Stevie Still Wants To Have A Sitdown With Tiger

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Paul Lewis of the New Zealand Herald talks to Stevie Williams about cutting back on his caddying schedule to spend more time with his cars.

And it seems that contrary to the post-Open Championship coverage of a Tiger-Stevie reconciliation because they shook hands on the last green, well…that's not enough for Stevie.

"I think Tiger and I need to sit down and have a conversation," Williams said. "That opportunity hasn't arisen yet, but that's something I'd like to do."

"Collateral Damage" Coming From The New HD Video Decision

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The governing bodies are receiving nearly universal praise for closing one loophole to armchair rulings in the HD era, and while I see what has some celebrating Decision 18-4, the blogger in me who has seen technology fly over golf cogniscenti's heads all too often, I'm not sure this is going to work out as hoped.
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English: Time To "Slap" McIlroy

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Strong stuff from Tom English as usual, this time coming to Brandel Chamblee's defense and in a bad sign for Rory McIlroy, a strong UK press attack on the young lad's rationale for exempting Tiger from criticism.

English writes:

He questioned Chamblee’s “authority” to say “anything like that” about his pal. Then this: “People wouldn’t know who Brandel Chamblee was if it wasn’t for Tiger Woods.”

At that point, you’d have to administer the slap.

Is Rory saying that anybody with reservations about Woods’ on-course behaviour this year should hush their noise because, well, he made us all and we should be eternally grateful? Is that it? Is every golf analyst to turn a blind eye because, hey, they’d be irrelevant without him? Such a lot of nonsense from McIlroy. It’s not less scrutiny that Woods needs. Quite obviously, it is more.

HSBC Really Wishes Tiger Was Playing This Week

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Generally I find the stories of late where sponsors complain about the lack of star presence to be a bit silly since golf is now a 52-week-a-year global sport and most of them signed on knowing this. However, after reading the grumbling of HSBC's Giles Morgan about Tiger's non-appearance in this week's WGC-HSBC despite being in China, I can kind of see the point.

Reported by Doug Ferguson from Shanghai:

Morgan said he was told a few months ago by Woods' agent that this was not going to work with his schedule. After a week of corporate work, Woods is playing (for another big appearance fee) in the Turkish Open, a European Tour event.

Like other overseas events, HSBC once paid to get the best players. But now that it's a full-fledged WGC, big appearance fees have been replaced by an $8.5 million purse.

"What I can't do is pay him," Morgan said. "And I feel enormously strong about that. This is a World Golf Championship. This is the flagship event of Asia. This is going to be the beacon to carry the game into this continent for many years to come. We could do the wrong thing by golf and drop the prize money right down and just pay one or two players huge fees. From a publicity standpoint, that would give us a certain amount of kudos because we'd get the top player in the world. And I'm absolutely not going down that route.

"We have an opportunity to be a genuine top 10 event in the world," he said. "That requires a massive investment, which we're pleased to do. And that means we want to be an authentic sponsor in the world of golf."

Of course HSBC also might think it's owed a favor as a founding partner of the Tiger Woods Learning Center, but as opening day headliner Bill Clinton can tell you, that doesn't mean a whole lot to Woods. And that may be why he's down to two blue chip sponsors.