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SubscribeSports, for me, is a companion; Ivan Lendl; Working on new book – reader suggestions on it are welcome
Thu, Aug 26 2010 10:42
| Mets, PGA Tour, Tiger Woods, Ivan Lendl, Tennis
| Permalink
The other night while I was watching the Cubs—minus Lou Piniella—maul the Nationals—minus Stephen Strasburg—my wife walked in, glanced at the television set and said to me: “Is there ever a day in your life where you say to yourself, ‘I just don’t want anything to do with sports?’
The question was semi-rhetorical but I got the point. Here’s the answer: No. Some might call it an addiction. Others might point out—correctly—that I need to track sports on a daily basis because of my job. But that’s really not it. In fact, in my 20s when I didn’t cover sports, I probably went to more games and watched more games than I do now. (Children are a factor in that too).
Sports, for me and I suspect many others, is a companion. On almost any day, regardless of the time of year, no matter what else might be going on in your life, sports is there. Sometimes just checking scores can provide escape from either the dullness of everyday life or the pressures of everyday life. As I’ve written before, I still vividly remember how happy I was to be able to watch Mets-Brewers highlights on the day of my heart surgery (even though the Mets lost) in part because I was alive to watch them but in part because they were a reminder that there were going to be games to watch during my recovery period at home.
I needed to know that. So perhaps I am addicted.
If so, there can be worse addictions. I don’t gamble on sports; never have and never wanted to. I get emotional about sports but not so much about who wins and who loses but who has a story worth telling. I guess in that sense, given what I do, I am different than a lot of people. That’s not to say I don’t care at all about ‘my,’ teams anymore. I still roll my eyes at the mediocrity of the Mets (not to mention their doctors) and, as history has proven, I can get wound up about Navy football. Army football too, as a matter of fact.
More often though, it is about individuals. That’s why I laugh when others in my business claim to be ‘objective.’ I make no such claims. Those posters who rip me every time I criticize Tiger Woods are right about one thing: I don’t like him. What they’re wrong about is when they speculate that it has something to do with him not talking to me (he doesn’t talk to anyone one-on-one except on TV to promote himself in some way or if he’s being paid—as Golf Digest does—for the time). Tiger has a perfect right not to speak to me. I was the first guy to criticize his dad publicly and he took that personally. As I’ve told him, I get that. What I don’t like about him is the way he treats people—whether it is kids seeking autographs; my colleagues asking reasonable questions or anyone NOT doing something FOR him. (That’s an Earl lesson by the way, do nothing for free).
That said, I almost gagged yesterday when a gossip columnist from The New York Post asked him TWICE if he still loved Elin. First of all, the question is irrelevant. Second, when he clearly ducked it (legitimately) the first time why the hell ask it a second time?
He started out this morning in his first round—first guy on the tee at 7:10 am because of his FedEx Cup ranking—by birdieing four of his first seven holes. That will start the, ‘Tiger’s back,’ stories again. He might very well win this week. Heck, he might even win the FedEx Cup. But it will still be a lost year in his mind because he didn’t win a major.
Anyway, back to individuals I’ve liked and disliked. Tonight, I’m having dinner with Ivan Lendl, who I covered extensively when I was The Washington Post’s tennis writer and when I wrote, ‘Hard Courts,’ back in 1991. I’m starting research on a book that will be keyed to the 25th anniversary of ‘A Season on the Brink,’ and I’m going back to talk to a lot of the people I’ve met along the way who I found either interesting or fun or challenging. The number one test for me in deciding who to track down is simple: How many times have people said to me, ‘so what became of ------.’ (If anyone has ideas or suggestions I’d love to hear them).
That means Chris Spitler, the unofficial hero of, ‘The Last Amateurs,’ will be in the book and so will quite a few players from ‘A Civil War,’—among, I hope, many others.
Lendl certainly qualifies. We had a very combustible relationship. I was very hard on him at times. He had a tendency to lose from ahead in big matches early in his career—particularly against John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors. He turned that around completely when he came from two sets down against McEnroe in The French Open final in 1984 (McEnroe got into a fracas with the umpire in the third set and let it get to him) to win. From that point on he became a great competitor in big matches.
We battled often. When George Bush (the first) was pushing as Vice President to waive the five-year waiting period for citizenship so Lendl could play Davis Cup for the U.S. I was very much against it and said (wrote) so. Lendl saw it as a shot—which it really wasn’t, I just didn’t think you pushed aside the law in the name of winning a tennis competition—and we had it out a few times.
One night, after he had won a tight match from Connors in Washington, he was asked about a third set incident in which he had slammed his racquet.
“Well,” he said. “I figure no matter what I do John Feinstein is going to rip me so why not slam my racquet?”
It was a funny line but he wasn’t being funny. Eventually, because Lendl is at heart a good guy, we talked things out, agreed to disagree and, if you read, ‘Hard Courts,’ you can tell he cooperated with me on the book. When I tracked him down (with the help of one of the blog’s regular posters, so who says doing this is a waste of time?) for this book he said: “I just have one question. If you want to write about the most interesting people you’ve met, why are you calling me?”
I look forward to catching up with him tonight. Maybe someday I’ll do the same thing with Tiger. Then again, maybe not.
****
A brief note to a couple of angry posters: I didn’t rip Tiger for criticizing the greens at The PGA—it was at the U.S. Open. Hard to tell those two events apart I guess. Here’s a quote from that tournament after he called the greens, ‘ridiculous,’ the first day when he failed to make a birdie: “He’s whining. He needs to stop blaming the greens for his failures and go out and play golf.”
Pretty harsh, huh? There I went, Tiger-bashing again, huh? One problem: That line came from Tiger’s good friend Notah Begay. I was sitting next to him when he said it. Yes, other players were frustrated during the week as the greens got worse in dry weather. But they all said the same thing: this is what you get with poa annua greens. That’s what Tom Watson was saying on Sunday talking about how tough they were to putt.
And to the person who posted in regard to my referencing my own mistakes: “Um, the Duke soccer players?” Um, I believe you’re talking about LACROSSE players?
