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
Woods had said his leg felt better. But from the opening tee shot at the TPC Sawgrass, he looked as bad as he ever has.
''The knee acted up and then the Achilles followed after that, and then the calf started cramping up,'' Woods said. ''Everything started getting tight, so it's just a whole chain reaction.''
The first hole could not have gone any worse.
He pulled his opening tee shot into the pine trees, leaving him a stance in the pine straw. Then he came up short of the green, his ball perched at the bottom of a steep bank that force another awkward stance.
The winless streak for Woods is now at 541 days. Not only is there no clear indication when he might win again, but now we have no idea when he will play again. There were certainly times Thursday when it appeared as if the last place Tiger Woods wanted to be was on a golf course. And when he left the property after his truncated first round, no one -- not even him -- knew when he would next be on a golf course. A man used to being in control suddenly now has precious little control of his future.
Woods looked nothing like the former world No. 1 he once was. He made bogey on the first, hit two balls into the water on the fourth to make triple bogey, made another bogey on the fifth and finished with yet another bogey on the ninth. He hit just one green and had just one birdie putt.
The 42 Woods shot on Thursday was not his worst nine-hole score as a professional. He has shot 43 four times, the most recent coming in last year's Wells Fargo Championship on the back-nine at Quail Hollow in the second round.
This is a different Woods in more ways than one. He’s winless since 2009. He has been rebuilding his life and swing after a sex scandal and subsequent divorce. And now again he’s dealing with physical problems in addition to emotional scars.
As one esteemed golf journalist said soon after the withdrawal, “Tiger’s Achilles’ heel is his Achilles’ heel. It used to be waitresses.”
Watching Woods saunter around the ninth green, surveying another lengthy putt to save par, he was visibly favoring his right knee. He looked like that sitcom character, Fred Sanford, but this was no comedy and nobody was laughing. Woods' game was junked.
Even allowing for the rust from the layoff, it was an atrocious round. He flubbed three wedge shots from close range, including dumping a pitch into a bunker on the ninth, after he had executed a soaring, 290-yard 5-wood from the fairway that sailed over the green and under a tree. Even the good shots turned out badly.
At times, Woods was more than a minute behind playing partners Martin Kaymer and Matt Kuchar and the caddies in walking from the tee to their second shots. Following his tee shot at the par-3 eighth hole, he watched the ball’s flight from a “flamingo” stance – his left foot lifted completely off the ground.
Why he even showed up at The Players - a tournament he doesn’t have much love for played on a course he dislikes - remains a mystery.
Maybe he felt he needed to repay tour commissioner Tim Finchem for allowing him to use the Sawgrass clubhouse as the venue for last year’s televised apology for the wake of his scandal.
Or maybe he just felt he needed to get in some practice before next month’s US Open at Congressional Country Club.Or maybe he was just trying to do the right thing and show up at the tour’s marquee event.
Whatever the motivation, it was clearly a mistake.
Woods wasn’t ready to play this tournament, in any sense.
I don't doubt that his left knee and Achilles' tendon were hurting, or that his left calf cramped up on him. But I also think Tiger Woods is about as physically tough as anybody who has ever played golf, and that if he liked the course and cared about the event and had striped his opening tee shot with a 3-wood instead of hitting a pull-hook, he would still be playing.
He was at the Players for only one reason: he needed, to use one of his words, reps. He needed more tournaments before the U.S. Open.
He did not practice again after the Masters until Monday; he played nine-hole practice rounds here Tuesday and Wednesday.
"This morning, felt fine during warm-up and then as I played, it progressively got worse. ... The treatment's been good. It's been getting better. It just wasn't enough."
Woods said his doctors told him it was OK to play.
"The more rest I get, the better it would be, obviously," he said. "Obviously, it's a big event. I wanted to come back for it and play, and unfortunately I wasn't able to finish."
**Brian Wacker talks to Sean Foley about his student's WD:
“At the end of the day if it’s been bothered before it doesn’t ever really truly heal,” Foley said. “You can be functional and productive on it but this comes from a guy that works hard and trains hard and is a perfectionist. The guy’s created a lot of speed for a lot of time. He’s an athlete and he’s fit but you can’t overuse your body that much and not have … there’s going to be some issues.”
Greetings from Ponte Vedra, home to the fifth of four majors one of the four best events on the globe!
