Tiger Looking For A "W," His "Feels" Are Coming, "Reps" Taking Hold, Still Texts With "Fed"
/With live cameras running, TW seemed less clippy for today's presser with Fergie, Ronnie, Solty, Rosie and other assorted question-askers.
TIGER WOODS: Well, I feel good. I played here last Monday and played the front nine yesterday and the back nine today. Golf course was in perfect shape. I mean, it's -- the fairways are just -- this diamond zoysia is just unreal. It's quick, no doubt, the fairways are quick.
Greens aren't as fast as what we played last Monday, but I'm sure they'll be picking up speed come tomorrow and the weekend.
Interesting that the greens were slower in practice than the week before in his view.
Okay enough golf stuff, let's get to the important matters. Painfully, it took seven warm-up questions for this ...
Q. I presume at this point you've heard some of the comments that Stevie made after Adam Scott's win on Sunday. I'm wondering what your reaction is to those comments. And also, there's a picture of Mark Steinberg and Stevie looking like they were talking presumably yesterday. I'm wondering if there was some message sent from your camp to him.
TIGER WOODS: Well, I was happy to see Stevie and Adam win. Adam has been a friend of mine, and same with Stevie.
I sent Stevie a nice text after completion, play, congratulating him on his win. It was good to see them go out there and play as well as they did.I mean, Adam played great on Sunday. He drove it on a string, hit every iron shot just where he needed to and he made putts.
I was needling him pretty good this year at the Bahamas about the long putter; I could why he went to it. His stroke's pure. And he's got so much more -- his path is so much better and his feel is so much better. So it was great to see him play that well.
But this is a good week for all of us.
(Taking break here for excessive heart overheating.)
Q. Did Mark meet with Stevie yesterday?
TIGER WOODS: They talked, yeah, absolutely.
Q. (No mic).
TIGER WOODS: They talked. You're right, yeah.
Stevie: Hey, how about those Cleveland Indians? Steiney: I'm moving to New York. Now, about that verbal NDA you committed to because I never thought we'd have to put anything in writing...
Q. Players and caddies go their separate ways for many reasons. How difficult was it after all those years for you to make the decision on Steve, and then secondly, do you feel that you sort of regret the way that it's unfolded?
TIGER WOODS: Yeah, sometimes we all need changes, and this was a change, and as I told you guys earlier, I was at peace with it, and it was a decision and a direction I wanted to go, and that's it.
Q. Do you regret the way that it's --
TIGER WOODS: All I can control is my life and how I feel, and that's it. That's all I can do.
And you do it so well...
Q. We're five years out from the Olympics. They're taking bids for the course. Going to name a course designer soon. Do you have a bid in? And what do you think, Faldo is pitching this idea of 18 major champions doing the golf course. I was wondering about your take on that.
TIGER WOODS: That's an interesting one. I hadn't heard that one from Nick. You know, I believe -- I think he was going in with maybe a Lorena or something like that, he was looking at doing a co, and Jack was going with Annika, I think.
A co?
Q. Norman is with Lorena.
TIGER WOODS: Okay, so it was -- it's something that, yeah, I was taking a look at, but I'm not going to have the time to do that, so I didn't bid for it. Right now I'm fully into my career and fully into playing.
I feel like that the players who are involved in it, Annika is retired; Lorena is retired; Faldo is retired; Jack is retired; I'm still right in the middle of my career, so I'm not going to have time to devote to that.
Other projects where it's going to be less time, but that's one is going to be quite a bit of time.
18/1=time!
Q. Just following on the Steve situation, the day after Adam's win he came out and said he felt that he went a little bit over the top, and you just said you texted him after the win. I'm just wondering if you guys have corresponded at all either via text or in person since that situation?
TIGER WOODS: I think that's between Stevie and myself.
Answers getting crisper. Better traj. I feel a W coming. Or Glenn Greenspan tugging at the ear lobe to let designated PGA of America media guy know it's time to wrap things up!
Q. You're at an age where majors are historically harder to come by. Do you have benchmarks where you'd like to be at age 38, age 40, in order to catch Jack?
TIGER WOODS: Yeah, ahead. (Laughter.)
You know, 38, so that's three years, 15. If I win all 15, I'll be looking all right. I would be in good shape, wouldn't I, 29.
Oh yes, sarcasm means it's time to call this a day.
Q. When Steve was your guy he never talked to the media or very rarely talked to the media after an event, and last week he said a lot of intemperate things. Were you surprised by that?
TIGER WOODS: Yeah (nodding head).
Larry, Larry, Larry...you are the New York Times. You can't give him a one-word answer special like that!
Q. Since I also write for professional tennis, I hope you don't mind the question.
Yes, but go on...
I was wondering if you've had the chance to catch up with your friend Roger Federer lately. He just celebrated his 30th birthday Monday.
TIGER WOODS: Uh-huh, he's old now, isn't he? All of 30 years old, wow.
No, Fed and I, we text all the time, still --
Whew, there's a load off.
he's been a great friend over the years, and we're always needling each other all the time. I think he's in Montreal this week playing. We've been trying to keep up with each other.
Every tournament he plays in, every tournament I play in, which I haven't been playing a whole lot, so I've been watching a lot of his events. It's good to see him play, and unfortunately Wimbledon just didn't quite work out for him.
But he's feeling fit, and I think that's the thing; he feels good. He just needs to get on a little bit of a run. And the U.S. Open is coming up; I think he's going to do really well. He's always had success on hard courts, so it's going to be fun to watch.
Q. Going back to your definition of loyalty, do you think with the things that Steve has said over the past few weeks, has he proved himself disloyal to you, or do you think the fact that he worked for you for 13 years and he didn't talk very much, that maybe there's just a bunch of pent-up stuff that he's just letting out now?
TIGER WOODS: I'm not going to speculate on Steve. Those are obviously his feelings and his emotions and his decision to say what he wants to say.
I'm picturing Glenn standing in the back looking like a third base coach by now, using every signal in his repertoire to let the PGA guy know it's time to wrap this baby up!
But not before the most telling question and answer. Remember when a season without a major win was a total failure?
Q. Just to go back to something you said earlier, is it possible that this season could end without a win and you could still consider it a success? Is that what you were saying earlier?
TIGER WOODS: Yeah, in order to win I had to be healthy. That's what we're trying to get to. Now I can go. Now I can do the work. I can do the practice sessions, and I think that that's the only way that my game will get to where I need to get to.
It's one thing that if I wasn't making any swing changes. I came off of '08 going into '09, I was still under the same coach, same theories, same everything, just had to get back to it.
I hadn't really been practicing a lot, so still learning a new system and understanding what Sean wants me to do, so that's going to take reps. Down the road if I would have gotten hurt and still been under Sean's tutelage for years then that's a different story. I could pick up from there. Here I'm still learning things.