The question was semi-rhetorical but I got the point. Here’s the answer: No. Some might call it an addiction. Others might point out—correctly—that I need to track sports on a daily basis because of my job. But that’s really not it. In fact, in my 20s when I didn’t cover sports, I probably went to more games and watched more games than I do now. (Children are a factor in that too).
Sports, for me and I suspect many others, is a companion. On almost any day, regardless of the time of year, no matter what else might be going on in your life, sports is there. Sometimes just checking scores can provide escape from either the dullness of everyday life or the pressures of everyday life. As I’ve written before, I still vividly remember how happy I was to be able to watch Mets-Brewers highlights on the day of my heart surgery (even though the Mets lost) in part because I was alive to watch them but in part because they were a reminder that there were going to be games to watch during my recovery period at home.
I needed to know that. So perhaps I am addicted.
If so, there can be worse addictions. I don’t gamble on sports; never have and never wanted to. I get emotional about sports but not so much about who wins and who loses but who has a story worth telling. I guess in that sense, given what I do, I am different than a lot of people. That’s not to say I don’t care at all about ‘my,’ teams anymore. I still roll my eyes at the mediocrity of the Mets (not to mention their doctors) and, as history has proven, I can get wound up about Navy football. Army football too, as a matter of fact.
More often though, it is about individuals. That’s why I laugh when others in my business claim to be ‘objective.’ I make no such claims. Those posters who rip me every time I criticize Tiger Woods are right about one thing: I don’t like him. What they’re wrong about is when they speculate that it has something to do with him not talking to me (he doesn’t talk to anyone one-on-one except on TV to promote himself in some way or if he’s being paid—as Golf Digest does—for the time). Tiger has a perfect right not to speak to me. I was the first guy to criticize his dad publicly and he took that personally. As I’ve told him, I get that. What I don’t like about him is the way he treats people—whether it is kids seeking autographs; my colleagues asking reasonable questions or anyone NOT doing something FOR him. (That’s an Earl lesson by the way, do nothing for free).
That said, I almost gagged yesterday when a gossip columnist from The New York Post asked him TWICE if he still loved Elin. First of all, the question is irrelevant. Second, when he clearly ducked it (legitimately) the first time why the hell ask it a second time?
He started out this morning in his first round—first guy on the tee at 7:10 am because of his FedEx Cup ranking—by birdieing four of his first seven holes. That will start the, ‘Tiger’s back,’ stories again. He might very well win this week. Heck, he might even win the FedEx Cup. But it will still be a lost year in his mind because he didn’t win a major.
Anyway, back to individuals I’ve liked and disliked. Tonight, I’m having dinner with Ivan Lendl, who I covered extensively when I was The Washington Post’s tennis writer and when I wrote, ‘Hard Courts,’ back in 1991. I’m starting research on a book that will be keyed to the 25th anniversary of ‘A Season on the Brink,’ and I’m going back to talk to a lot of the people I’ve met along the way who I found either interesting or fun or challenging. The number one test for me in deciding who to track down is simple: How many times have people said to me, ‘so what became of ------.’ (If anyone has ideas or suggestions I’d love to hear them).
That means Chris Spitler, the unofficial hero of, ‘The Last Amateurs,’ will be in the book and so will quite a few players from ‘A Civil War,’—among, I hope, many others.
Lendl certainly qualifies. We had a very combustible relationship. I was very hard on him at times. He had a tendency to lose from ahead in big matches early in his career—particularly against John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors. He turned that around completely when he came from two sets down against McEnroe in The French Open final in 1984 (McEnroe got into a fracas with the umpire in the third set and let it get to him) to win. From that point on he became a great competitor in big matches.
We battled often. When George Bush (the first) was pushing as Vice President to waive the five-year waiting period for citizenship so Lendl could play Davis Cup for the U.S. I was very much against it and said (wrote) so. Lendl saw it as a shot—which it really wasn’t, I just didn’t think you pushed aside the law in the name of winning a tennis competition—and we had it out a few times.
One night, after he had won a tight match from Connors in Washington, he was asked about a third set incident in which he had slammed his racquet.
“Well,” he said. “I figure no matter what I do John Feinstein is going to rip me so why not slam my racquet?”
It was a funny line but he wasn’t being funny. Eventually, because Lendl is at heart a good guy, we talked things out, agreed to disagree and, if you read, ‘Hard Courts,’ you can tell he cooperated with me on the book. When I tracked him down (with the help of one of the blog’s regular posters, so who says doing this is a waste of time?) for this book he said: “I just have one question. If you want to write about the most interesting people you’ve met, why are you calling me?”
I look forward to catching up with him tonight. Maybe someday I’ll do the same thing with Tiger. Then again, maybe not.
****
A brief note to a couple of angry posters: I didn’t rip Tiger for criticizing the greens at The PGA—it was at the U.S. Open. Hard to tell those two events apart I guess. Here’s a quote from that tournament after he called the greens, ‘ridiculous,’ the first day when he failed to make a birdie: “He’s whining. He needs to stop blaming the greens for his failures and go out and play golf.”
Pretty harsh, huh? There I went, Tiger-bashing again, huh? One problem: That line came from Tiger’s good friend Notah Begay. I was sitting next to him when he said it. Yes, other players were frustrated during the week as the greens got worse in dry weather. But they all said the same thing: this is what you get with poa annua greens. That’s what Tom Watson was saying on Sunday talking about how tough they were to putt.
And to the person who posted in regard to my referencing my own mistakes: “Um, the Duke soccer players?” Um, I believe you’re talking about LACROSSE players?
Comments (16)
Why is it so hard for people in sports—and in life—to simply say, “I blew it?”
Tue, Aug 24 2010 10:07
| Navy, Jim Joyce, Tiger Woods, David Price, Officials, Roger Clemens, PGA Championship
| Permalink
I was in my car on Sunday morning en route to my first swim meet since the heart surgery (I was very pleased with my butterfly swims; not so happy with my god-awful freestyle) and I happened to come upon a local golf show here in Washington hosted by Steve Czaban, whose weekday show I appear on once a week.
