Eldrick Woods: Human Being

Let's go ahead and get a few things out of the way right now.

Yes, Tiger Woods is my favorite golfer and favorite athlete period.

No, I don't think what he has all but admitted to doing is ok or should be looked at as anything other than wrong.

Now that we have those two points out of the way, I do have a few thoughts on this issue.

First, I don't believe we should all be that shocked that something like this happened. I know he's Tiger Woods and to this point the worst thing anyone could say about him is that he swears a lot on the golf course and occasionally throws a club in anger. However, given the extra-marital exploits of power players like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant, Bill Clinton, et al., can it really be a surprise any more when this sort of thing happens? I think not.

Here's To You Phil and Amy

From the time Phil Mickelson first teed it up in a PGA Tour event he has had the weight of expectation planted firmly on his shoulders by those mesmerized by his uncanny shot making ability.

Since the dawn of the Tiger Woods era it seemed that if there was anyone on the golfing landscape that could challenge the world's best player, a task that's knocked him down more often than it's lifted him up, it would be Lefty.

Monday Musings (The Tuesday Edition)

Welcome to a special Tuesday Edition of Monday Musings thanks to the Labor Day holiday. I won't bore you with my golfing exploits over the weekend, so on with the show...

• The college football season started with a bang and picked up right where last season left off with upsets a plenty.
  
  Three top-25 teams lost to unranked opponents (Tennessee, Virginia Tech, Pittsburgh), another was beaten badly by a lower ranked team (Clemson) and Michigan found a way to lose their second-straight home opener.
  
  This is why I love college football, because for those five teams it will be virtually impossible for them to win a national championship. Every game counts equally and there is no room for slow starts.
  
  
  
  Oh, and they're OK too.
  
  
• Tennessee head coach Phil Fullmer may never set foot in the state of California again. At least he won’t if he’s smart.
  
  
• Cliff Lee became the major league’s first 20-game winner after he tossed a complete game shutout against the AL Central leading White Sox.
  
  Lee now has credit for 20 of Cleveland’s 66 wins, which is remarkable. What’s even more impressive is that in seven of his wins the Indians have scored four runs or fewer and he picked up no-decisions in four games in which he gave up two runs or less.
  
  He hasn’t lost since July 6th and has won six straight decisions giving up eight earned runs and seven walks in 47.2 inning pitched. Dominant doesn’t quite describe what Lee has done this season and he should be a lock to win the AL Cy Young Award.
  
  
  
  
• There are reports that the Bengals’ wide receiver formally known as Chad Johnson has legally changed his name to Chad Ocho Cinco. This might be at the same time the dumbest and greatest attempt to market ones self in the history of sports.
  
  One thing is for certain, if the NFL allows him to put Ocho Cinco on the back of his jersey (and I can’t see how they can stop him now), his will be the most purchased jersey in the league and it won’t be close.
  
  
• Ricky Williams got a one-year contract extension with the Miami Dolphins. I have him on 1,400 yards and 8 touchdowns, no joke.
  
  
• The San Francisco Giants have lost six of their last seven games and Barry Zito got lit up by the Reds on Friday. Order has officially been restored to major league baseball.
  
  
• The Knicks traded for Patrick Ewing Jr. apparently hoping to distract fans from the awfulness that is the New York Knicks. Honestly, it will be pretty cool to see Ewing emblazoned on the back of a Knicks jersey once again, but they still suck. A lot.
  
  
• Tiger Woods and his wife Elin are reportedly expecting their second child sometime this winter. This of course brings into question the story about him injuring his knee while running. You the man Tiger!
  
  
• Brazilian superstar Robinho signed with Manchester City, favorite club of Oasis front man Noel Gallagher (new album in stores Oct. 6, yay!). This after powerhouse Chelsea thought it had the inside track on the 24-year-old.
  
  
  
  I’m sure no one reading this will care, but anytime a talent like Robinho switches clubs it’s worth mentioning in my book. Thus ends the soccer portion of the program.
  
  
• Vijay Singh won his second straight tournament by demolishing the field at the Deutsche Bank Championship, firing a final round 63 on his way to all but securing the $10 million bonus that goes to the winner of the FedEx Cup.
  
  At 45, Singh looks as fit as ever and even his often-balky putter seems to be behaving for him.
  
  I am supremely impressed by Singh who looks like he could play until he’s 55 without losing a step. He still hits it a mile and has the experience and moxy to do some serious damage in the majors next year.
  
