Tiger Woods Now The 1 Billion Dollar Man

From http://blogs.forbes.com/sportsmoneyblog/2009/09/the-first-billion-dollar-athlete/

The First Billion-Dollar Athlete

September 28th, 2009
There is no recession for Tiger Woods. Our calculations show that the $10 million bonus Woods earned for the FedEx Cup title nudged him over the $1 billion mark in career earnings. Forbes has been tracking athlete earnings since before Tiger turned pro in 1996. Woods had earned a cumulative $895 million going into 2009 by our estimates from prize money, appearance fees, endorsements and his golf course design business. If you add in his $10.5 million in 2009 prize money, the FedEx bonus and his take so far this year from his annual $100+ million in off-the-course earnings, Woods' career earnings are now 10-figures.

Only Woods' accountant knows if Tiger is a billion athlete yet, but if it did not happen on Sunday it is likely only a matter of months or his next check from Nike. Woods has been the world's highest-paid athlete since 2002 when he surpassed Formula 1 legend Michael Schumacher. His earnings have surged in recent years as he launched a golf course design business and has three courses underway that pay him more than $10 million per project. The launch of the FedEx Cup has been a bonus for Woods who has taken the top $10 million top prize two of the Cup's three years (a knee injury prevented his participation last year).

It is Nike though that has been Woods' most lucrative partner. The relationship has been hugely beneficial for both parties as Nike launched a golf division from scratch on the back of Woods and sales are now $800 million annually. Nike pays Woods north of $30 million annually for his ringing endorsement. The scary part is that Woods is only 33-years-old and might have 15 years of competitive golf left in him and 30+ years of designing golf courses. This is only the first $1 billion for Woods. --Kurt Badenhausen

Tiger Woods turns his doubts into another great year

By DOUG FERGUSON
AP Golf Writer
Associated Press Sports
updated 3:01 p.m. ET Sept. 14, 2009
LEMONT, Ill. (AP) -Tiger Woods is turning into quite the trivia buff.

During the third round of the Deutsche Bank Championship two weeks ago, he saw a couple of familiar faces as he walked off the 10th tee and approached as if wanting to impart some important information.

"Which city sits on two continents?" he said. "And what country has the most lakes?"

His favorite golf question: The eight major champions with the letter "z" in their surname.

When it comes to his own trivia, Woods often doesn't have a clue.

He kept track of the score at the BMW Championship, which was all that mattered to him. Woods built such a big lead at Cog Hill with his course-record on Saturday that his only goal for the final round was to break par.

He closed with a 68 and wound up winning by eight shots.

In an era when a three-shot margin is considered comfortable, this was the fourth straight year Woods has won by at least eight, and the 10th time in his PGA Tour career. He was asked if big victories like that gave him additional satisfaction.

"First of all, I did not know that," he said with a smile that suggested he was pleased to find out.

Odds are, he isn't aware that he tied Sam Snead with his sixth year of six victories or more. To put that in perspective, only one other player over the last 25 years has won six times in a season - Vijay Singh in 2004.

So really, has anything changed about Woods?

He makes winning look ridiculously routine. Because he usually plays only the stronger courses, his adjusted scoring average is 68.06, giving him a 1.26 margin over second place. Such a gap is not unlike Secretariat at the Belmont Stakes - or even Woods in the world ranking, in which he has doubled the lead over Steve Stricker.

So why is Woods so proud of his game? Why does he call this one of his best years when he didn't win a major?

Only he can appreciate how badly his ligaments were shredded in his left knee. Only he knows the extent of the surgery, not to mention the eight-month recovery that allowed doubts to invade his mind about how quickly he could get back to where he was.

Woods has been saying all summer that he never could have imagined winning so much after such a major surgery. Yet the more he keeps winning, the harder it is to believe him.

"If you would have asked me at the beginning of the year ... any of you guys probably wouldn't have predicted I would have had a year like I did," Woods said Sunday. "To be as consistent as I've been this year, I'm very proud of that."

Even so, consistency is nothing new.

Over the last three years, Woods has finished out of the top 10 only seven times in 40 tournaments. Go back to Hoylake for the 2006 British Open, and he has won 52 percent of his PGA Tour events.