As luck would have it, Czaban and his co-hosts—local golf pros—were interviewing a guy from The Middle Atlantic PGA about—you guessed it—the ending of The PGA. If I remembered his name I’d used it, but I don’t. The guy was basically blathering The PGA’s company line about how David Price did nothing wrong in not making sure Dustin Johnson knew he was in a bunker on that fateful 18th hole at goofy Whistling Straits nine days ago.
I’m not here to go over that whole mess yet again. I’ve made my position—which is backed up by most professional rules officials—clear and I’ve tried to clear up a lot of the factual inaccuracies that have been bandied about since the incident occurred: that rules officials aren’t supposed to give players warnings about potential rules violations (wrong); that not all groups at the PGA have rules officials walking with them (wrong) and that there was no change in the PGA of America’s approach to those bunkers in 2010 from 2004 (wrong, many were designated waste areas in 2004. That was a mistake repeated by this rules guy on Sunday).
My point here is this: Why is it so hard for people in sports—and in life—to simply say, “I blew it?” I make mistakes all the time. I have a bad habit, because I have a good memory, of not double-checking facts I THINK I know and sometimes I get it wrong. But that’s not really the kind of mistake I’m talking about. You CAN’T argue when you get the facts wrong. If I say Alfonso Soriano hit the home run to put the Yankees up 2-1 in game seven of the 2001 World Series in the ninth inning when he hit it in the eighth inning (as I once did, I would have SWORN it was the ninth) I’m wrong—no ifs ands or buts.
The kind of mistake I’m talking about is the one Price made. Or, on a much broader level the kind Roger Clemens made—not just screaming he’d never used steroids but swearing under oath he’d never used steroids. You see umpires in baseball do it all the time: they blow a call, they KNOW they’ve blown the call and so they overreact when someone argues and toss the guy from the game—making their mistake even worse. Recently I saw an umpire toss Ryan Zimmerman for throwing his bat down after striking out swinging. Zimmerman never looked back so he didn’t ‘show up,’ the umpire but got tossed anyway. Why? Because the ump, apparently reading Zimmerman’s mind, knew Zimmerman was upset about a 3-1 pitch he thought was ball four.
I still remember when I was researching, ‘Living on the Black,’ seeing an umpire named Tony Randazzo miss a call at first base by a full step—a much worse call than the one Jim Joyce made earlier this year to cost Armando Galarraga a perfect game. When Mets manager Willie Randolph came out of the dugout, largely to keep Tom Glavine from getting tossed from the game (Glavine, who might have argued five calls in 23 years) he said to Randazzo, “look Tony, just tell me you missed it and I’ll go back in the dugout.”
Randazzo began screaming at Randolph that he had NOT missed it and ended up ejecting Randolph. The next day, knowing Randazzo would have had the chance to see the replay, I knocked on the door of the umpires room and asked to speak to Randazzo. He wouldn’t even come to the door to talk to me.
That’s the opposite, as we all know, of the approach Joyce took. He saw the tape and instantly said he’d blown it, even went to find Galarraga to apologize. So what happened? Joyce almost became a heroic figure for simply saying, “I got it wrong, I’m sorry.”
Sure it’s tough to look in the mirror and know you’ve screwed up—especially in public—but admitting it is always the best way to go. My worst public mistake, as many if not most people know (God knows I get reminded about it enough) came during a Navy-Duke football game five years ago. The officiating was brutal—so bad that Navy Coach Paul Johnson after WINNING the game chased the officials off the field) and I—inexcusably, regardless of the circumstances, muttered ‘f------ referees,’ after an especially bad call, somehow forgetting I was on the air.
As soon as I realized what I’d done, I pulled myself off the air, found Eric Ruden, who runs the Navy radio network, told him what happened and offered to go on the air and resign. Both Ruden and Navy AD Chet Gladchuk said absolutely not, so I compromised and went back on and apologized. That was not—as Eric and Chet had said—‘the end of it;’—they had to fend off calls from some in the media that week wanting to know why I wasn’t going to be suspended.
“John made a mistake, he offered to resign and then he apologized on the air within minutes of the incident,” Eric told the AP that week. “We don’t need to do anything more.”
For the most part, people said and wrote that I should be given credit for instantly apologizing. To me, it was the only thing to do. Saying the refs were brutal would have just been excuse-making. It didn’t matter. I was un-professional.
How would people have reacted if Clemens had admitted what he’d done and said he was sorry the day after the Mitchell Report came out in 2007? They would have ended up cheering him for being man enough to admit he had behaved badly. Heck, look at how Andy Pettitte and Alex Rodriguez have been treated for ‘confessing.’
In 1993 a freshman Navy kicker named Ryan Bucchianeri missed an 18-yard-field goal in a driving rain at the buzzer that would have won the Army-Navy game. He didn’t hide from the media when the game was over, he stood up and said, ‘I lost the game.’ He refused excuses offered him—wet field, wet ball, rain in his face. He became a national hero to the point where Sports Illustrated did a nine-page story on him the next fall.
On the other hand there’s the newly-single Tiger Woods, who stalled and hid and then refused to take questions when he finally made a public appearance almost three months after he piled his car into a fire hydrant. Everything he’s done this year in public has been part of a strategy to get sponsors back. If you think you’ve seen any genuine remorse or sorrow, you’re just wrong. He’s sorry he got caught and that’s it. The public knows that which is why there might be many who want to see him be a great golfer again but there are few who sympathize with him on any level. If he’d REALLY been sorry and said so and acted that way—rather than blaming everyone else most of the time—people would not have condoned what he did but would have been more forgiving.
The same goes on a totally different level for David Price and The PGA of America. If Price had said when it was all over, “you know hindsight is 20-20 but I wish I’d said something to Dustin—especially given what happened,”—that would have been pretty much the end of it. The mistake would still be there, but Price would be remembered for grace under pressure (like Joyce) after an officiating mistake. Now, as the PGA and guys like the Middle Atlantic PGA guy continue to make mealy-mouthed excuses, the entire PGA looks bad.