  
• Olympic gold medalists Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh lost for the first time in 112 matches when they were beaten by the American team of Elaine Youngs and Nicole Branagh.
  
  The loss came just over a year after their last defeat, which was also at the hands of Youngs and Branagh.
  
  Say what you want about beach volleyball being a fringe sport, but you have to be impressed by the total dominance May and Walsh have shown over the last year.
  
  
• Cal beat Michigan State 38-31 on Saturday in spite of senior quarterback Nate Longshore’s two crucial interceptions in limited duty.
  
  
  
  I have no idea why Cal head coach Jeff Tedford continues to run him out there, but here’s hoping Longshore’s terrible effort on Saturday will further tighten sophomore Kevin Riley’s grip on the starting job and decrease the amount of playing time Tedford gives his senior QB.
  
  
• Lastly, the LPGA is trying to pass a rule that requires its members to speak English or face suspension from the tour.
  
  While it’s true that a growing number of the best players in the world hail from non-English speaking countries, making it mandatory for them to learn the language or lose playing privileges is out of line.
  
  For a game that markets itself as a global competition the LPGA has clearly over-played its hand in this instance. They could never get this kind of rule passed on the men’s tour, and they are foolish to think they can do it for the women.
  
  The LPGA needs to be happy about the rise in their popularity as a tour and keep its greatest assets, its players, as happy as possible and this is no way to do it.
  

The Goose Is Loose

Retief Goosen is a two-time U.S. Open champion and one of the best golfers in the world. But apprently he's not the brightest golfer in the world.

Goosen claimed he was be "light-hearted" when he accused Tiger Woods of exaggerating his knee injury on his way to the U.S. Open title last week, but I'm not buying it.

When asked if Tiger could have been faking it, Goosen responded, "I think so. It just seemed that when he hit a bad shot his knee was in pain and on his good shots he wasn’t in pain.

“You see when he made the putts and he went down on his knees and was shouting ‘Yeah’ his knee wasn’t sore. Nobody really knows if he was just showing off or if he was really injured. I believe if he was really injured he would not have played.”

OK, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt here in that if you only saw the highlights of Woods' win you might get the impression that only his bad shots were followed by painful grimaces.

Goosen clearly however failed to see Tiger nearly falling over in pain on several drives that split the middle of the fairway or watched him limp around the greens using his putter as a cane.

The fact of the matter is that Woods had multiple stress fractures in his left leg as well as a ruptured ACL. The injuries will cost him the rest of the season, so clearly they are serious.

“No one but Tiger knows how badly hurt he was," said Goosen. "But if he was really badly hurt, he would have withdrawn, wouldn’t he?”

The answer is no Retief. Maybe you would have pulled out, and most likely just about anyone else would have too, but that's why he's Tiger Woods and you're not.

More Human Than Human

So I've spent the better part of the last few days trying to first digest what was truly one of the best U.S. Open's ever played and second how in the world a man with one leg could have won the damn thing.

The revelation that Tiger Woods prevailed after five days of grueling, pressure-packed golf while at the same time suffering from a ruptured ACL AND two stress fractures in his left leg has left myself and the sporting world as a whole in awe of his major triumph.

What can you really say, other than Woods is the greatest competitor in sports today and probably one of the five greatest athletes to ever live?

Woods' U.S. Open performance makes the comeback stories of Willis Reed and Kirk Gibson look downright weak, and I mean that with all due respect. Those two limped onto the field of play for a matter of mere minutes, while Woods endured five days of the highest level of competition the game of golf has to offer.

Even Woods' close friend Michael Jordan, who famously took the court with the flu in the NBA Finals and led his team to a crucial win, never went through the type of physical and mental anguish that Woods did.

Knowing what we know now of the severity of Woods' injuries, that performance was quite simply one of the three or four best of all time, in any sport.



The fact that he won ten times, came in second twice and fifth once in 13 events since rupturing his ACL running at home in Orlando makes him one of the toughest SOB's anyone has ever seen.

Don't believe me? Go tear your ACL, then walk 15-20 miles over the span of four days for 13 weeks, all the while every 300 or so yards planting your bad leg in the ground and twisting it with as much force as you can. Go ahead and try it, it'll be fun, trust me.