That's right, the tournament kicking off Thursday is a better event than the PGA Championship. My reasoning:
-Better course than anything PGA has played in years or will play.
-Better weather (barely...)
-Better television presentation (this one's not even close...and that's not a statement about CBS v. NBC, that's a statement about the PGA becoming a preview show for the CBS fall television schedule while The Players limits commercial time and gulp, delivers value to sponsors PWC and Jeld-Wen).
-Better course setup. The PGA's Kerry Haigh does an outstanding job most of the time, but has also made a few odd moves and is stretched thin handling other duties. The PGA Tour wins on consistency at a course that is not easy to set up. (Though the TPC Sawgrass would be way better with no rough...more on that in a moment).
Besides, there is nothing wrong with being the most important event in the world that is not a major. I certainly can't think of one that is more important than the Players, whether Lee and Rory turn up or not. It's certainly a bigger deal than the World Golf Championships. In fact -- although the last thing golf needs is another major in the U.S. -- if we were starting over tomorrow, the Players, as the biggest event on the world's biggest tour, would surely be a major.
Though I never experienced the event in person in March, most feel the tour needs to shift away from the May date now that the NCAA has moved games to night and more fans were around in March. Personally, I like where The Players sits on the schedule now and hope they stick to their guns, but I'm definitely in the minority on this one. John Feinstein, courtesy of reader Lee:
Okay, here’s why May is a bad idea. First, the weather is almost always hot and humid in north Florida in May and that’s the weather report for this week. The crowds last year looked sparse compared with the old days in March when snowbirds were still around and others came down to combine spring training trips with a couple days of watching golf.
But the March date was better. Sure, it rained sometimes, but overall it was cooler and more comfortable for everyone. It fit right in at the end of the Florida Swing on Tour. Maybe it was a warm-up for the Masters but now, well, it’s an early warm-up for the U.S. Open. The always politically correct Phil Mickelson slipped for a second Sunday afternoon on TV when he said he was trying to make progress, “going forward towards the Open,” before catching himself and saying, “and of course The Players next week.”
More and more of the NCAA basketball tournament is played at night these days so there is less TV competition from basketball and in May there are still the NBA playoffs to deal with; baseball in full swing and good weather in most of the country that has people outdoors on the weekend.
The Players should move back to March. It still won’t be a major but it will be a better golf tournament. That should matter.
May only quibble with this event is one key element to the golf course: the rough. Adam Scott made these comments to Doug Ferguson:
"In my personal opinion, I don't think they've got the setup quite right yet for the May date," said Adam Scott, who won The Players in 2004 when it was in March. "With the different grass, I'd like to see them set it up a little differently. I'd like to see the rough cut down a lot more with the different grass here, get the ball running through. And we could do away with the thick rough."
Here's why the Bermuda grass rough stinks: (A) it keeps errant balls in play, as Scott notes and (B) the rough strips the course of much needed aesthetic punch that it once had (think Pinehurst #2 restoration).
Either way, The Players is here. I'll be out on the course quite a bit and will try to do my best to issue some reports, but with the PGA Tour clamping down on any kind of photo or video sharing, I'll be limited in what I can share! Enjoy!
Brian Keogh did the dirty work in transcribing Tiger teacher Sean Foley's Dublin radio interview in which he stood up for his man.
Denying that he was angered by what Watson said, Foley added: “I wouldn’t say angry. I would just say, bud, you won three times the last 10 months, I am really pleased for you. You have worked hard and I think it is a great thing that you are playing so well. But why do you feel the need that you have to get the attention? What’s the use in making that comment?
“Let the guy do what he’s doing and you do what you’re doing and it will be fine. There is absolutely zero need for him to make that comment. But you know, Bubba loves the camera anyway so, I mean, whatever.”
And on the media...
"The fall from grace and how the media has treated him and how it has all went (sic). The guy’s name alone has brought like $600 million to charity.
"So they only paint one side of the picture. They keep taking about his swing and talking about his swing but on the weekend at Augusta he hit 31 of 36 greens and 24 of 28 fairways so, he is definitely headed in the right direction and when he starts putting a little bit better he is the greatest player ever. You can’t hold him back. I don’t think it matters who coaches him, as soon as he gets used to their style, he is Tiger Woods.
For context, his Woods comments last week were the result of a query about Sean O'Hair and Foley splitting. Watson has never used a swing coach.
