Nike May Own Tiger's Name & Other Greater Jupiter Dining Notes

Michael Bamberger, filing for golf.com, tracks Tiger's movements around the greater Palm Beach area and suggests that the world's most famous golfer is pretty into the creation of his new restaurant.

So much so, he brought a special guest by to scout the locale...

“Tiger was behind the wheel,” a reporter told Mastroianni on Thursday. The surname is pronounced MAS-tree-on-eee. “Who do you think was riding shotgun?”

“Lindsey?” the developer said, referencing the skier Lindsey Vonn.

“Michael Jordan,” he was told.

“Yeah,” Mastroianni said, registering no surprise. He’s a mid-80s shooter at Old Palm and Trump Jupiter, two South Florida courses known to Jordan. “They’re friends.”

And they're probably hitting each other up to support restaurants and new golf courses. There's a duel to protect the wallet no one should interfere with.

Mastroianni said he has worked directly with Woods, with the CFO of ETW, Chris Hubman, and not at all with Mark Steinberg, Woods’s agent.

Poor guy! Who is going to lie to him?

He said Woods is spending $1,000 per square foot in the construction of the restaurant, about 30 percent more than most upscale restaurant owners spend. “He’s got marble from Italy, granite from another country,” he said. Mastroianni said he expected cocktails to cost about $15 each.

If I were your accountant I'd have to strongly advise against it. If I were your accountant.

He’s been impressed by Woods’s business acumen. “He’s very diligent,” Mastroianni said. “Everything he says, he thinks about it first.”

The developer was asked about the cumbersome name, The Woods Jupiter: Sports and Dining Club. He referred to it as Woods Jupiter and expects that’s what most people will call it. Mastroianni said he was told that Nike “has the rights to the name Tiger Woods,” which prevented Woods using his first and last name in the restaurant name. (Nike and Greenspan, Woods's spokesman, did not immediately respond to inquiries about the rights to use Woods's name in commercial ventures.)

They own his name?!

Kid Rock On Joining The Bear's Club, Tiger's Reclusiveness

The February 28, 2015 Rolling Stone features a Patrick Doyle-authored story on Bob Ritchie, aka Kid Rock, who has joined the Bear's Club and hit golf balls at Tiger's house.

Doyle writes:

Lately, Rock has been getting into golf. He was just accepted into Jack Nicklaus' private Bear's Club, near Palm Beach, Florida. "If you told me five years ago I'd have to take my hat off and tuck my shirt in, I'd have slapped the taste out of your mouth," Rock says. "Now I'm like, 'Look at me, hair slicked back, shirt tucked in.' I'm like, 'What a fag!' "

What a lovely sentiment. I think Jack needs to call Bob into his office, too.

As for Tiger, his comments were of interest. Really.

Rock recently got some pointers at the range from Nicklaus himself, and he hit balls at Tiger Woods' nearby house. "Nice kid," Rock says. "A little bit of an Eminem and Axl Rose syndrome. Very reclusive, literal, and sometimes you feel a little bad for them. Sometimes they think the world's against them. You gotta loosen up, man! People are gonna talk shit. You just gotta enjoy it!"

Continuing the music metaphors, the March 3rd, 2015 issue of Rolling Stone featured this Michael Weinreb piece suggesting Tiger has moved into Michael Jackson territory.

He is, as Sports on Earth's Will Leitch wrote, firmly ensconced in his "freak show" phase; he now appears so far removed from normal life that it's getting more difficult to imagine he'll ever be an object of mainstream affection any time soon. In, say, 2002, it would have seemed utterly absurd to compare Tiger Woods and Mike Tyson; now it feels like an increasingly apt metaphor. The fact that he felt the need to publicly attack a biting satirical column by a legendary sportswriter best known for biting satire may have been the least self-aware and most humorless screed by an athlete who was never exactly known for his edginess.