The larger question of course is whether or not it was worth it. Was it worth missing the remainder of the 2008 season and possibly compromising the rest of a career to limp onto Torrey Pines and gut out a 91-hole win?

Only Woods truly can answer that question, and from all that we've heard it obviously was worth the risk. That of course should surprise no one given Woods' track record of success on the biggest stage.

Woods also has a track record of being able to bounce back from surgery and rehab to play at his abnormally high level. I would not be surprised at all to see him right back at Torrey Pines in late January of 2009, hoisting the trophy for the Buick Invitational, a tournament he's won six times before.

So if your name is Sergio Garcia, Adam Scott, Luke Donald or any other non-major winning star, the time is now. The time is now for you to step up and win that elusive big prize because if you don't you're going to have to deal with a healthy Tiger Woods and who knows what could happen if he is able to play on two good legs.

I've joked in the past that Woods is not human. Well the truth is that he's very human, he just might be a little more human than the rest of us. Get well soon Tiger, we can't wait to see what you do next.

Great Scott

Adam Scott is one of the best golfers on the planet. He's young, good-looking and along with Sergio Garcia is probably the best player who has yet to win a major championship.

He's long off the tee (8th in driving distance), can be a clutch putter down the stretch (see: 2008 Byron Nelson, 2006 TOUR Championship, 2004 Players Championship) and it would seem only a matter of time before he wins the big one.

He's the third ranked player in the world, and when he tees it up in the first two rounds of next week's U.S. Open at Torrey Pines he could very well be the most insignificant player in the field.

How is that possible, you ask?

Simple. His playing partners on Thursday and Friday will be none other than Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods. If you're keeping score at home that's Tiger 13, Phil 3 and Adam zero when it comes to majors won. Yikes.



You have to wonder who with the USGA did Scott piss off to find himself in what can only be regarded as the group of death? Did he play "hide the pitching wedge" with a tournament officials daughter? In a fit of rage did he bury a 9-iron in the door of someones Mercedes?

Whatever he did, it clearly wasn't good as the powers that be have decided that this year's U.S. Open sacrificial lamb will be sporting a Burberry polo.

Scott, who is known for his very attractive galleries, will have to hope that the stone-cold SoCal hotties who come out to see him strut around Torrey's fairways have their stilts handy because they'll be lucky to catch a glimpse of his Titleist hat let alone a full on view of the Australian star.

Now there are two ways to look at this if you're Scott.

The first way is to simply pack it in and try to stay out of the way as the games two biggest stars trade shots. Enjoy the gorgeous San Diego weather, focus on making the cut and cash a nice little check.

The second way however is to take the USGA's decision to insert you in this pairing as a vote of confidence in your game, then go out there and show the world that you're a force to reckoned with.

True golf fans everwhere will of course hope that Scott will choose the latter and make it a true battle of the games elite players and not just a week long two-man show which the media seems to want to make every major.



For Scott this is (pardon the pun) a major opportunity to take the next step in what has already been a very good career. This is his opportunity to make his good career great.

Armed with one of the most technically sound swings you'll ever see and all the bubbling star power we want in our big time athletes, if ever there was a time for the 27-year-old Scott to turn the corner, I think it's safe to say that the time is now.

Frustrating Sunday, Painful Tuesday

Update 4/16/08: It was reported last night that Tiger Woods underwent arthroscopic surgery to repair cartilage damage in his left knee. That's the same knee he's had surgery on twice before.

This setback means Woods will miss the Wachovia Championship as well as the Players Championship before hopefully returning in June for the U.S. Open.

As it is with any athlete, the great equalizer is injury, and in Woods' case would appear to be the only thing that could stand between him and every meaningful record in the game of golf.

No one knows for sure how long Woods has been dealing with the injury, some say it's been since the middle of last year. But the fact that he has won already three times on tour in 2008 is just another of his amazing athletic feats.

There is probably not another athlete that is tougher than Woods mentally, and I have little doubt that he'll be able to recover physically and return to form quickly. However it is a concern that this knee problem continues to flare up.

Anyone who has ever had knee problems knows that it never really gets better and eventually it just becomes a matter of mitigating the pain on a daily basis. Given Woods' freakish workout and practice habits you have to wonder how continued knee issues might impact his unequalled preparation.

That said, the last time Woods had surgery on the knee he returned to win three of the first four events he entered.

