Big Miss Faucet Leaking Again: SEAL Injuries Specifics, Adult Films For Zach, Poulter The Moocher Edition

No longer gimpy, Tiger arrived at the Tavistock Monday and received a nice ribbing from Feherty, notes Ryan Lavner.

“Many of us arrived here in a helicopter,” the gregarious CBS/Golf Channel personality said. “He came here in an ambulance.”

Woods keeled over and had a good laugh, as did the few hundred fans huddled around the first tee. Ten minutes later, after a perfect drive and a razor-sharp iron shot, he tapped in from 2 feet for an opening birdie. Cancel the career obituary.

Jason Sobel tried to make sense of Tiger's good health, Tiger's self-congratulatory remarks,  the conspiracy theories and the question on everyone's minds as they watched the event. "Why tee it up at all this week and risk injuring himself prior to the upcoming Masters?"

The easiest explanation – and the one Tiger himself is sticking with – is that once his doctor gave him a clean bill of health, sitting at home didn’t seem like much of a viable option. He did, however, maintain that his pursuit of a fifth green jacket is still of utmost priority.

“I’ve played through not just pain, but injury,” he said. “I’ve also set myself back quite a bit. I didn’t want to set myself back anymore. That’s what happened last year – I missed two major championships because of it. So I just wanted to be ready for Augusta.”

Chances are, whichever theory you believed in regard to Woods’ injury, that idea was buoyed by Monday’s activity. Either he appeared perfectly healthy because you think he was never hurt in the first place or because you think he did the proper thing in receiving early treatment and getting it diagnosed rather than continue playing.

Whatever the case, for now it seems he is fully healthy in advance of the year’s first major championship. No ambulances necessary and nothing falling off him.

Alright enough of that, let's get to the entertainment portion of the program.

Doug Ferguson files an AP story on more revelations from The Big Miss, including the likelihood that Woods injured himself in SEAL training.

Haney also tells of a woman who approached him during an outing in Minnesota last year. Her husband was a Navy SEAL in California and told her Woods came in for training in 2007 at a Kill House – an urban-warfare simulator – and “got kicked pretty hard in the leg, and I think he hurt his knee pretty bad.”

Haney said that matched a story from Carroll, who said Woods revealed to him that the complete tear of his left knee ligaments really happened in a Kill House when he had lost his balance and been kicked in the knee.

“My immediate thought upon hearing Corey’s account, which so closely paralleled that of the woman in Minneapolis, was that it was true,” Haney writes. “And if so, it meant that if Tiger never catches Jack Nicklaus, it will very likely have as much to do with the time and physical capacity he lost as a result of his bizarre Navy SEALs adventure as anything else.”

GolfDigest.com has a fun slideshow of more revelations, including some that actually make Tiger look good. Well, to those who might appreciate his warped sense of humor or his pride in getting his own South Park episode.

But a player of which he was not particularly fond was Ian Poulter, who after a practice round at Oakmont a few weeks before the U.S. Open there in 2007 "was cheeky enough to ask Tiger, 'How are we getting home?' " Both lived in the Orlando area and Poulter knew that Woods had a private jet standing by. Though Woods never extended an invitation, Poulter showed up at the jetport anyway. "Can you believe how this d--- mooched a ride on my plane?" Woods wrote in a text to Haney as the three of them were flying back to Orlando.

And I bet this livened up the tour Bible Study chit-chat, talking about the time Woods and Zach were roomed together during a scouting trip to the K Club:

"Knowing that Zach is a devout Christian, Tiger, when he got to the suite first, immediately purchased the adult movie 24-hour package and turned the television on," Haney writes. "When Zach walked in, he saw the sights and sounds, but presuming that it was what Tiger wanted to watch, he didn't change the channel or turn it off. Tiger never commented on the movies, nor did Zach. 'It was funny watching him acting like everything was normal,' Tiger told me. 'I got him pretty good.' "