Sure, there are some noticeable differences.

- For the first time since he was a 20-year-old rookie, he had a lead in the final round on the PGA Tour and lost. Making it that much worse, it happened in a major for the first time ever, and it was Woods' last chance to win a major this year.

- He failed to win a major, which is how he typically measures a successful year.

- He missed the cut in the British Open for the first time, including two starts as an amateur.

So what makes this year so different? His own doubts.

"There was so many uncertainties at the beginning of the season," Woods said. "I didn't know how the leg was going to respond. I've never had a leg that was stable. What kind of shots could I play? How was my recovery going to be from day-to-day? Am I going to hurt again? A lot of these things, I didn't know.

"To come back and be, as I said, this consistent feels pretty good."

For Woods to keep raving about exceeding expectations speaks to how low he might have set the bar after knee surgery.

Look back at his reaction, when he screamed and ran into a hug with caddie Steve Williams after making a 15-foot birdie to win at Bay Hill. Yes, it was the last hole. It was for the win. The extra emotion comes from being his first victory since knee surgery.

So even if winning this year looks routine, it isn't to Woods.

And while the victories continue to pile up - his 71st on the PGA Tour - it is no less amazing.

After his third round at Cog Hill, Stricker headed to the range with his father-in-law and coach, Dennis Tiziani. This has been Stricker's best year, with three PGA Tour victories and a career-high No. 2 world ranking.

His caddie, Jimmy Johnson, was chatting about the turning points in the season when he realized Stricker had won three times in his last nine starts. That's winning at a 33 percent clip, which is strong stuff.

Then he was told Woods has won 30 percent of his tournaments over a 13-year career.

Johnson just laughed. What else can you do?

As for that trivia question? Istanbul lies between Europe and Asia. Canada has the most lakes.

What that has to do with anything remains a mystery.

But if Woods were to win the Tour Championship next week in Atlanta, he would be the first golfer to go over $11 million for a season. He probably doesn't know that.

© 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/32845614/ns/sports-golf/

Greg Norman, Tiger Woods would not make good politicans, Bob Hawke tells Australian Golf Digest

Interview By Steve Keipert
Editor, Australian Golf Digest
September 14, 2009
I didn't start playing golf until my third year as Prime Minister. I was at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in the Bahamas. The weekend retreat was at the "millionaires playground" at a place called Lyford Cay. It was a beautiful course and all the heads of government stayed in villas around it.

I was doing some work there and Kenneth Kaunda, who was the President of Zambia, came hacking past and I thought, "I wouldn't mind having a go at that". I went back to Canberra and Gary Edwin was the pro at Yowani at the time and he gave me some lessons.

My handicap now is 23; it’s pretty close to 22. I had 19 Stableford points on the first nine this morning and I was hoping to score about 38 or 39 but I only finished with 35. I’m hoping to get back down to 22 shortly. The lowest my handicap got was 15 at Royal Canberra while I was in office.

In office, I used to try to get in one game a week. I’d get up at sparrow-fart, literally just as the sun was coming up. From the Lodge to the first tee at Royal Canberra is five minutes and I’d get around with my security blokes and finish 18 in a couple of hours, if I was by myself.

One day, I was playing with Graham Richardson and we were on the 5th hole. I was well back off the green in two and facing a tough, downhill, sloping pitch. I said to him: "What odds will you give me of getting this in?"

He said: "3000-1."

Well, I put a dollar on with him and holed it. It took him a while to pay, too, the bastard!

PM Norman? President Woods?
It’s marvellous the way in which people like Greg Norman and others have attracted young people to the game. I think it’s one of the reasons why we’re not so good at tennis now. I think a lot of kids, girls and boys, who would have been good tennis players have been more attracted to golf.

I don’t say this in any nasty sense, but Greg’s a very self-centred sort of bloke. Because of that, I don’t think he would make a good politician. Neither would Tiger Woods. He’s too reclusive, although understandably so. He doesn’t give out a lot of warmth and that’s necessary in politics. Jack Newton could have made a good politician. He’s very much a man of the people, a warm, outgoing bloke.

But Tiger Woods is the best golfer ever, no question about it. Equipment has made a lot of difference over the years, but, by any objective standard, by the time he’s finished his career he will be so far in front of everybody else.

