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?!