Stevie: All's Well With Tiger (*&^%$ Ass) And Phil ($%&^*)

If you were looking for a good laugh to break the withering playoff tension bound to envelop Friday and Saturday's Tiger-Phil-Adam pairing at the Deutsche Bank Championship, Robert Lusetich has the story of Adam Scott looper Stevie Williams, new pal of Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.

Or so he says.

You may recall Stevie used a less than flattering bit of imagery while suggesting that he would like to insert something into Tiger. And with Phil he just went with the more succinct "prick" description.

The Stevie-Tiger make-up story started at Merion where Stevie says he sensed that his presence made Tiger "uncomfortable," so feeling the pain and concern for his former mate, decided at Muirfield during the final round--and what better time to chum it up than during a major final round--Stevie talked auto racing with Tiger on the 8th hole. Voila! They've been exchanging loving glances ever since.

“When I used to caddie for him I’d watch it at (their rented home) and after a while he started watching with me and getting into it.”

They engaged in small talk; as often is the case in such situations, the subject wasn’t important.

“He asked me how the family was and I did the same. We just talked, you know,” Williams said.

“At some point in time, I just felt we had to break the ice."

As for Phil, all Stevie said is they are "all good."

Call me skeptical...

Blumenherst Walking Away From LPGA Tour?

Randall Mell with news of a blow to the LPGA as one its classiest and most engaging players, 26-year-old Amanda Blumenherst, is walking away at year's end to spend more time with her husband, Oakland A's first-baseman Nate Freiman.

From Mell's exclusive on the 2008 U.S. Women's Amateur champion:

“I don’t want to say I’m retiring, because you never know what will happen,” Blumenherst said. “Maybe I’ll decide in a couple years to come back, and this will just be a little break, you never know.”

It sounds like more than a break, though. Blumenherst, 26, would like to start a family. She said this season has been tough.

“I started noticing that my heart was no longer in it,” Blumenherst said. “I was just going through the motions in practice. I want to be with Nate.”

Mell discussed Blumenhurst's story on Morning Drive with Gary Williams:

Commish Welcomes FOX Sports & Their "Work In Progress" Coverage; Just Loves The European Tour

Doug Ferguson reports that PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem welcomes the USGA bringing Fox Sports into the golf world because (A) they will now be forced to show and pay for golf highlights on their nightly new shows that no one watches, and (B) they will make CBS and NBC look super while stumbling through the inevitable hiccups that come with trying to launch a full golf telecast operation.

Finchem did not say if the tour was concerned about Fox's ability to handle golf because it had never televised the sport. Miller was particularly critical, saying that "you can't just fall out of a tree and do the U.S. Open."

"It's going to be a work in progress," Finchem said. "They've got to build a capability there, working with the USGA, and I'm sure they will. They're professionals. They do an excellent job in producing the other sports that they have. I'm sure they'll get the talent together to do a good job for the USGA, but it will be interesting to see what happens when that lines out. When they get certain people in certain positions, we'll find out."

Now, as a connoisseur of Finchemspeak, anything but a resoundingly positive statement means that when he learned of the announcement, he turned to Ty and mumbled, "what are they smoking back there in Far Hills?"

Finchem's comments Wednesday about the European Tour were much more interesting. It's becoming clear the PGA Tour would like to be in business or partnership with the struggling circuit and why not?

Jason Sobel reports on the cryptic language from the Commish, which included lots of praise, speculation, platform references, and this:

“You just don't do something and turnaround and do something else. So I think the timeframe is fine. And there's nothing urgent about any of this. I think professional golf has made a lot of strides in the last five years, not just here, but around the globe, and continues to do so. And if there's a way we can do it better together then that's good.

“But if it's 10 years or 15 years, I think we're still headed in the right direction. So I don't feel like this is a situation where we have to fix anything. Things are moving very well.”

Right!

Catriona Backed For Euro Solheim Cup Captaincy

While the 18-10 loss at Colorado Golf Club has left the Americans in disarray about what to do next, Europe appears to be building a consensus toward a Catriona Matthew Solheim Cup captaincy in 2015.

Martin Dempster reports.

Must Read For American Sports Fans: NY Times' "Remote Control: Inside The Power Of ESPN"

Outside of the USA I can't imagine the three-part NY Times story on ESPN to be of much interest, but in light of the recent Fox Sports deal to acquire USGA events along with ESPN's role in broadcasting the Masters and The Open, and Golf Channel's place in the cable "bundling" world, this three-parter is a must for sports business fans.

Parts one and two of the stories by Steve Eder, Richard Sandomir and James Andrew Miller deal mostly with college football, while part three gets into ESPN's future and the potential for ending the bundling of channels that lets ESPN take in $6 billion before ever selling a single ad.

But Matthew Polka, the industry lobbyist for small cable operators, said, “On à la carte, there was no stronger opponent than Disney and ESPN.”

And ESPN has no more stubborn nemesis than Mr. McCain. This past spring, with cable rates and ESPN’s monthly fees continuing to rise, he revived an effort aimed at undoing bundles.

“Why do I pick on ESPN?” Mr. McCain said in an interview in May. “I’m not picking on them. But they are the most glaring example of what people are required to watch — I mean pay for — even if they never watch it.”

And there was this, which could either be seen as justifying the overpaying for sports rights, or...

Meanwhile, companies like Google, Sony and Intel are planning virtual cable services that would be delivered on the Internet. They could lure consumers from traditional pay television as low-cost alternatives to traditional pay TV while also competing for major sports properties when ESPN’s contracts eventually expire. Mr. Skipper said he would make deals with these upstarts, but only on ESPN’s terms: they must take all of ESPN’s offerings, not just the ones they want.