From bad can come good. But not until you admit to your mistake.
As luck would have it, Czaban and his co-hosts—local golf pros—were interviewing a guy from The Middle Atlantic PGA about—you guessed it—the ending of The PGA. If I remembered his name I’d used it, but I don’t. The guy was basically blathering The PGA’s company line about how David Price did nothing wrong in not making sure Dustin Johnson knew he was in a bunker on that fateful 18th hole at goofy Whistling Straits nine days ago.
I’m not here to go over that whole mess yet again. I’ve made my position—which is backed up by most professional rules officials—clear and I’ve tried to clear up a lot of the factual inaccuracies that have been bandied about since the incident occurred: that rules officials aren’t supposed to give players warnings about potential rules violations (wrong); that not all groups at the PGA have rules officials walking with them (wrong) and that there was no change in the PGA of America’s approach to those bunkers in 2010 from 2004 (wrong, many were designated waste areas in 2004. That was a mistake repeated by this rules guy on Sunday).
My point here is this: Why is it so hard for people in sports—and in life—to simply say, “I blew it?” I make mistakes all the time. I have a bad habit, because I have a good memory, of not double-checking facts I THINK I know and sometimes I get it wrong. But that’s not really the kind of mistake I’m talking about. You CAN’T argue when you get the facts wrong. If I say Alfonso Soriano hit the home run to put the Yankees up 2-1 in game seven of the 2001 World Series in the ninth inning when he hit it in the eighth inning (as I once did, I would have SWORN it was the ninth) I’m wrong—no ifs ands or buts.
The kind of mistake I’m talking about is the one Price made. Or, on a much broader level the kind Roger Clemens made—not just screaming he’d never used steroids but swearing under oath he’d never used steroids. You see umpires in baseball do it all the time: they blow a call, they KNOW they’ve blown the call and so they overreact when someone argues and toss the guy from the game—making their mistake even worse. Recently I saw an umpire toss Ryan Zimmerman for throwing his bat down after striking out swinging. Zimmerman never looked back so he didn’t ‘show up,’ the umpire but got tossed anyway. Why? Because the ump, apparently reading Zimmerman’s mind, knew Zimmerman was upset about a 3-1 pitch he thought was ball four.
I still remember when I was researching, ‘Living on the Black,’ seeing an umpire named Tony Randazzo miss a call at first base by a full step—a much worse call than the one Jim Joyce made earlier this year to cost Armando Galarraga a perfect game. When Mets manager Willie Randolph came out of the dugout, largely to keep Tom Glavine from getting tossed from the game (Glavine, who might have argued five calls in 23 years) he said to Randazzo, “look Tony, just tell me you missed it and I’ll go back in the dugout.”
Randazzo began screaming at Randolph that he had NOT missed it and ended up ejecting Randolph. The next day, knowing Randazzo would have had the chance to see the replay, I knocked on the door of the umpires room and asked to speak to Randazzo. He wouldn’t even come to the door to talk to me.
That’s the opposite, as we all know, of the approach Joyce took. He saw the tape and instantly said he’d blown it, even went to find Galarraga to apologize. So what happened? Joyce almost became a heroic figure for simply saying, “I got it wrong, I’m sorry.”
Sure it’s tough to look in the mirror and know you’ve screwed up—especially in public—but admitting it is always the best way to go. My worst public mistake, as many if not most people know (God knows I get reminded about it enough) came during a Navy-Duke football game five years ago. The officiating was brutal—so bad that Navy Coach Paul Johnson after WINNING the game chased the officials off the field) and I—inexcusably, regardless of the circumstances, muttered ‘f------ referees,’ after an especially bad call, somehow forgetting I was on the air.
As soon as I realized what I’d done, I pulled myself off the air, found Eric Ruden, who runs the Navy radio network, told him what happened and offered to go on the air and resign. Both Ruden and Navy AD Chet Gladchuk said absolutely not, so I compromised and went back on and apologized. That was not—as Eric and Chet had said—‘the end of it;’—they had to fend off calls from some in the media that week wanting to know why I wasn’t going to be suspended.
“John made a mistake, he offered to resign and then he apologized on the air within minutes of the incident,” Eric told the AP that week. “We don’t need to do anything more.”
For the most part, people said and wrote that I should be given credit for instantly apologizing. To me, it was the only thing to do. Saying the refs were brutal would have just been excuse-making. It didn’t matter. I was un-professional.
How would people have reacted if Clemens had admitted what he’d done and said he was sorry the day after the Mitchell Report came out in 2007? They would have ended up cheering him for being man enough to admit he had behaved badly. Heck, look at how Andy Pettitte and Alex Rodriguez have been treated for ‘confessing.’
In 1993 a freshman Navy kicker named Ryan Bucchianeri missed an 18-yard-field goal in a driving rain at the buzzer that would have won the Army-Navy game. He didn’t hide from the media when the game was over, he stood up and said, ‘I lost the game.’ He refused excuses offered him—wet field, wet ball, rain in his face. He became a national hero to the point where Sports Illustrated did a nine-page story on him the next fall.
On the other hand there’s the newly-single Tiger Woods, who stalled and hid and then refused to take questions when he finally made a public appearance almost three months after he piled his car into a fire hydrant. Everything he’s done this year in public has been part of a strategy to get sponsors back. If you think you’ve seen any genuine remorse or sorrow, you’re just wrong. He’s sorry he got caught and that’s it. The public knows that which is why there might be many who want to see him be a great golfer again but there are few who sympathize with him on any level. If he’d REALLY been sorry and said so and acted that way—rather than blaming everyone else most of the time—people would not have condoned what he did but would have been more forgiving.
The same goes on a totally different level for David Price and The PGA of America. If Price had said when it was all over, “you know hindsight is 20-20 but I wish I’d said something to Dustin—especially given what happened,”—that would have been pretty much the end of it. The mistake would still be there, but Price would be remembered for grace under pressure (like Joyce) after an officiating mistake. Now, as the PGA and guys like the Middle Atlantic PGA guy continue to make mealy-mouthed excuses, the entire PGA looks bad.