The More I Practise ...
Like all golfers, I’ve had a few lucky shots. Three holes-in-one is way over the average. So many good golfers go through life and don’t have one. That’s just good fortune. There’s a little bit of skill in it, but basically a hole-in-one is a bit of skill and a lot of fortune.

I played with Peter Senior at New South Wales Golf Club one time. On the 14th, the par-four up to the green on the promontory, I hit a beaut drive and an 8-iron onto the green and holed a long putt for a three, which with two strokes was a net albatross.

In the pro-am before one Australian Open at Royal Sydney, on the first hole I hit a cracker of a drive, a really long one for me. We had a good gallery that day, and I pitched up and the ball landed behind the pin and rolled back next to the hole.

I heard one guy in the gallery turn to his mate and say: "Geez, this Hawkey can play!"

I soon came back to the field.

To read the full version of this story, pick up a copy of the October issue of Australian Golf Digest, on sale from Wednesday, September 16.

Tiger Woods Blows Away Field at BMW Championship

Associated Press

LEMONT, Ill. -- Tiger Woods left the drama to everyone else at Cog Hill.

One day after his course-record 62 gave him a seven-shot lead, Woods made sure no one else had a chance Sunday in the BMW Championship. He closed with a 3-under 68 for an eight-shot victory over Jim Furyk and Marc Leishman.

It was his sixth victory of the year, and assured Woods the No. 1 ranking going into the final tournament of the FedEx Cup and its $10 million prize. Woods won for the fifth time at Cog Hill, and it was his 10th career victory by at least eight shots.

"It felt like we had a tournament within a tournament," Furyk said. "Tiger was seven ahead. He was kind of running away. It was kind of a tournament for second place."

That other tournament wound up being quite a show.


As Woods cruised around Cog Hill in his familiar red shirt, a dozen players behind him were scrambling for positions into the FedEx Cup finale at East Lake in two weeks.

Furyk's runner-up finish moved him up 15 spots to No. 3, meaning he can win the FedEx Cup with a victory at the Tour Championship. Leishman, who only qualified for Cog Hill by making an eagle on his last hole a week ago outside Boston, earned his first trip to the Tour Championship and will have an outside shot at the $10 million.

Most compelling, however, was the battle for the 30th and final spot.

Inching Closer
With his trouncing of the field Sunday at Cog Hill, Tiger Woods claimed the 71st PGA Tour victory of his career, now just two behind Jack Nicklaus and 11 back of the all-time lead.

The heartbreaker belonged to Brandt Snedeker, playing in the final group with Woods. Walking up the 18th hole, he learned he only needed a bogey to finish in the top 30. He missed his 12-foot par putt, then watched in shock as his 3-footer for bogey caught the left lip of the cup. Snedeker was so stunned that he missed the next two putts and took triple bogey.

"I can't believe I did this," Snedeker said. "I just made a mess of it."

That allowed John Senden to capture the 30th spot by less than a half-point over Ian Poulter, two players who were hardly clutch down the stretch. Senden had a 90-yard wedge to the green at the 15th and chunked it so badly that it traveled only 50 yards. Two holes later, he nearly hit a bunker shot over the green and into the water to make double bogey.

Senden finished with 1,532.41 points. Poulter, who hit his approach into the water on the 18th, wound up with 1,531.95 points.

Far easier to compute was Woods winning.


Tiger Woods has assured himself of the No. 1 ranking going into the final tournament of the FedEx Cup with Sunday's victory.
He finished at 19-under 265 for his 71st career victory, leaving him two short of Jack Nicklaus for second on the PGA Tour's career list. Woods also tied Sam Snead with his sixth season of at least six victories.

Woods won for the first time since his aura was slightly tarnished at the PGA Championship, where he lost a lead in the final round for the first time since he was a 20-year-old rookie. Y.E. Yang rallied from two shots behind to beat him at Hazeltine, ending Woods' streak of never losing a major with at least a share of the lead.

No way he was about to lose this one -- not at Cog Hill, and not the way he was hitting shots and making putts.

The closest anyone got to him was six shots when Tiger Woods missed the fifth fairway and failed to convert a 10-foot par putt. He made it look easy, yet still provided a few thrills.

