Tiger Expecting "Emotional" Sunday At Final Sherwood Event

Tiger Woods spoke to the assembled scribes in the friendly confines of Sherwood's cart barn and said he expects it to be an emotional Sunday as the Northwestern Mutual World Challenge bids farewell.

"It is going to be emotional," he said. "There is no doubt about it. Sherwood, the board here, all the volunteers that come out and support us in sunshine or rain, wind, cold or perfect sunny So Cal days.  They come out to support our event and have made this event as special as it has been."

Woods answered questions about the event's move, noting the difficulty of landing a sponsor and that "it's harder to get good players to play, quite frankly," just moments after having noted that "we've got an amazing field over here this week."

Jason Sobel called Woods' words "less a love song than a polite break-up. One of those 'it’s not you, it’s me' kind of break-ups."

More revealing where tournament director Greg McLaughlin's quote, which makes pretty clear the move was sponsor driven and partly inspired by Tiger's desire to be closer to his home in Florida.

“It was just a lot of factors, but certainly title sponsorship is a key part of it,” explained Greg McLaughlin, president and CEO of the Tiger Woods Foundation. “So definitively, if we had someone who said, ‘You have to stay here,’ then we’d stay here. But that wasn’t the case.”

The truth is, this move was a long time in the making.

“Had there not been a partnership with Tavistock, we were considering a separate parallel path in the area where he lives,”McLaughlin continued. “Not Medalist or anything like that, but in that region. We’ve been talking about this since last year. So the Tavistock thing just evolved from a bunch of conversations.”