The one thing that I think the knee problems rule out in the future is the Champions Tour for Woods once he turns 50. My guess is that he'll be too busy with outside ventures and family to be able to commit himself the way he would want to to that tour, and the knee will probably make it an even easier decision.

Luckily for us it'll be a long time before that happens.

-Doc

Like he had so many times before, Tiger Woods stood over a 15-foot birdie putt on the 18th green at The Masters. And like so many times before the putt dropped.

Only this time it was quite different.

As Woods put the finishing touch on what was by most accounts the most frustrating four days he's ever experienced around the hallowed grounds of Augusta National, Woods gave the birdie a sarcastic wave as if to say, "oh sure, now you go in".

It was just one of those weeks for the world's best player. A week in which his brief moments of brilliance, like the long birdie on the 11th Sunday afternoon that looked like it might signal a Tiger-charge, were eclipsed by untimely mistakes.

In the end Woods recorded his fifth runner-up finish in a major, which is certainly nothing to scoff at. However, when your expectations are as high as his, anything less than a fifth green jacket was going to be a disappointment.

Give all the credit in the world to South Africa's Trevor Immelman for putting together a very Woods-like performance, leading the tournament wire-to-wire and minimizing his mistakes on Sunday to make sure he locked up his first major championship.

Unlike Woods, Immelman followed his brief lapses in solid play with timely moments of brilliance. Interestingly enough it was the 11th hole for Immelman that proved to be his turning point shortly after most thought it would be Woods'.



After playing safe and missing his approach to the treacherous hole to the right, Immelman came up well short on the fringe with his pitch shot. Staring bogey or worse dead in the eye, Immelman canned the long par putt and ultimately stemmed the growing Woods-tide.

Even a terrible tee shot on the par-3 16th hole from Immelman that inexplicably found the water was not enough for Woods to take advantage of down the stretch.

A short miss for birdie on the par-5 13th seemed to signal the end for Woods, and an even worse bogey on the 14th ended any hope of a Sunday comeback as well as Woods' march towards the calendar year Grand Slam.

While it's little consolation for Woods, the end result of The Masters points out just how amazing his accomplishments to this point have been and just how slim the margin between winning and losing on the PGA Tour really is.

Woods' four-day performance at Augusta was one of the flattest, most uninspiring of his career at a major championship. Rivaled only by his lone missed cut at a major in his professional career, two years ago at the U.S. Open, shortly after the death of his father.

And yet as poorly as he performed in the big, tournament-changing moments this week he still managed to find a way to finish second alone and shoot one of the better rounds of the day on Sunday.

It'll be several weeks before we get to see Woods back out on the course, and that's probably a good thing for those of us who are admitted Tiger wonks, because if history has shown us anything about him it's that he'll figure out what went wrong and bust his Tiger-ass to fix the problem and move forward with a vengeance.

Woods' next major challenge comes in June at the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, a course Woods has owned over the years. This week showed that nothing is for certain in golf, but if I were the field I would prepare my runner-up speeches ASAP.

Wow!

Just when you think you've seen it all from Tiger Woods, he does something that defies whatever explanation of his exploits that you may have had before.

Such was the case Sunday afternoon when the world's number one player captured his fifth straight PGA Tour win, and seventh in a row overall, by sinking a 25-foot, downhill left-to-right slider on the 18th hole of the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

As the tournament host watched from greenside, Woods erupted into a never-before-seen from him celebration, complete with a slam of his hat, a la Fred Funk (shouldn't he owe the Funk-ster a royalty check for that?), and bicep-flexing crowd-pump (I just made that up).

Meanwhile his closest competitor, 45-year-old Bart Bryant, could only chuckle in awe as he watched his hopes of qualifying for the Masters swallowed up by the all-encompassing force that is Tiger Woods.

You have to feel for Bryant who became the first player not named Phil Mickelson in quite some time stand up to Woods shot-for-shot on a Sunday.

Throughout Sunday's final round as players like Vijay Singh and Sean O'Hair made crucial mistakes, it was Bryant who played nearly mistake-free golf in very Tiger-like manner, forcing Woods to make birdie on a hole that had surrendered only four up to that point in the round.

Early on in the tournament Tiger by his own admission was struggling to find his swing and it seemed he would finally be a bit of a non-factor in a tournament. Don't forget that it was at this same tournament last year that he limped down the stretch with a backside 43 on Sunday while Singh took home the trophy.