"I just told him [his management] that, look, you know me. I'm good friends with you," Watson said. "I've been a supporter of you the whole time I've been a pro and have known you. So I'm here for you, but I didn't do anything wrong.
"So yeah, the camp says I'm okay, but I haven't talked to the boss yet."
Woods was not doing cartwheels about the comments when he arrived at the Players Championship on Tuesday, and not just because he has a sore knee.
This time around at the Players we are not wondering if Tiger and Elin Nordegren will divorce -- they have. This time around we are not wondering if Woods and swing coach Hank Haney will split -- they have. This time around we are not wondering whether the turmoil in Woods' private life would disrupt his professional career -- it did.
This time around the questions are these. When will the swing changes Woods is working on with new coach Sean Foley kick in? How healthy is the left knee that has been operated on four times and the left Achilles he said was hurting him when he withdrew from the Wells Fargo Championship two weeks ago?
Golfweek illustrators D.J. Piehowski and Jason Lusk put together logo options for the European Tour to ditch the old geezer who never played the European Tour with a Seve-themed logo. This is the one that floated my boat:
AP's Paul Logothetis reports on Seve Ballesteros' memorial service.
Ballesteros' oldest son, Javier, carried the urn holding the Spanish golf great's ashes at the front of the procession, with the wail of a single bagpipe punctuating the occasion on an overcast day in the tiny village off the Bay of Santander.
The procession also included several young boys and girls wearing a replica of the navy blue outfit that Ballesteros wore for his first British Open win in 1979. They each held a 3-iron, the first club he used as a child.
Members of a local men's rowing team marched with their oars.
The large crowd outside the church burst into applause as Ballesteros' ashes reached the tiny church, which was filled to its 400-person capacity. Locals, friends and others watched from one of the three giant screens set up outside.
An unbylined European Tour story included this:
The 2012 European Captain José Maria Olazábal, who with Seve formed the greatest partnership in Ryder Cup history, was joined by past Captains Sir Nick Faldo, Bernard Gallacher, Colin Montgomerie, Sam Torrance and Ian Woosnam. Miguel Angel Jiménez and Gonzalo Fernandez-Castaño were among the Spanish contingent with a host of European Tour players past and present who joined family and friends in Seve's hometown.
George O’Grady, Chief Executive of The European Tour, R&A Chief Executive Peter Dawson and his predecessor Sir Michael Bonallack were among those paying their respects.
Getty Images has a library of shots from the service. Thanks to reader Tim for the link.
Tributes continue to come in (or I'm just now reading them), including this from Mitchell Platts:
I recall a breakfast with Seve at the Ritz in London when, with tears in his eyes, he spoke warmly of his parents – his father had now died - and three brothers. He said: “The biggest influence on my life was my parents and probably the surroundings because our house was right there on the golf course (Real Club de Golf de Pedreña). My uncle, Ramon Sota, was also a professional golfer and he was very good.
“My father was always optimistic; he always believed in me. The house had belonged to my mother’s uncle. When we were growing up Baldomero, my eldest brother, had one bedroom, Manuel had another and I shared with Vicente. We were a happy family. We kept cows which my father looked after. He also fished, some for us to eat and some to sell, and he caddied. It seemed that he and my mother were always working.”
Later the tears turned to smiles when he recalled being drunk at the age of 12. He said: “I came home and my father and mother had gone fishing. My lunch had been left and there was a bottle of wine. I had four glasses. It did not go unnoticed when I returned to school; I was sent back home!”
Scott Michaux suggested this as a way to pay tribute to Seve…not that it'll happen, but it might be fun to do once a year.
If the game's leaders wanted to truly honor Seve's memory, they would figure out a way to restore the relevance of his style in an era before players carried five different wedges, several hybrids, long putters and balls designed to combat the elements of spin. It's probably too late to cap the bottle of technology, but maybe something as simple as reducing the number of clubs in the bag from 14 to 11 would require today's elite players to learn how to do more with less the way Ballesteros could.
Ballesteros’s life ended where it began: in the Cantabrian hamlet of Pedrena, along the rock-edged, turquoise shores of the Bay of Santander, where he was raised.
“The funeral rites will be as simple as those for any neighbor from the village,” his brother Baldomero said. “Seve is a country boy. We thought it was best.”
It’s a simpler and somewhat rougher part of Spain’s coast, not as traveled as the southern Mediterranean, but ancient and splendidly beautiful even so, wild with energy, and suggestive of just what an epic act of self-fashioning his career was. His essence, surely, is there.
