Tiger Runs "Out Of Gas" & Schedules Only Get Worse From Here!

It was a pretty shocking admission for physical specimen Tiger Woods to say his Tour Championship second round fell apart because he "just ran out of gas" and calling the ResetCup series of events (even with a week off) "a long grind." (Mark Lamport-Stokes reports.)

And guess what? The 2013-14 season starts in three weeks and next year's playoffs do not include a week off. But there is a week after the playoffs so you can rest for the Ryder Cup in Scotland.

In 2015 the Presidents Cup, presumably soon after the FedExCup, will be in Korea on the moundiest looking course you'll ever see.

And do we even want to talk about the mess that is 2016? Ewan Murray did in assessing (and agreeing) with Woods' complaint about fatigue.

Woods was right to point to a condensed schedule from the Open Championship to this, the climax of the FedEx play-off events. He also predicted that matters will become even more hectic in 2016, when golf returns to the Olympic Games in Rio.

It's going to be fascinating to watch the stars getting older while Commissioner Blankfein's vision for non-stop golf plays out.

A Caller Tries To Save Stenson From Penalty

Jim McCabe with the story of Tour Championship 36-hole leader Henrik Stenson possibly spared a penalty for playing a broken 4-wood.

While it he (and his "physio") knew something was amiss and dealt with it before the round, Stenson was greeted by tour officials who were on the case after--you guessed it--a viewer called in.

This time, however, PGA Tour rules officials – in this case, Mark Russell and John Mutch – were there to speak with Stenson. It seems that Golf Channel showed the practice-range scene with Stenson looking at his club and a viewer called in to raise the possibility that the tournament leader had a broken club in his bag.

Doing the prudent thing, Russell approached Stenson before the Swede, who was in the final pairing with Scott, could sign his card.

“We just wanted to see (that Stenson didn’t have the club in his bag),” Russell said. When they discovered that he did not, in fact, carry the 4-wood and had but 13 clubs in his bag, it was case closed.

Stenson posted a 66 with the 13 clubs to open up a four stroke lead over Adam Scott.

The highlights:

East Lake Lockers Sleep Easy On News Of Stenson's 64

Henrik Stenson, scourge of cherry-wood paneled lockers across the land after going ballistic at Conway Farms on the innocent storage space rented by some member probably hoping the Swede merely left behind a sleeve of balls, turned his anger to East Lake with an opening 64.

Stenson is playing with a sore wrist--what could have caused that? Jeff Rude reports on Stenson explaining last week's tantrums.

“I’ve always been a bit of a hothead,” said the Swede, who apologized and awaits a bill for damage. “It kind of builds up and eventually goes over the limit. For me, it comes down to being tired. I played so much golf (and) haven’t been able to get rest.”

On top of that mental state, Stenson came to East Lake with a bad left wrist that he figures he inflamed by hitting balls and sleeping on it wrong last week. It was so bad that on Wednesday he hit just a “couple of shots on the range” and didn’t play a practice round – even though he had never played East Lake before, save for the front nine Tuesday.

“Wednesday morning, just holding a toothbrush was painful,” said the winner of the Deutsche Bank Championship, the second of the four FedEx Cup playoff events.

The first round video highlights courtesy of Tiger's good friends at PGA Tour Entertainment:

"Now there is potential to doubt that Woods will keep protecting the field above his own self-interest."

Two very tough (and similar) commentaries from respected writers on Tiger's rules situations, starting with AP's Doug Ferguson reviewing Woods' 2013 rules run-ins and suggesting that he risks "losing the locker room":

A few players privately mocked him during the final round at Conway Farms. ''Oscillation'' became a punch line.

Was it worth it?

Whether he likes it or not, Woods is held to a different standard, just as Greg Norman, Tom Watson, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer were before him in the television era. He gets more attention. He draws the largest crowds. He's on TV more. His every move is scrutinized.

There's no point complaining any longer that it's unfair to use television footage to determine penalties. Everyone is expected to play by the rules – whether there's a TV camera there or not – and accept the penalty, even when players unknowingly break them. It's already in the rule book under Decision 34-3/9: ''Testimony of those who are not a part of the competition, including spectators, must be accepted and evaluated. It is also appropriate to use television footage and the like to assist in resolving doubt.''

What's worse? Someone calling in a possible violation from the couch, or an official ignoring evidence of a violation?

Jaime Diaz in this week's Golf World says Tiger digging in even after the evidence was presented does not bode well:

That Woods disputed the visual evidence in the scoring trailer, to the point of admittedly getting "pretty hot," evoked the image of Michelle Wie's petulant and feeble self-defense at the 2010 Kia Classic, when she said she had grounded her club in the water to balance herself. It was a claim that video replay clearly refuted.

At the BMW, Woods had a chance on Saturday to wipe the slate clean by saying that he had been in error and accepted his penalty as proper. Instead, his unbending denial in the face of such strong evidence hurt his good name. Now there is potential to doubt that Woods will keep protecting the field above his own self-interest. It means all the respect he has earned is unofficially under reassessment.

Oh Do Tell: Woods, Finchem Meet For An Hour

GolfChannel.com Digital, whose parents, Mr. and Mrs. Digital, were visionairies in naming their first born, reports that Tiger Woods and Commissioner Tim Finchem met for over an hour Wednesday. An hour, for Tiger preparing to tee off the next day in a big event and listening to the Commish bellow on, is the equivalent of a 24 hour meeting for the rest of us.

Here's guessing they were not comparing notes on the G650 or working a Steve Sands-branded whiteboard over how to revamp the FedExCup points (again) or discussing how to televise all of Tiger's shots in SD to avoid future rules mishaps.