From bad can come good. But not until you admit to your mistake.
Comments (17)
As the world goes ‘round – Favre, LeBron back for headlines
Wed, Aug 18 2010 09:29
| NFL, Brett Favre, NBA, Bob Knight, Tiger Woods, LeBron James
| Permalink
So Brett Favre and LeBron James are back in the news today. Sort of.
I mean let’s be honest, Favre deciding to play football this season ranks up there with the sun rising in the east and ESPN trying to claim that tomorrow being Thursday is an exclusive story when it comes to being newsworthy.
The funny thing is I never really pictured this guy as the world’s biggest diva until the past few years. He was always the rugged quarterback who took every hit, got up and kept playing. Now he’s still rugged and takes hit, he just likes to have people fawn over him and plead with him not to retire each offseason. He craves attention the way I crave John’s Pizza. (New York City, the best there is. Okay, now I’ve made myself hungry).
This time three teammates actually had to fly to Mississippi to go to Favre’s farm on bended knee and beg him to come back. Are you kidding me? Look, I don’t blame the Vikings. Favre was a major reason—Adrian Peterson might have been a factor too although that’s often overlooked—they were about two plays from reaching the Super Bowl last year. The other quarterbacks they have on the roster might get them to the playoffs because Peterson’s still there and the rest of the team is very solid, but they aren’t going anywhere in the postseason without a quality quarterback—which Favre probably still is even at 41.
But the diva act really rankles. As with Tiger Woods, Favre clearly isn’t getting very good advice. He’s gone from being one of the most respected figures in football to a punch line (for reasons, obviously, entirely different than Woods). The whole Hamlet thing wore thin a couple of years ago and yet he’s continued it with no sign of any real self-awareness about it. Yes, he did do that commercial where he pokes fun at himself for indecision, I give him credit for that. But, not surprisingly, what did that involve: getting attention and making money. Clearly, that’s what Favre is all about.
Of course as long as he performs few people are going to care. That’s how divas get to be divas. They’re so good at what they do that they’re allowed their foibles because the price paid for putting up with them is worth it. Certainly all the garbage Favre put the Vikings through last summer proved worth it once he got on the field. Clearly they are counting on the same thing happening this fall.
Favre better be aware of one thing though: If he doesn’t perform, whether because of an injury or age finally catching up with him, he’s going to get jumped on. Years ago Bob Knight said this to me: “I know as long as I win, people around here will say I’m eccentric. If I ever stop winning, they’ll say I’m an embarrassment.”
Knight stopped making Final Fours at Indiana in 1992. By 1999, he was vulnerable enough that Myles Brand could get away with firing him. If he’d been to a Final Four in, say, 1998, Brand wouldn’t have dared.
So Favre better crank up the arm and win a bunch of games or he might find himself booed off the stage.
The same is going to be true of James. If by some chance the Miami Heat aren’t dominant, if he gags in the playoffs the way he did the last two years in Cleveland, he will be a laughing stock around the country—except of course on ESPN where Stuart Scott will no doubt still pay homage to The King at every turn—and he won’t be The God of South Beach.
Whether he wins or not, it was certainly amusing to read one quote from the interviewed release by, I think, Gentleman’s Quarterly yesterday. In it, James shoots back at Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, who ripped him after he left for Miami. Look, James is entitled to shoot back, Gilbert got after him in a way I have never seen an owner go after a player. While I sympathized with Gilbert and everyone in Cleveland, James is certainly entitled to tell his side.
But when James says, “I don’t think he ever cared about LeBron,” how can you not crack up?
There it is folks, the prototype 21st century athlete, talking about himself in the third person and criticizing an owner for not CARING about him? If you want to say, “I didn’t think Gilbert’s comments were fair to ME because of ------“ (you fill in the blank) that’s fine. But owners don’t care about athletes, they pay them to win. I’m always amused when I hear players and owners talk about how close they are to one another. They should talk to Knight because he’ll straighten them out. As long as the player performs the owner will ‘care,’ about them. As soon as he stops, the owner will talk about how much he cares about him while he’s cutting him or trading him. And if another owner wants to show a player how much he ‘cares,’ about him by giving him a better deal, the player will be gone the next day. He may or may not stage an infomercial to announce it. (One question: Has anyone figured out why James put on his act in Greenwich yet? Did he feel safe in a community that has lots of people in his tax bracket? Haven’t figured it out yet).
I wonder how much the Wilpon family ‘cared,’ about Francisco Rodriguez before he tore up his thumb punching out his girlfriend’s father last week? Right now they care so much they’re trying not to have to pay him ever again. They aren’t wrong to be as angry as they clearly are but I don’t think K-Rod should tell someone, “I don’t think the Wilpons ever cared about K-Rod.”
Actually maybe he should—because he’d be right.
I mean let’s be honest, Favre deciding to play football this season ranks up there with the sun rising in the east and ESPN trying to claim that tomorrow being Thursday is an exclusive story when it comes to being newsworthy.
The funny thing is I never really pictured this guy as the world’s biggest diva until the past few years. He was always the rugged quarterback who took every hit, got up and kept playing. Now he’s still rugged and takes hit, he just likes to have people fawn over him and plead with him not to retire each offseason. He craves attention the way I crave John’s Pizza. (New York City, the best there is. Okay, now I’ve made myself hungry).
This time three teammates actually had to fly to Mississippi to go to Favre’s farm on bended knee and beg him to come back. Are you kidding me? Look, I don’t blame the Vikings. Favre was a major reason—Adrian Peterson might have been a factor too although that’s often overlooked—they were about two plays from reaching the Super Bowl last year. The other quarterbacks they have on the roster might get them to the playoffs because Peterson’s still there and the rest of the team is very solid, but they aren’t going anywhere in the postseason without a quality quarterback—which Favre probably still is even at 41.
