TIGER WOODS: Lately.