But instead of putting him in a hole on Saturday, the rest of the field allowed Woods to ride an up-and-down round of 66 into a tie for the lead heading into Sunday. That mistake would of course prove fatal to the field's chances.

Honestly though, should we be surprised? Should it come as some sort of shock that Woods once again proved why he is the most dominant athlete of our time (sorry MJ)?

Well no, of course not. But that doesn't mean that we can't gasp in awe of his overwhelming virtuosity and revel in the knowledge that as amazing as this latest moment was he will undoubtedly give us many more in the future.

I for one can't wait to see what's next.

Unbeatable?

The Patriots couldn't pull it off. The Memphis Tigers couldn't get the job done. Hell, not a single team in Division I-A football could do it and the National Championship was won by a two-loss LSU team.

Leave it to the greatest athlete in the world today to toss his swoosh-emblazoned hat in the ring and embark on a quest to complete the rare undefeated season.

Blasphemy you say? No golfer could make it through the PGA Tour season without losing a single tournament. The fields are too deep and too many things could go wrong along the way for that to every happen.

Or could it?

While I agree that the likelihood of Tiger Woods ripping off 13 or so more wins, including all four of golf's major championships is quite low. Something tells me that the man himself believes in his heart that he could accomplish the seemingly impossible, and that means a lot.

He's already admitted that he thinks completing the regular season Grand Slam is within his reach and when asked if he could eclipse Byron Nelson's record of 11 straight wins he simply grinned and replied, "Mmm Hmm" as if to say, "you ain't seen nothing yet".

Consider that Woods already owns PGA Tour win streaks of six and seven in a row and his current streak of four is actually six if you count his wins at the Target World Challenge and earlier this year in Dubai, both of which boasted high-quality fields.

In fact that "strength of schedule" may be the one thing that keeps Woods from running the table in 2008 as it has been his custom to only play the highest profile events with the deepest fields in golf.

That coupled with the uncertain nature of the game would seem to put the undefeated season outside of his considerable reach.

Personally I don't think it's all that outandish to believe that Woods could win every time out in 2008. In his three starts so far he's won in a myriad of ways from run-away victories at the Buick Invitational and the Championship Match at the World Match Play, to stirring comebacks in Dubai and the first round of the World Match Play.

His stats are nearly as impressive as his ability to gut out wins so far in 2008.

Woods ranks first on the PGA Tour in greens in regulation, putting average, scoring average and average birdies per round. All while ranking 176th in total driving. Which means when he gets his driver warmed up he really could be unbeatable.

People will of course point to the erratic nature of his driver as ultimately the reason why he couldn't possibly remain undefeated in 2008, but I would argue that he can only get better (he finished 45th in 2007 in total driving) and when that inevitablity finally comes to pass he will be so far out ahead of everyone else that it won't matter if he misses some fairways.

I'm not going to walk out on the plank here and say that it's a foregone conclusion that Woods will run the table, but should this streak continue through April and the Masters and then into June and U.S. Open one would have to concede that an undefeated season is a real possibilty for a man that up to this point has done nothing but exceed expectations at every turn.

Goodbye World

In case anyone forgot, Tiger Woods is the best golfer on the planet. In fact, I'd say he's probably the best golfer this or any other planet has ever seen, with apologies to Jack of course.

When he decided to remake his swing and adjust his game after the memorable year that was 2000 we all thought he was crazy. What we didn't know was that the evolution of his game was a necessary step and that he'd only continue to get better despite "Tiger-proof" courses and the deepest fields the PGA Tour has ever seen.

Of course that's why he's Tiger and the rest of us only post our good rounds in order to make our 15 handicap game smell like it's a solid 10.

With the new FedEx Cup playoffs coming to an end this Sunday, Tiger decided to end any thoughts the world's #2 player Phil Mickelson or surprise contender Steve Stricker may have had about stashing away that $10 million annuity that should make sure Sam Alexis Woods' great-grandchildren will be able to eat.

His first round 64 in the season-ending Tour Championship was followed up by a second round 63 which included five birdies and an eagle, on the front side, in a row. The mere fact that he only shot 63 should tell you that while I often times think otherwise, the man is indeed a human being.

You wanna know what the really scary part about this Woods guy is? He's getting better every day he laces up his Nike spikes and hits the course with a game that cannot be contained by normal standards. And no matter what the Rory Sabbatini's of the world tell you, they're not even close to him and the gap between him and the rest of the golfing world continues to grow.