Tiger Speaks

What was initially thought of as just another silly season has transformed remarkably in ten years. With Tiger Woods usually pulling the chute on his season after the Tour Championship, his Chevron World Challenge was become a yearly pulpit for world’s best golfer to address the topics that have surfaced in his brief public absence. His annual press conference draws major attention, and like each year prior, there were a list of questions begging for answers from the big man on campus yesterday in Thousand Oaks, California.

Not surprisingly it just took a few questions for the topic to turn from the tournament (which will host many of the world’s best players, not including Tiger who is still on the bench following summer knee surgery) to the recent and well publicized remarks made by his caddy Steve Williams regarding Phil Mickelson. Tiger’s view? “Yeah, what ended up happening is I communicated with Phil, and we have discussed it. I talked to Stevie about it, and he feels bad, what happened. At this point it happened at all, and it's something that none of us really wanted to have happen, but it's over and done with and we put it to bed.”

And with that the subject that has captivated golf Internet forums and media members for days looks to be fairly dead one.

Beyond the fact that he still does not know when he will return to the tour, there was not a lot of great insight from Tiger yesterday, mostly a lot of discussion about his rehabilitation and how he has been spending his time. Family and course design is the answer to that, along with the opportunity for him to vote for Padraig Harrington as the Player of the Year.

Majors are still what golf is all about to Tiger and that rang true even with the PGA Tour award voting. As he said when asked why he voted for Paddy: “He won two,” referring to Harrington’s Open Championship and PGA Championship victories. His answer to the follow up of “Is that all it comes down to?” was even more compact. “Yeah,” he said pointedly.

After the burning subject of caddy talk was addressed likely the only other question that might have gotten the attention of golf geeks around the world was a one shot exchange that ended today’s proceedings. It is a subject that will likely come up more in 2009 than the state of the Phil/Stevie relationship…we hope.

Asked whether the USGA ruling on less aggressive grooves that will be implemented 2010 will affect the state of his golf bag, Tiger showed he has given the subject some thought. “Yeah, it'll affect what's in my bag. I can't have my two sand wedges the way I have them now. But as far as -- I play the spinniest ball on TOUR, so for me, my transition will be a little bit easier than the rest of the guys, guys who play a harder golf ball. They're going to have to maybe a little bit more of an adjustment, whether they do it with loft. Some guys are experimenting with 64-degree wedges to try to help them out that way so they can hit fuller shots with more spin, or guys just might be making -- actually more mental adjustments in their course management skills, going for greens, because you know you actually can't get the ball to spin like you used to so it puts more of a premium on putting the ball in the fairway. With the wedges you can't blast it out there on the par-5s and expect an easy up-and-down. You've got to miss it on the proper side more than ever. But it'll be very interesting to see what happens, how guys make that adjustment.”

Of course that begs the question, “If the USGA looks to restrict the use of high lofted wedges as well, then can we guess what Tiger might be talking about at next year’s Chevron World Golf Challenge press convenience?”

Well, Phil of course! (Eyes rolling)

Ok…maybe wedges.

But I wouldn’t count on it.