Here is the remainder of my email Q&A with Adam Schupak, author of Deane Beman: Golf's Driving Force.
Q: Beman righthand man Tim Finchem seems to be under-represented while many other Beman cohorts share all sorts of great memories and insights. Did you interview the current Commissioner?
AS: Finchem cooperated. He’s a busy man so at his request we spoke by phone. On each occasion, we ran over the allotted time. When I realized I hadn’t touched on his role in The Presidents Cup and some other topics, he squeezed me in and gave me some good details. Perhaps I didn’t direct quote him as much. I’m not sure he gave the most colorful quotes. He did tell me about the photo of the two of them on his office wall with Beman’s inscription, which I ended up using both in the book and as the inside-cover photo. And I sensed sincerity when Finchem told me he wished Beman had stayed longer and that he wasn’t lusting for the job. Finchem said he expected to have to go elsewhere to run a business.
If there was a disappointment, Finchem didn’t provide many recollections on grooves or the intimate details from the negotiations I hoped for from someone who served as the Tour’s point-person on that topic. Then again, he didn’t get where he is today by baring his soul to writers.
Q: Beman says he wouldn't have retired when he did had he known the governing bodies and tour would drop the ball on regulating distance. But wasn't he weakened by his decision to take on PING?
Beman already was moving forward to conduct additional research in grooves and golf balls after he settled with Ping. He felt he was in a stronger position because Ping had agreed to the terms of an equipment advisory board. Sure, there were more hoops to jump through, but as long as the Tour didn’t act in an arbitrary nature and convinced the independent group that a rule change should be mandated, the Tour had the authority to make its own rules. I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve been told that it would be much more difficult to prove an antitrust suit under such circumstances.
Q: How was he to work with and how did your interview sessions work?
He was a journalist’s dream in that he kept everything, and entrusted me with board minutes dating back to the Joe Dey era and his personal records. They provided me with the supporting documents that added depth to my reporting and detail to the narrative. As one of his former lieutenants said to me, Deane Beman doesn’t do anything halfway. He devoted himself to explaining his story, which sometimes meant repeating the same story several times, and the book is all the better for it.
Q: Where can we buy it?
“Deane Beman: Golf’s Driving Force,” is available at Amazon.com (See Geoff’s “Current Reading” for a direct link), the Kindle store, Golfsmart.com, and any club pros or off-course retailers who want to carry the book should contact The Booklegger.
The Paulson banktruptcy filing on Doral includes the revelation that the group is not including the Great White course as part of the package, according to this Bloomberg story. This raised a few eyebrows until Douglas Hanks and David Neal explained that they want to develop Norman's Miami masterpiece.
The owners of the Doral resort want to spin-off one of its five golf courses for residential or commercial development, according to court filings.
The move to separate the Doral’s “Great White’’ course — named after designer Greg Norman — probably would not impact the resort’s annual PGA golf tournament, which is played on the famous “Blue Monster.’
Howard Pankratz reports on good news for the Coore-Crenshaw designed home of the 2013 Solheim Cup and a course thought to have been a PGA Championship contender despite having a non-Rees Jones design and August temperatures potentially under 94 degrees.
Colorado Golf Club said "the acquisition marks a new beginning for the club".
Ferrell said the transaction was completed after months of negotiations and cooperation between the membership and other parties - including the original developers, lenders, creditors and New York real estate investor Arendale Holdings.
"I've never seen a more multi-faceted deal," said Ferrell, who has been in the golf business more than two decades. "It is remarkable all the players could make this happen."
Tiger's post-practice scrum included this:
Q. I know you and Bubba are friends. I was curious about your reaction to what he said last week about you going in the wrong direction.
TIGER WOODS: That was interesting.
Q. He said this morning that you guys haven't had a chance to talk.
TIGER WOODS: Not yet.
Q. Do you have an issue with it?
TIGER WOODS: We'll talk.
Q. Have you ever told him he needed a teacher?
TIGER WOODS: To each his own.
Wei explains the backstory to this earthshattering feud.
Jeff Rude sums up Tiger's Tuesday presser in which he suggests he's here for the reps pre-Congressional and not much else.
Asked about his game and lack of preparation, Woods said, “It is what it is. The whole idea is that I peak four times a year. I’m trying to get ready for Congressional (U.S. Open next month), and I need some playing time.”
