Woods' Limited Schedule
There has been a lot of chatter about Tiger Woods' summer schedule. It appears he will skip the Buick Open, might skip his own AT&T National, and everyone is wondering particularly about the Open Championship at Birkdale next month. Meanwhile, Jeremy Fowler at the Orlando Sentinel thinks at a broader level about Woods' future...and completely blows it.
Questions have lingered for the last month about the long-term effects of Woods' violent swing, coupled with a left knee that has seen three surgeries in Woods' career. The first two were minor, but this could be the first major step in Woods' scale-back schedule.The problem here is that Tiger Woods cannot maintain PGA Tour status (without a medical exemption) by playing in any fewer than 15 events. I'm not saying that Finchem would not make some kind of exemption for Woods, but the current rules clearly state that Fowler is dead wrong.
Think his 15 or 16 PGA Tour events per year aren't often enough? The knee might cut that in half if it doesn't heal correctly.
Nike ushered in Woods 12 years ago with those "Hello, world" commercials, but a new slogan should read, "See you when I see you." This is the cost of preserving the chase of history with a long-term investment.
Even if his schedule drops from 15 tournaments a year to 10, or even 8, there's enough evidence that at least one major per year would be worth the wait.
Don't feel bad, though, Jeremy. Greg Johnson at the LA Times also goofed.
For the record, though, I think Woods will continue to stick with his minimum 15-16 event schedule - good knee or not.
2 comments:
Ryan,
Both golf writers dropped the ball unless..,. the PGA Tour lets Tiger do whatever he wants. Would the tour do that?
There's more than a little recent history of big name players being allowed to skirt the rules.
Phil Mickelson being allowed to play at the Byron Nelson in 2007 after his failing to show up at the Pro-am. In an earlier case a player wasn't allowed to skip a pro-am to go to his father-in-law's funeral. The player withdrew instead.
Tiger defacing a green at the 2005 US Open. If it had been anyone other than Tiger, you want to bet he would have been fined or penalized in some way?
Ken Green getting fined, but not Arnold Palmer, for having a beer(I think it was non-alcoholic) when paired together at the 1997 Masters.
There are rules for the stars, and rules for everyone else.
Bill,
You're right and, as I mentioned, I'm pretty sure that Finchem would make some kind of exception for Tiger. How could he not?
Still, I wanted to take a page from your book and point out some lazy research. :)
Ryan
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