Woods sent his tee shot well to the right into the trees on the par-5 ninth, leaving him a 20-foot wide chute under the trees. He smacked a 3-iron low, straight and under the branches, just a little too far. Blocked by a tree on his third shot, he played a low hook and ran the ball onto the green to 15 feet. He made the birdie.

Walking off the green, he shrugged his shoulder and smiled. Indeed, everything went his way this week in the Chicago suburbs.

He added an eagle on the par-5 15th when his approach bumped off the collar of the green, caught a ridge and rolled to 6 feet. From there, all that remained was his margin of victory.

Cog Hill became the fourth course where Woods has won at least five times. He has won seven times at Torrey Pines and Firestone, and six times at Bay Hill.

Now comes the hard part.

Woods' sixth victory likely sewed up another PGA Tour player of the year award -- no one else has won more than three times this year. And while he has a 1,504-point lead over Steve Stricker, the points are reset for the Tour Championship.

As the No. 1 seed, Woods will have 2,500 points, with Stricker at 2,250. The rest of the top five are Furyk, Zach Johnson and Heath Slocum. All of them can win the FedEx Cup with a victory at East Lake. Everyone else will need some help.

For Tiger Woods videos visit www.pga.com and www.tigergivesmewood.com

Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press

Golfweek | Marc Leishman, meet Tiger Woods

Golfweek | Marc Leishman, meet Tiger Woods

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Tiger Woods takes commanding lead at BMW Championship

By DOUG FERGUSON
Associated Press
Posted: September 12, 2009
LEMONT, Ill. – Tiger Woods dropped his 3-wood in disgust after his first tee shot Saturday sailed left into the bunker for another sloppy bogey. Four hours later, he finished off his best round of the year to build a seven-shot lead in the BMW Championship.

Getting better with every shot, Woods broke the course record at Cog Hill with a 9-under 62 and blew away the 68-man field in the third FedEx Cup playoff event.

He also tied the tournament record, set last year by Jim Furyk outside St. Louis at Bellerive.

“After I got past the first hole I was doing all right,” Woods said. “It was one of those days that kind of built upon itself.”

A course renovated by Rees Jones with hopes of landing a U.S. Open was no match for Woods. He hit his most unheralded shot of the round, a 7-iron that stopped 3 feet away from a dangerous pin at the par-3 sixth, and never came close to missing another green.
The signature shot was his 3-wood from just over 300 yards to 10 feet at the par-5 ninth for an eagle, so pure that the gallery crammed into the bleacher rose to its feet when the ball finally stopped rolling.

Woods was at 16-under 197 and had his largest lead on the PGA Tour since he was eight shots in front in the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines early last year.

He will play in the final pairing Sunday with Brandt Snedeker, who had a 66. Marc Leishman had a 68 and joined Snedeker at 9-under 204, both of them hopeful of finishing high enough to get into the Tour Championship.

More than being his lowest round of the year, Woods was nearly nine shots better than the field, which averaged 70.71.

It will be his first time with the 54-hole lead since the PGA Championship last month at Hazeltine, where Y.E. Yang made up a two-shot deficit and became the first player to beat Woods from behind in a major.

Yang is 25 shots behind at Cog Hill.

Snedeker was worried about keeping his car this summer until his health improved and his game turned around. Now he has a chance to move into the top 30 in the FedEx Cup standings, which would qualify him for all the majors next year.

Winning this week? That’s a taller task.

“Looks like Tiger is making it difficult on us,” Snedeker said after closing with four straight birdies. “I’m playing fantastic. And the best thing is I fought extremely well out there.”

Matt Kuchar improved his Tour Championship hopes with a 66 and was tied for fourth at 205 with Padraig Harrington (69).

It was Harrington who got Woods’ attention early in the third round. The Irishman birdied three straight holes, chipping in on the fourth hole from deep rough, while Leishman birdied four straight in the middle of the front nine to reach 10 under.

Woods stood on the sixth tee three shots behind. Four holes later, he had the lead to himself. And midway through the back nine, when he was firing at flags and holing putts, the tournament seemed to be over.