With the rise of new competition come questions about the fate of existing customers.
Consumers are fleeing pay TV at a quickening pace: 898,000 in the past year, nearly twice the number in the previous year, the analyst Craig Moffett said. And in the past two years, ESPN has lost more than one million subscribers.

What’s more, ESPN ratings plunged 32 percent in the quarter that ended in June.

Mr. Skipper’s task — very different from that of predecessors who built ESPN into a powerhouse — is to negotiate a deeply uncertain future.

“It’s a high-class problem,” he said.

Hicks Thinks Johnny Will Stick Around Post-2014 U.S. Open

Ed Sherman interviews Dan Hicks about taking over announce duties for Notre Dame football and also addresses the "kick to the stomach" of losing the US Open to Fox starting in 2015. But on the minds of most is sidekick Johnny Miller's status, whose passion for the US Open was undeniable.

From the Sherman Report where he posts the interview, and Sherman's Tribune column.

I feel worse for (Johnny Miller) than anyone. He gives so much emotion to that championship. After I talked to (producer Tommy Roy), I called Johnny. You could hear the emotion in his voice.

Miller will be 67 next year. Is there any chance he does one final Open in 2014 and rides off into the sunset?

I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think Johnny is too good to just walk away because we’re not doing the Open anymore. He still wants to do some golf. Our team is tight. If the crew was breaking up, then I could see him leaving.

Tiger In '12: Major Wins Make For A "Great" Year

For those wondering if Tiger changed his assessment of a "great" year last week to include one with no major wins, Doug Ferguson's notes column says you are correct.

And it was just a year ago that Woods made his case.

It was at The Barclays in 2012 that he was asked about three PGA Tour wins and whether he saw it as a good year or some other description.

''Well, I see it as absolutely it's a good year,'' Woods said a year ago. ''But I think winning a major puts it into a 'great year' category. I've said that countless times prior.''

Or he used to, anyway.

"In the absence of any meaningful, professional management of his dealings with the media, McIlroy is going to continue to face a lot more aggravation than he really needs to."

Media bashers won't buy the argument, but Karl MacGinty lays out an eloquent case for why Rory McIlroy will continue to have weird little off-course dust-ups until his break-up with Horizon is settled.

His 'Black Friday' at the Honda Classic in March, when McIlroy walked off the 18th fairway and abandoned the tournament after completing just eight holes of the second round, is an obvious case in point.

His honest, heartfelt answer to reporters was that his head simply wasn't in the right place which earned respect and sympathy throughout the game.

Yet the drama turned into an enduring PR crisis when, within the hour, a statement was issued citing wisdom toothache as the reason for McIlroy's withdrawal, sparking a "mental or dental" which festered for five days until he (sort of) "cleared the air" in a media conference.

In fairness, Horizon were, I understand, in the process of appointing a full-time media and PR liaison officer for McIlroy when they were stunned by news last May of the golfer's decision to set up a team of relatives, friends and close confidants to manage his own affairs.

As lawyers from both sides try to settle serious contractual issues, McIlroy is in a managerial 'twilight zone', but until the legal situation is resolved, he cannot officially appoint his new team.

Without Rough, Liberty National Shines

I would never advocate that the world of golf take any lessons from a $250 million+ golf course that looks like something out of a really bad cheesy 80s video game, but since Liberty National produced a super leaderboard for the 2013 Barclays it would be unwise to pass on yet another opportunity to point out how much better the game is without contrived, harvested, man-made rough.

John Hawkins on many topics in this week's Hawk's Nest, also addressed Liberty National's "overhauled" reputation which, in his "18 years covering the PGA Tour full-time, no course has overhauled its reputation as quickly and dramatically as Liberty National did last week."

Fifteen holes were altered in some form. Many of the putting surfaces were expanded and recontoured, which is a nice way of saying they dug up the elephants, but the problem in ’09 had more to do with all the humps in the original Tom Kite/Bob Cupp design.

Phil Mickelson has perfected the art of signing autographs, delivering the money quote and talking to drooling fans, all at the same time. “Imagine Augusta National with 24-yard-wide fairways and [heavy] rough,” he assessed. “The setup was fine once they turned the rough into a first cut. That brought out the strength of the golf course, which was the greens. You could play shots into them.”

Punter's Note: Players Changing Coaches At Any Time

With the (questionable) efforts to make golf a year-round cash grab at the expense of the seasonal ebb-and-flow other sports enjoy, Tim Rosaforte spotlights another bizarre twist that has arrived with calendar-year golf: players changing coaches at any given time.

He cites the Westwood-to-Foley move, the not so surprising Watney-to-Anderson move (nice going Butch!) and the very surprising Donald-to-Cook move.

"Used to say: 'We'll really focus on this in November,' " Foley said Sunday morning. "You can't do that anymore."

Players are looking for the type of impact Matt Kuchar gained from going to Chris O'Connell in 2006 for the one-plane swing, or in the case of Gary Woodland, some short-game counsel from the coach of the game's best short-game player. By going to Pat Goss on a cold rainy day in Chicago the week of this year's Masters, Woodland started learning the fundamentals of bunker play that paid off with a win at the Reno-Tahoe Open and a T-2 in the Barclays.

"It wasn't a rewrite," Goss said. "It was like writing it for the first time. When he came to me, his short game was terrible."

Goss has coached Donald since his freshman year at Northwestern and will continue to help him with his short game. What has changed is that Donald no longer uses Goss as his swing coach -- a switch Goss saw coming. He sensed that Luke had lost faith "when he started trying other things on his own in another direction."