But the diva act really rankles. As with Tiger Woods, Favre clearly isn’t getting very good advice. He’s gone from being one of the most respected figures in football to a punch line (for reasons, obviously, entirely different than Woods). The whole Hamlet thing wore thin a couple of years ago and yet he’s continued it with no sign of any real self-awareness about it. Yes, he did do that commercial where he pokes fun at himself for indecision, I give him credit for that. But, not surprisingly, what did that involve: getting attention and making money. Clearly, that’s what Favre is all about.
Of course as long as he performs few people are going to care. That’s how divas get to be divas. They’re so good at what they do that they’re allowed their foibles because the price paid for putting up with them is worth it. Certainly all the garbage Favre put the Vikings through last summer proved worth it once he got on the field. Clearly they are counting on the same thing happening this fall.
Favre better be aware of one thing though: If he doesn’t perform, whether because of an injury or age finally catching up with him, he’s going to get jumped on. Years ago Bob Knight said this to me: “I know as long as I win, people around here will say I’m eccentric. If I ever stop winning, they’ll say I’m an embarrassment.”
Knight stopped making Final Fours at Indiana in 1992. By 1999, he was vulnerable enough that Myles Brand could get away with firing him. If he’d been to a Final Four in, say, 1998, Brand wouldn’t have dared.
So Favre better crank up the arm and win a bunch of games or he might find himself booed off the stage.
The same is going to be true of James. If by some chance the Miami Heat aren’t dominant, if he gags in the playoffs the way he did the last two years in Cleveland, he will be a laughing stock around the country—except of course on ESPN where Stuart Scott will no doubt still pay homage to The King at every turn—and he won’t be The God of South Beach.
Whether he wins or not, it was certainly amusing to read one quote from the interviewed release by, I think, Gentleman’s Quarterly yesterday. In it, James shoots back at Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, who ripped him after he left for Miami. Look, James is entitled to shoot back, Gilbert got after him in a way I have never seen an owner go after a player. While I sympathized with Gilbert and everyone in Cleveland, James is certainly entitled to tell his side.
But when James says, “I don’t think he ever cared about LeBron,” how can you not crack up?
There it is folks, the prototype 21st century athlete, talking about himself in the third person and criticizing an owner for not CARING about him? If you want to say, “I didn’t think Gilbert’s comments were fair to ME because of ------“ (you fill in the blank) that’s fine. But owners don’t care about athletes, they pay them to win. I’m always amused when I hear players and owners talk about how close they are to one another. They should talk to Knight because he’ll straighten them out. As long as the player performs the owner will ‘care,’ about them. As soon as he stops, the owner will talk about how much he cares about him while he’s cutting him or trading him. And if another owner wants to show a player how much he ‘cares,’ about him by giving him a better deal, the player will be gone the next day. He may or may not stage an infomercial to announce it. (One question: Has anyone figured out why James put on his act in Greenwich yet? Did he feel safe in a community that has lots of people in his tax bracket? Haven’t figured it out yet).
I wonder how much the Wilpon family ‘cared,’ about Francisco Rodriguez before he tore up his thumb punching out his girlfriend’s father last week? Right now they care so much they’re trying not to have to pay him ever again. They aren’t wrong to be as angry as they clearly are but I don’t think K-Rod should tell someone, “I don’t think the Wilpons ever cared about K-Rod.”
Actually maybe he should—because he’d be right.
Comments (8)
PGA Championship -- Who is going to win if not Tiger? As usual, I haven’t a clue
Wed, Aug 11 2010 01:24
| Whistling Straits, PGA Tour, Tiger Woods, PGA Championship
| Permalink
HAVEN, WISCONSIN—Yup, that’s where I am right now. Haven is an unincorporated village near Kohler which is somewhere close to Sheboygan which is, I don’t know about 90 miles from Milwaukee, which is 80 miles from Chicago.
You get the idea. At least there’s a radio station up here that carries the Brewers so I could listen to a few innings of Bob Uecker last night while driving in. Did you know they’re having C.C. Sabathia bobble-head night in Milwaukee this weekend? Seriously. He pitched there for what, 15 minutes? (Okay, he did get them into the playoffs for the first time in 26 years, I’ll grant you that).
Anyway, I don’t want to say it has been raining here at beautiful Whistling Straits (they say it’s beautiful but right now I can’t see six feet in front of me when outdoors so it is hard to say) but I think I saw a guy rounding up animals by twos a few minutes ago. Last week they had seven inches of rain here. Today they must have had at least two more. Good luck to the PGA of America keeping the players from firing directly at flags tomorrow and Friday because even if the weather does dry up as predicted the greens are going to be softer than one of John Thompson’s non-conference schedules in the good old days at Georgetown.
(Wow, I’m on a roll today, huh?).
It may have to do with being in the middle-of-nowhere in the middle of a monsoon. It may also have to do with Herb Kohler, who owns Whistling Straits telling me at The Masters when I talked about what a hike it was going to be to get to the golf course every day that, “we’ve got a couple of great places to stay practically on sight. Get in touch with my staff, they’ll take care of you.”
So I did. I got a very nice note back from the first person I wrote to saying, “Oh yes, Mr. Kohler told me all about this. Write to (this person) and she’ll take care of you.” So I did. I got a note back cheerfully listing the media hotels in Milwaukee. Since I’m a little slow to pick up on a blow-off, I wrote back one more time saying I was trying to AVOID the commute from Milwaukee. “Oh yes, the hotels here are lovely,” I was told. “They’re booked. You might try the Sleep Inn in Sheboygan.”
I compromised: I’m in Oshkosh because if I’m going to have to drive an hour and 15 minutes each way each day I’m going to at least get Marriott points out of it—dammit! I DID get lucky though and find a really nice YMCA there just a few minutes from my hotel. You know you’re in Wisconsin when you walk into the local Y and the first sign you see directs you to the ice rink.
The pool was nice (though warm) but the weird thing was no one was very friendly. Aren’t people in Wisconsin supposed to be friendly? When I lived in Indiana for six months years ago it was literally an adjustment for me—New Yorker that I am—to people being as friendly as they were. Not at the Oshkosh YMCA. When I walked out I said to the woman at the front desk, “thanks very much.” Her response was, “yeah.” And she was BETTER than most people in the place.