Leishman made the turn with a two-shot lead, shot 1 over on the back nine and found himself seven shots behind.

Related Content

Event: BMW Championship
“That’s Tiger,” he said. “Anything can happen – well, anything good.”

The par-3 sixth hole was the toughest of the third round at Cog Hill, the pin cut in the left corner guarded by deep bunkers front and back. Woods picked out the “6” on the hole sign behind the green and swept a 7-iron in front right-to-left. Even better was his 6-iron from 188 yards in the rough on the next hole, where he had to shape it around a tree from left-to-right.

He lightly pumped his fist when it landed on the fringe 15 feet away, and even missing the birdie putt was OK.

“Just happy with a par,” he said.

Such is the anatomy of his round –he opened with a bogey, his best shot resulted in a par. It was the shots that followed that kept getting better, and Woods rarely has looked this dialed in.

“It was just a round that, as I said, kind of built upon itself, and I just kind of gradually kept hitting good shots, then making a couple of putts here and there,” he said. “And lo and behold, I end up at 9 under par.”

Woods will be going for his sixth victory of the year and his fifth at Cog Hill on Sunday, which would put him atop the FedEx Cup standings going to the Tour Championship in two weeks.

For everyone else, it’s a matter of getting there.

Seven players among the top 10 are currently outside the top 30 required to get into East Lake. Snedeker would not have figured to be one of those players three months ago, when he was returning from a rib injury.

“I didn’t think I was going to have a job in July,” Snedeker said. “My whole goal was to secure my card. Now I’m back to my original goal of trying to make the Tour Championship. Any time you get to the Tour Championship, it’s been a good year.”

Tiger Woods Notices Groupie

RANDALL MELL, Senior Writer, GolfChannel.com

NORTON, Mass. – Tiger Woods put in some hard work posting that 8-under-par 63 Monday, but nothing like the guy who followed him around dressed head-to-toe in a tiger costume.

“He lost a few pounds, there’s no doubt,” Woods said. “He took off the head at No. 1 there, and he was dripping wet.”

Tiger Woods rallies, but comes up short

By Associated Press
Posted: September 7, 2009

NORTON, Mass. – Tiger Woods was 6 under after six holes in the final round of the Deutsche Bank Championship, leaving fans wondering whether they would see an unprecedented comeback.

But Woods never got his hopes up after starting the day nine strokes back.

“The whole idea was to try and shoot something in the low 60s and that would probably get me in the top 10,” he said after an 8-under-par 63 briefly brought him within a stroke of the lead. “Certainly from where I was at, I couldn’t win the tournament, even if I shot 60 or something like that. I was so far back; these guys, (with) no wind, soft greens and pretty benign pins, they’ll go low.”

Woods, who has never come from more than eight strokes behind to win as a pro, shot 70-67-72 over the first three rounds to earn an early tee time Monday – more than three hours before Steve Stricker and Retief Goosen left at 1:40 p.m. Woods, who won at TPC Boston in 2006, birdied the first four holes and eagled No. 6 on Monday morning.

But he bogeyed the 11th and 17th, played the back nine in 2 under and finished 12 under for the tournament.

He was the leader in the clubhouse for hours, but he knew it wouldn’t last.

“Whether you can win a tournament or not, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “You go out there and post a low number, as low as you’ve got for that day. It doesn’t change, whether you’ve just made the cut or you’re dew sweeping on the last day. It doesn’t matter. You post a low round and see what happens. You can feel good about it, you know?”

Tiger Woods Throws Club at The Barclays

Tiger Woods PGA T0ur 10

By Matt Rudy September 2009 - Golfdigest.com

Now I know what it's like to be Colin Montgomerie.

I actually thought it would be a little sweatier.

Playing Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 on the swing-it-yourself Wii video game system is so much more convenient than going all the way over to Turnberry, taking slag from Sandy Lyle and scowling through a press conference.

Hyper-realistic sports video games have been a staple for the high-definition Playstation III and X-Box systems for years. But something about the golf experience is lost when you're controlling the length of your backswing with your right thumb.

On the Nintendo Wii, you wave a wireless motion-sensing controller around and its position is picked up on the screen. If that sounds like the perfect recipe for making birdies -- and triple-bogeys -- as your favorite PGA Tour player, you would be correct.