Gene Wojciechowski says to not expect a great performance from Tiger this week.
So in review, Tiger's knee and Achilles are better, but not 100 percent. He has barely picked up a club in the past 4½ weeks. He's taking anti-inflammatories. And, by his own admission, his putting is in the dumper and his short game isn't much better.
Plus, Woods and The Players Championship aren't always on speaking terms. He hasn't won at TPC Sawgrass since 2001 and has only one top-10 finish since 2002. Last year, he had to withdraw in the final round because of a neck injury.
Yet the Vegas smart guys have Woods as the betting favorite this week. They're begging you to wager on him.
Thanks to reader Stan for Brian Viner's Seve tribute, that included a reminder of Seve's philosophy on long putters and technology.
"He approved of gamesmanship because it was a test of psychological strength. But he deplored players getting technological assistance. "I would ban the long putter," he told me. "Golf in my opinion was invented to reward the skill, ability and intelligence of the player. But when I see guys using that putter, on the short putts especially it looks like an incredible help. People who can't putt at all, all of a sudden they're making everything inside 20 feet."
I asked whether we shouldn't spare a thought for his friend Sam Torrance, whose career was extended by conversion to the broomhandle putter.
"That's a good question. But if the long putter did not exist, Sam couldn't have tried it. He would have continued to find another way. I would also change the loft on the sand wedge, from 60 degrees to maximum 54, so there is more feel involved. Some guys carry four wedges, I need only one. I would have only 12 clubs in the bag, not 14, to eliminate all those wedges. And I would change the size of the ball. It should be bigger, to stop distance. Great golf courses all over the world are being redesigned, because with new technology players hit so far. That is wrong because great courses, like St Andrews, are pieces of art. The ball should be changed, not the course."
While traveling today I got to spend a little time with the hard copy of the NY Times and inspected Dick Rugge's response to the Polara ball and other suggestions that the rules of golf are scaring golfers away. I like that he was both logical--we've seen greater advances in the last 15 years than ever before--and a wee bit sarcastic too.
“For the last 15 years, advances in conforming club and ball technologies have made it easier to play,” he said. “So we’ve already had a 15-year experiment on this make-it-easier logic. And what have been the results? Participation has not gone up. So we’re not going to dumb it down.
“You know the easiest way to get the ball in the middle of the fairway? Walk down there and place it with your hand. Who are you kidding?”
At least that's my policy. That's quite different from what the folks at Quail Hollow and Augusta say. Alex Myers delves into this seemingly ridiculous debate. Or is it a grand statement about where golf fits into the cultural landscape? Or neither?
Why this is front page news, I'm not sure, but Bill Pennington on the Polara ball.
It is physics, not magic, but there is, of course, a catch. The Polara ball has an irregular dimple pattern that means it does not conform to golf’s official rules. The ball, which is designed to reduce slices and hooks by 75 percent or more, would be illegal to use in the Masters, for example, or any other competition, local or otherwise, sanctioned by the United States Golf Association.
But as golf works to appeal to a younger generation that hits the links in cargo shorts and sandals and without a rulebook, does a nonconforming label still matter?
“It wouldn’t matter one bit to me,” said Fredric Martenson, 36, of Jersey City, who was also pounding balls into the night. Mr. Martenson, a beginning golfer with a wicked slice, also found the Polara ball went considerably straighter.
“I just want to go out and not spend the whole day looking for my ball,” he said.
And we know that's all been the ball's fault!
But many at the driving range here last week wanted nothing to do with the Polara ball.
“Part of the game is the challenge of hitting it straight,” said Charles Yoo, 33, of Edgewater.
The dialogue at the range mirrors a debate in the greater golf community. With the number of golf rounds declining in recent years, especially among beginners, what is the best way to draw new players to a difficult, intimidating, tradition-bound game? Can new technologies enhance the recruitment of players, even if some advances are outside rules in place for centuries?
Dave Felker, the former Callaway golf ball engineer and executive behind the Polara, said his product was meant to grow the game because it is not for the elite golfer.
“It’s for the other golfers, the ones who rarely hit it straight,” he said. “It’s for people who want to be embarrassed less, play faster and enjoy it more. I respect the U.S.G.A., they help identify the best golfers in the world, but what about the rest of us?”
After yesterday's Flogton story, might we see a USGA rebuttal to all of this?
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