So, I called my friend David Maraniss, born and bred in Wisconsin, a graduate of UW and someone who lives out here almost half the year. What’s up with that? I asked.
“Oh it’s Oshkosh,” he said. “The people there aren’t friendly.”
“Why not?”
“No idea.”
So, my first mystery of the week. I got completely soaked getting from the parking lot to the media tent—I mean SOAKED—AND I left my phone in the car. At least I THINK I left my phone in the car. I could go back for it but that will kill a good 20 minutes that I don’t have.
As I say to my children, “hardest life ever lived.”
Oh, the golf tournament. Tiger Woods has hired a new swing coach—sort of—a guy named Sean Foley who has worked successfully with Hunter Mahan and Sean O’Hair. This is clearly a tryout; Woods is going to see if Foley can help him before committing to him but this has been (my guess) in the works for a while. Remember, Tiger didn’t admit he had hired Hank Haney until about a year after he hired him. If he wins this week and thanks Foley in his acceptance speech, I would think Mahan and O’Hair might want to start looking for a new coach.
Now, you might think I’ve lost it writing the words, ‘if he wins this week.’ Certainly based on last week, missing the cut is a better bet than winning. But I don’t think you ever count the great ones out. I still remember Pete Sampras sitting on a chair on court two at Wimbledon in 2002 after losing in the second round while everyone talked about the end of his career.
Ten weeks later he won the U.S. Open.
That was different. Pete was 32, and WAS near the end. Woods’ situation is completely different but I really think he hit rock bottom last week. When things get so bad that you’re laughing at yourself that’s usually when they start to get better. I think Tiger will play a lot better here. Good enough to win? I don’t know, but as I said, I never count the truly great athletes out.
Heck, even A-Rod finally hit his 600th home run.
(There I go again).
Who is going to win if not Tiger? As usual, I haven’t a clue. For the record, I did NOT pick either Graeme McDowell or Louis Oosthuizen at the U.S. Open or The British Open but neither did anyone else. I’d LOVE to see Rory McIlroy win because I like everything about his game and his attitude. Steve Stricker winning in Wisconsin would be almost too good a story to hope for.
Speaking of Stricker—if I’ve told this before forgive me—years ago, in describing his parents to me he said, “they’re the classic Midwesterners, really friendly. Sort of the anti-New Yorkers.”
I need to go talk to him about Oshkosh.
You get the idea. At least there’s a radio station up here that carries the Brewers so I could listen to a few innings of Bob Uecker last night while driving in. Did you know they’re having C.C. Sabathia bobble-head night in Milwaukee this weekend? Seriously. He pitched there for what, 15 minutes? (Okay, he did get them into the playoffs for the first time in 26 years, I’ll grant you that).
Anyway, I don’t want to say it has been raining here at beautiful Whistling Straits (they say it’s beautiful but right now I can’t see six feet in front of me when outdoors so it is hard to say) but I think I saw a guy rounding up animals by twos a few minutes ago. Last week they had seven inches of rain here. Today they must have had at least two more. Good luck to the PGA of America keeping the players from firing directly at flags tomorrow and Friday because even if the weather does dry up as predicted the greens are going to be softer than one of John Thompson’s non-conference schedules in the good old days at Georgetown.
(Wow, I’m on a roll today, huh?).
It may have to do with being in the middle-of-nowhere in the middle of a monsoon. It may also have to do with Herb Kohler, who owns Whistling Straits telling me at The Masters when I talked about what a hike it was going to be to get to the golf course every day that, “we’ve got a couple of great places to stay practically on sight. Get in touch with my staff, they’ll take care of you.”
So I did. I got a very nice note back from the first person I wrote to saying, “Oh yes, Mr. Kohler told me all about this. Write to (this person) and she’ll take care of you.” So I did. I got a note back cheerfully listing the media hotels in Milwaukee. Since I’m a little slow to pick up on a blow-off, I wrote back one more time saying I was trying to AVOID the commute from Milwaukee. “Oh yes, the hotels here are lovely,” I was told. “They’re booked. You might try the Sleep Inn in Sheboygan.”
I compromised: I’m in Oshkosh because if I’m going to have to drive an hour and 15 minutes each way each day I’m going to at least get Marriott points out of it—dammit! I DID get lucky though and find a really nice YMCA there just a few minutes from my hotel. You know you’re in Wisconsin when you walk into the local Y and the first sign you see directs you to the ice rink.
The pool was nice (though warm) but the weird thing was no one was very friendly. Aren’t people in Wisconsin supposed to be friendly? When I lived in Indiana for six months years ago it was literally an adjustment for me—New Yorker that I am—to people being as friendly as they were. Not at the Oshkosh YMCA. When I walked out I said to the woman at the front desk, “thanks very much.” Her response was, “yeah.” And she was BETTER than most people in the place.
So, I called my friend David Maraniss, born and bred in Wisconsin, a graduate of UW and someone who lives out here almost half the year. What’s up with that? I asked.
“Oh it’s Oshkosh,” he said. “The people there aren’t friendly.”
“Why not?”
“No idea.”
So, my first mystery of the week. I got completely soaked getting from the parking lot to the media tent—I mean SOAKED—AND I left my phone in the car. At least I THINK I left my phone in the car. I could go back for it but that will kill a good 20 minutes that I don’t have.
As I say to my children, “hardest life ever lived.”
Oh, the golf tournament. Tiger Woods has hired a new swing coach—sort of—a guy named Sean Foley who has worked successfully with Hunter Mahan and Sean O’Hair. This is clearly a tryout; Woods is going to see if Foley can help him before committing to him but this has been (my guess) in the works for a while. Remember, Tiger didn’t admit he had hired Hank Haney until about a year after he hired him. If he wins this week and thanks Foley in his acceptance speech, I would think Mahan and O’Hair might want to start looking for a new coach.