I brought home a copy of the game -- and a 12-pack of Miller High Life -- and invited two friends over for an adult version of a Dungeons and Dragons play date: Beer and a round at Pebble Beach in virtual video game land.

The knock on the Wii system is that its processing chip is a lot less sophisticated than the ones in the PS3 and X-box. Games on the Nintendo system tend to run more toward the cartoonish than the photo-realistic. That hasn't completely changed with Tiger Woods 10 -- Tiger Woods still looks like a Marvel Comics version of himself -- but the graphics are a huge step in the realistic direction.

The conceit for TW10 is the 2009 PGA Tour season, rendered through remarkably realistic real-life tour courses and a selection of PGA Tour and LPGA Tour players to choose as your golf avatar. Taking advantage of the Wii's ability to connect wirelessly to the Internet, the game also allows you to play under the current real-world weather conditions at the golf course you select. If it's 50 and foggy on the Monterey Peninsula that day, it's faithfully recreated on the screen in front of you.

Since it's my house, I get to pick my character first. It comes as no surprise that Tiger is the first face on the selection screen. A list of different attributes -- power, accuracy, recovery, approach -- run down the left side of the screen. They've resisted the urge to make Tiger a 100 in everything, giving him an 80 in putting (and luck, whatever that means), but he's the best package you can pick -- sort of like the New England Patriots in any NFL game. Instead of going with robo-golfer, I pick a guy with a physique a little closer to my own. Monty pops up on the screen, complete with the sour look he wears in real life, and a too-tight pale blue sweater.

My friend Travis goes next, and he goes with Jim Furyk -- who makes a contorted practice swing that looks just like the real thing. Alan is pretty mild-mannered in real life, but he goes for the throat when it comes to video games. He laughs at Travis and my obvious sentimentality and picks Tiger. We're not getting any strokes, either.

The best part about the Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 gameplay is that you can pick up enough right out of the box to go play a round without hitting grounders and making 10s. With the game on its medium setting and playing from the White tees, we're all able to make successful swings off Pebble's first tee. In a particularly non-Monty kind of strategic maneuver -- he always seems to wait until the 72nd hole to hit one fat and lose -- I try to go over the trees on the right side of the dogleg right with my 3-wood and end up in pretend jail, 200 yards out. "Tiger" and "Jim" smooth it out there with long irons and have short yardage in.

The game interface is a nice combination of accurate and forgiving. You can do pretty much whatever you want with your backswing when it comes to swing path, but the length of it determines how much power you put on the shot. Take Monty back halfway with his driver and he bunts it out there 50 percent. How you twist the controller through impact determines the sidespin on the shot. Twist your wrist down and the ball goes left. Turn it up and the ball goes right. The space in between, for a straight shot, is pretty wide and forgiving, giving you a decent chance to split fairways and find greens.

Where things get interesting -- and occasionally annoying -- is when you have a finesse shot requiring 50 or 60 percent power. We spent the first two or three holes smoking shots over greens or leaving them short because we couldn't quite dial in the subtlety. Then again, if EA Sports was trying to replicate real golf, that'd be a pretty accurate representation of our collective real-world games.

And just like in real golf, there's a beer consumption nexus -- at about three, performance improves. After that, you start looking for reasons to drive the cart and sit in the air conditioning. Except that with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10, you're already in the air conditioning, and the beer is only 10 feet away.

We chopped it around the front nine, with Tiger leading at one under, Furyk at two over and my Monty straggling behind at four over -- just like real life. And just like at real Pebble, we entered the lull when the holes turn away from the sea. But by the time we reached pretend 17 -- and we had only two High Lifes left in the box -- Tiger was still ahead at two under, but Furyk and Monty were tied just one shot behind.

As realistic as the rendering was on my 42-inch plasma screen, there's still enough of a disconnect from real golf that you're not afraid to heckle during your opponent's pretend backswing. Virtual Furyk dumped his approach shot on the picturesque 17th -- cue the harbor seals barking -- short and right, in the bunker. My Monty put a hybrid on the green, but inexplicably -- and accurately -- pursed his lips in apparent displeasure. Tiger proved to be just as clutch in the pixellated world as he is in real life, stuffing it in there five feet.

