RTJ, Jr: Hey Tiger, Tell Me How Great My Design Is!

Point missers and rally killers have been known to infiltrate a U.S. Open press conference, but it's rare to get a point-missing rally-killer, or worse, a point-misser rally-killer who wants attention. Chambers Bay architect Robert Trent Jones Jr., who slithered into Tiger's pre-2015 U.S. Open press conference to get himself a little more praise. Tiger didn't bite.

To the transcript...

Q. We've known each other since you were 14. I appreciate you being forthright and honest about my golf course and all the odd bounces you're going to get.

Me, me, me, me! Go on...

Do you think we gave you enough alternatives to play it in different ways, and is this a thinking golfer's championship as well as a shot maker's?

Tiger, am I a genius? Please, tell me more about me!

TIGER WOODS: Well, it's a golf course in which how you built it is that we have so many options. And I think that it's -- what we don't know, as I told you, none of the people in this room know and all the players don't know, we don't know what Mike is going to do and when he's going to do it.

Mike, schmike! Get back to me!

What tees he's going to move up, what tees he's going to leave back, and to what pin locations are, where he's going to the put them at. We have a general idea. But it's unlike any other major championship I've ever had to prepare for having to hit so many different tee shots. There's three or four different tee shots on almost every hole. Basically Mike has an opportunity to play basically 36 holes and 36 different options, somewhere around there.

Stop with this Mike guy already!

So many different options that it's harder to, I think -- one of the harder Opens or any championship to prepare for given that there's so many variables. Yeah, can you run the ball up? Yeah, you can. But also then again sometimes you really can't. You've got to throw the ball up in order to keep it somewhat from going over the back. Some of the holes we're trying to figure out, like on 9,

Like, why in the heck did someone put a golf hole on the side of a ledge...

when he plays some of the top tee, where is the pin going to be. The bottom tee, obviously it's interesting, hitting off the top tee. When I first played here, I hit 5-iron and 6-iron. I went to the bottom tee and I was hitting 5-wood. So it was actually -- the top tee was actually longer. And to have that big a discrepancy, there's so many options. It's going to be interesting to see what Mike does. I'm kind of happy that I'm playing actually in the afternoon the first day, get a chance to watch what some of the guys do in the morning to get a feel for it and see what's going on.

Mike Davis, Mike Davis, Mike Davis!

And we thank you Tiger, with warmest regards.

Signed,

The Media

P.S. - you sly dog you, knowing full well that Mike Davis and Robert Trent Jones Jr. won't be giving each other any man hugs come Sunday night.

Here is the full video of Tiger's press conference at GolfChannel.com.

As for Tiger's game, the Morning Drive crew watched his warm up and didn't like the overcoaching they saw, and that's before noting all of the life coach visits. It's a lively discussion here about Tiger's analytical ways.

Robert Lusetich wrote about the recent talk of Tiger's struggles and the obvious pressure he's feeling in pursuit of more major wins.

Gene Wojciechowski at ESPN.com understands the fascination with Woods and his "ground under repair" swing, but takes issue with questioning of Tiger's determination to improve.

AP's Tim Dahlberg considers the "downfall" of Woods and suggests Chambers Bay will cause more problems.

It's been seven long years since Woods won that Open, and now even the bookies in Vegas can't make the odds long enough on his chances of winning this one. He's a 50-1 pick, and the bettors who once put money on him to win every tournament now look elsewhere to make their money.

That's not going to stop Fox from showing his every shot Thursday in a primetime telecast for which the network paid big money at a time Woods was still relevant. Woods still moves the needle, even if he no longer moves with the confidence of a player who once expected to win every time he teed it up.

What has changed is we watch him not to win, but to see when he crashes. And on a quirky golf course that features trains rumbling through on a regular basis, Woods is a train wreck waiting to happen.