Digital speculates that it had to do with "call-in" violations based on Tiger's press conference remarks.

“There are certainly a lot more viewer call-ins,” Woods said. “I get it from the first time I step on the range on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, all the way through, and virtually every shot is on something, and some of the top players are getting it. Most players don't get it until they're in the leader groups on Saturday or Sunday.”

Bob Harig zones in on Tiger's assertion that there needs to be a time-limit on call-ins, though what that has to do with any of the situations he was involved in is beyond me!

"There needs to be a time limit, and I think there needs to be a discussion obviously where is that time limit? Where is that line of demarcation? You've got to start with disqualification and then work our way back from there.

Commish Talks Player Utilization Ratios Of FedEx Opportunities

Numerous stories noted the big takeaway from Commissioner Tim Finchem's state of the tour presser: the tour will be taking yet another look at caller-inspired rules violations even though (A) it's the one bit of controversy Commissioner Monk embraces, and (B) it's the one sign an audience of any size is watching the playoffs.

So nothing will change. Players will commit violations.  HD will reveal violations they didn't know happened. Players will pat themselves on the back for calling penalties on themselves. And Tiger will have more run-ins with the rules because he's on television more than anyone.

Finchem is smarter than most of us and he knows the second you put a rule that says no outside observer can point out a rules violation, the integrity of the rules will be undermined because we'll have a long list of penalties that should have been given out, but were not.

In other words, a situation much more toxic than the one we have now.

As for Tuesday at East Lake, you are more than welcome to read 4855 words of the Commish and press questions--and that's just the part before Peter Jacobsen arrived to collect his Payne Stewart Award.

Or you can take Helen Ross's summary of the state of the tour, which as you might suspect, is very upbeat, with loads of numbers from the Commissioner except those top-secret playoff ratings (they're so big they keep them secret to avoid a nationwide outbreak of aneurysms).

But since we can't get those TV ratings, we can at least get some numbers confirming that the players do indeed believe in the FedExCup and its $40 million in bonus money. Shocking stuff here.

On how the FedExCup has been accepted by the players: "99.1 percent of the (Playoffs) starts by players that were available to players have been actually utilized. Of the 975 opportunities, 966 have been filled. It's an indication of the very robust interest, support, and enthusiasm the players have for this competition. And I think, as with the fans, it continues to grow."

Not that anyone is counting or anything.

On the debut of the Web.com Tour Finals: "I must say in this first year we're off to, I think, a very, very solid start. The quality of the golf courses in the finals, the juxtaposition of the 126 to 200 from the PGA TOUR against the top 75 off the Web.com Tour money list has, I think, proven to be very interesting to fans. Our galleries have been good at those events, and we've gotten good results on television."

Uh, how many more weeks do we have of the Web.com Tour Finals?

And the Commissioner's tortured take on fans phoning in rules violations:

On whether the TOUR would ever decide to not take calls from fans about potential penalties: "Well, we've been talking about it and looking at it over the years. I think twice we've actually got pretty serious about it. It's not just one thing. It's sort of three or four different ways to look at it starting with one fundamental, which is disqualification reasonable for signing a card wrong when you didn't intentionally do anything?
 


"Going from there to what's a reasonable point to accept outside information? Is it better to have some sort of limit on it? If you don't learn about something before X time. All the other sports close their books a little quicker than we do, so to speak. But there's two sides to the story. I mean, it's not an easy argument one way or the other.  I think it's cumbersome and difficult and awkward sometimes. On the other hand, sometimes it's pretty interesting to the fans. ... But we seem to have three or four of these things this year. So we'll probably be taking another harder look at it after we get done with the season."

Eh ehmmm...Tim, the season starts again in a few weeks.

Oscillategate Moves To The Forensic Analysis Stage

Before we get to the photos of Tiger's BMW ball move sent in by a reader, we have more analysis from a variety of corners.

Ewan Murray in The Guardian:

There are those who remain quick to denigrate both the game of golf and Woods himself at any available opportunity. Golf is treated as a chummy closed shop by its' critics and Woods's public profile will never recover from the misdemeanours which wrecked both his marriage and place in American sporting hearts. Yet even through that, his integrity when at his place of work was never subject to question.

Woods famously insisted he didn't "get to play by different rules" in 2010 in relation to his personal life. In the context of his golfing life, it is safe to say 2013 has now been overshadowed by a clutch of instances in which the finest player of a golfing generation should have known better.

Jim Furyk and Steve Stricker were more sympathetic, reports Ryan Lavner who quotes Furyk as saying he "didn’t realize that ball moved" and this from Stricker:

“The rules are tough,” Steve Stricker said, “and there’s always a fine line between oscillating and moving. A player can see it as one thing and the camera is going to obviously pick it up differently. … It’s unfortunate that he’s been at the center of this about three times this year. I don’t know why, if it’s just because all the TV is on him or what.”

And while many of us struggled to see the move in the first version, the zoom-in by Golf Channel was more clear and this screen grab by a reader who asked to remain anonymous does show the ball moving, not oscillating. The reader writes:

Even in this pixillated version from the original video you posted the ball clearly settled relative to the stick in front of it from this perspective, by at least one dimple in both the full-screen and blow-ups after Tiger moved piece of leaf litter or whatever he touched..  That is well within the visual resolution of any golfer and is why Tiger stopped.  He had to see it.  Had the ball oscillated, the left and center pieces of mud on the ball would have moved or rocked back up.  They didn’t.

Click on the image to enlarge:

Update on 2013-09-17 06:20 by Geoff

**The Art Department offers an even better version and it shows the ball moving, but every so slightly.