But the second quirk of the otherwise remarkable gameplay engine pops up again when you're putting. You use a series of buttons on the controller to set your aim, then draw the wand back to provide the appropriate amount of power to the stroke. However, when the controller is pointing down in a pretend putting pose, it seems to briefly lose connection with what's happening on the screen at the top of the backswing. During that pause, if you gun the controller forward, you have a good chance to hitting the putt about four inches.

That's something Tiger has probably never done in his real competitive career, but my living room isn't Augusta National. With Alan at the controls, Tiger tinkled his birdie putt a foot-and-a-half, leaving himself another three-and-a-half feet for par. After the feeble birdie effort, Virtual Tiger even grabbed his putter by the neck and smacked the face with his hand as if to castigate his real-world counterpart. Hooting, my Monty and Furyk both got up and down to save par.

I wish I could say that Virtual Monty broke the spell that has always seemed to come across his golf game when he crosses the real-life Atlantic Ocean to play in the States. Channeling his real-world self, my Monty blocked his tee shot into Charles Schwab's backyard off the tee, consigning us to a double-bogey 7 and a spectator's seat for Faux Furyk's quest to make birdie and try to tie.

Apparently even the video game version of Furyk comes with grit. Travis directed his trusty balding golf avatar 40 yards short of the green in two, where he then jarred a pitch shot for eagle. Tiger needed to make a 17-footer for birdie to tie, which he missed.

It took about 45 minutes for us to play 18 holes -- fast forwarding through most of the banal play-by-play provided by Scott Van Pelt and Kelly Tilghman -- and we all came to the same conclusion. We certainly didn't burn as many calories waving the wand around in my living room, but it there's something to be said for getting a round in with enough to time to go out into the real world and watch a baseball game at sports bar.

Like Travis says, there's a reason they called it "Super No-Friendo" back in high school.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10

Tiger: Els Didn't Work Hard Enough

Reuters

NORTON, Mass. -- Ernie Els did not work hard enough after undergoing major surgery on his left knee in 2005, according to world No. 1 Tiger Woods.

South African Els was once riding high in the rankings but is now down in 20th place, having gone 41 tournaments without a victory.

Ernie Els' original three-year plan from 2006 hasn't gone so well for myriad reasons. A recent resurgence has the Big Easy heading to the Deutsche Bank Championship this week thinking a return to prominence is well within reach. Jason Sobel

"Ernie is not a big worker physically and that's one of the things you have to do with an ACL injury," said Woods, who had almost identical knee surgery last year.

"I feel pretty good with what I've done and I think Ernie could have worked a little bit harder," the American said on the eve of the Deutsche Bank Championship, the second tournament of the PGA Tour's four-event FedEx Cup playoff series.
It has been nearly three years since Els spoke about a three-year plan to challenge Woods for the No. 1 spot.

The three-time major winner has, instead, gone in the opposite direction in the rankings, although he has shown encouraging form lately.

Els tied for eighth at the British Open in July and then tied for sixth at last month's U.S. PGA Championship before finishing one shot behind winner Heath Slocum at last week's FedEx Cup opener, the Barclays Classic in New York.

Tiger Woods Throws Club - Sobel on ESPN

Friday, September 4, 2009
Tiger's tantrum a low among group's highlights

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?entryID=4446797&name=sobel_jason

NORTON, Mass. -- On a day when one playing partner grabbed a share of the opening-round lead and another holed out from a bunker for eagle, Tiger Woods initiated the most fireworks in his threesome at the Deutsche Bank Championship. And they weren't the good kind.

I'll get to co-leader Steve Stricker's eye-popping 8-under 63 and Heath Slocum's continued pronouncement that he can hang with the big boys, but anytime the game's No. 1-ranked player commits a never-before-seen act on the course, it would be a journalistic sin to bury the lede.

In a career filled not only with victories, fame and fortune, but also grandiose outbursts and expletive-filled self-indulgences, Tiger suffered an epic meltdown at one point Friday. Teeing off the par-4 fifth hole -- his 14th of the day -- Woods badly blocked a drive well right of the fairway. That's hardly a surprise, but it's what followed that was truly startling. Almost immediately after impact, he spiked the driver toward the ground, releasing the grip and letting it fly into what can only be described as a dry wetlands area about 10 yards in front of the tee box.

Tiger then walked away, roaring "Release the club!" to himself -- an ironic proposition considering the aftermath of his swing. His caddie, Steve Williams, was left to recover the driver from the thigh-high thick stuff -- which proved to be a daunting task, as it took some 30 seconds to locate the club and another 30 to actually pry it loose -- failing to leave the potential eBay goldmine lying in the weeds.

Asked later to describe his frustration on the hole, Woods would only allow, "How about every hole?"

It was a "SportsCenter" moment if there ever was one, an occasion that would be replayed for the masses time and again. But here's the rub: On a tee box that was largely closed to foot traffic, Woods' tantrum may have been witnessed by fewer than a dozen observers -- playing partners included -- as nary a cameraman nor photographer was within shooting distance.

Once the driver was finally reunited with Frank the headcover and safely in the bag, Woods found his ball in an unplayable lie and was forced to take a drop from the hazard. He made bogey on the hole, then played his remaining four in 1 under par, ostensibly letting his frustrations go with that release of the club. It was part of an altogether respectable round of 70, especially considering how he described it afterward.

"I felt terrible over any tee shot," said Woods, who hit eight of 14 fairways. "Didn't matter what club it was, whether it was an iron on a par-3 or a driver on any hole. I didn't feel great over any shot. It was one of those days."

His lack of success off the tee might have been more acceptable if Woods was rolling the rock well at TPC Boston, where he has found success in the past. Instead, there was a continuation of the poor putting stroke that has plagued him at times during the second half of this season, missing four putts of 10 feet or less and making only two of more than 10 feet, including a 36-footer on No. 8 for one of his three birdies on the day.

"Some were bad putts," he admitted after taking 30 whacks in Round 1. "Most of the putts I hit today, if anything, they were lacking pace. They were kind of rolling by about 6 inches past the hole, maybe a foot. I just wasn't carrying enough pace to the hole."

While Woods couldn't find the pace, Stricker was busy setting it, posting a bogey-free 63 that left him a pair of strokes off the course record.

A six-time PGA Tour champion, including twice this year, the Wisconsin native has never won a tournament in which Woods was in the field. But at No. 4 in the Official World Golf Ranking, Stricker has learned to deal with life in the Tiger era.

"I guess I'm to the point where I'm comfortable with what I'm doing, and I'm not really worrying about him," said Stricker, who finished T-13 here a year ago. "He's going to hit those great shots and he's going to make those great putts. I can't do anything about that."

Instead, it was quite the opposite, as Stricker really heated up on the group's back nine, carding four consecutive birdies starting at No. 1, including three he finished from 4 feet or less.

"It was unbelievable," Woods said of his friend and Ryder/Presidents Cup teammate. "The putts were center cut, iron shots were right at it, and he was driving the ball great. He made one mistake there at 7 -- his layup was left [leading to par]. But other than that, you'd be hard-pressed to find a shot that he hit off line."

And then there was Slocum, who was playing with Stricker for the second time in six days. On the previous occasion, the 124th-ranked player in the FedEx Cup vanquished a bevy of big-timers, moving all the way up to third -- and a spot in this marquee group, as competitors are paired based on the points standings.

Once again proving he can play with the game's best, Slocum pitched in for eagle from the greenside bunker on the short par-4 fourth hole en route to a 2-under 69 -- one of a variety of deft shots from around the green by the Barclays champion.

That score meant Woods would have left the final green a little lighter in the wallet if this was a friendly money game, the high man in the threesome and the only one without a sub-70 total.

Of course, it's only 18 holes. With 54 more still to play, Tiger knows he still has a chance to be very much in the hunt here on Labor Day weekend.

"It's a four-day tournament," he said. "If you have a bad day, the whole idea is just to mitigate the mistakes and keep yourself in the ballgame. Today is a day I certainly could have shot over par, but I kept it under par, so that's a good sign."

Three birdies, two bogeys, one driver hurled in frustration. Outwardly, Tiger Woods wasn't pleased with his game on Friday, but that "good sign" on the scorecard makes it all the more palatable.