Now, you might think I’ve lost it writing the words, ‘if he wins this week.’ Certainly based on last week, missing the cut is a better bet than winning. But I don’t think you ever count the great ones out. I still remember Pete Sampras sitting on a chair on court two at Wimbledon in 2002 after losing in the second round while everyone talked about the end of his career.
Ten weeks later he won the U.S. Open.
That was different. Pete was 32, and WAS near the end. Woods’ situation is completely different but I really think he hit rock bottom last week. When things get so bad that you’re laughing at yourself that’s usually when they start to get better. I think Tiger will play a lot better here. Good enough to win? I don’t know, but as I said, I never count the truly great athletes out.
Heck, even A-Rod finally hit his 600th home run.
(There I go again).
Who is going to win if not Tiger? As usual, I haven’t a clue. For the record, I did NOT pick either Graeme McDowell or Louis Oosthuizen at the U.S. Open or The British Open but neither did anyone else. I’d LOVE to see Rory McIlroy win because I like everything about his game and his attitude. Steve Stricker winning in Wisconsin would be almost too good a story to hope for.
Speaking of Stricker—if I’ve told this before forgive me—years ago, in describing his parents to me he said, “they’re the classic Midwesterners, really friendly. Sort of the anti-New Yorkers.”
I need to go talk to him about Oshkosh.
Comments (10)
Isiah Thomas – setting the Knicks idiocy aside, how can the NBA and NCAA allow this?; Quick notes on Woods, MLB umpire situation
Mon, Aug 9 2010 09:02
| Isiah Thomas, NCAA, NBA, Tiger Woods, MLB, Officials, James Dolan, Knicks
| Permalink
The New York Knicks have hired Isiah Thomas as a consultant.
Sure, and Barack Obama has hired Bernie Madoff as Secretary of The Treasury.
I mean seriously, the Knicks have hired Isiah Thomas? What are they going to do next bring back Stephon Marbury as their point guard?
This just in: Dan Snyder has signed Jeff George to play quarterback.
You see, even SNYDER isn’t stupid enough to repeat absolute folly. That’s what James Dolan apparently wants to do. He is bringing back a man who brought complete shame to his franchise on and off the court; a man who has about as many friends in the world as, well, Bernie Madoff.
Isiah Thomas?
Already there’s a story in The New York Daily News that Donnie Walsh thought about quitting as team president and general manager and may yet do it. Maybe then Dolan can bring Isiah back as general manager. While he’s at it maybe he can hire Kiki Vandeweghe, who had so much success with the Nets this past season, as his coach. Or Bernie Madoff. I mean, why not?
There are so many questions that are un-answered about all this. The most obvious one is why? But there are others. For example, how in the world can either the NBA or the NCAA be okay with Thomas continuing as coach at Florida International University while being on the Knicks payroll?
Let’s look at it from the NBA side first. The league has very strict rules about contact with players who aren’t draft eligible—either by being college seniors or having declared for the draft. That means, every time Thomas talks to his team, he’s breaking NBA rules. It means every time he talks to a recruit, he’s breaking NBA rules. It means any time he talks to an opposing player—even to put his arm around him and say, ‘nice game,’—he’s breaking NBA rules.
More important though is how it can be possible that the NCAA can allow this. Remember, this is an organization that has about 426 rules that relate to ‘unfair advantages,’ in recruiting. In 1988 when I wrote, ‘A Season Inside,’ and related stories about going on recruiting visits with a number of coaches to player’s homes, the NCAA passed a rule banning any member of the media from making a home visit with a coach. Why? Because (I was told) it was considered an unfair advantage for a coach to be able to imply that he had more access to media coverage than another coach might by bringing a reporter along with him.
The NCAA also passed a rule several years ago which banned any member of the media—even one WRITING A BOOK--from being in a team’s locker room before, during or right after an NCAA Tournament game—UNLESS the locker room was opened to all members of the media. The reason: If a coach can tell a recruit that there is enough interest in his program to merit being part of a book, it is an unfair advantage.
I swear I’m not making this stuff up.
Given all that, how can the NCAA think for one second that this is NOT an advantage for a college coach to be able to say to a recruit, “you know I’m a paid consultant for an NBA team.” That implies a connection to the NBA that other coaches don’t have.
Now, you might laugh and say, ‘who the heck is Isiah Thomas going to recruit at Florida International who is even a long-shot NBA prospect?’ Are you kidding? Ninety percent of the reason he was hired by the school is because it thinks his name will attract higher-level recruits, kids who might have pro ambitions. (By the way, in high school, they ALL have pro ambitions).
Beyond that, you can’t say it’s okay for the coach at Florida International to be on an NBA payroll but not okay for the coach at Duke or North Carolina or Kansas or UCLA or Maryland—or ANYONE—to be on an NBA payroll. Coaches complain all the time that Mike Krzyzewski has an unfair advantage in recruiting because he coaches NBA players as the Olympic Coach. Imagine if The Washington Wizards hired Krzyzewski as a consultant. Do you think Gary Williams (or Roy Williams or anyone else) might have a problem with that?
Imagine if a college coach on a recruiting visit can say to a kid, “you know, the other day Pat Riley (or you pick a general manager) called me to talk about what free agents we should go after next summer.” Or if he said, “Phil Jackson was asking me who the top five college freshmen are going to be next year and I mentioned you right away.”
Okay, which is a bigger recruiting advantage: being able to drop a line like that or having some reporter sitting in the corner taking notes?
If I were an NBA owner, I’d be on the phone with every top college coach right now asking if he wanted to be my consultant. If I were a top college coach, I’d take the extra money and any recruiting advantage it might bring in a heartbeat. And just think, very few of these guys have been sued for $11.6 million for sexual harassment—and lost.
Jim Dolan is the absolute prototype of a trust fund kid who has never gotten anything right in his life and, sadly, never really needed to get anything right in his life. He’s made more stupid, arrogant moves than any owner this side of my guy Snyder. In fact, he makes Snyder look like Steve Bisciotti by comparison.
But he’s not the only one who is screwing the pooch on this one. David Stern must be on vacation. The NCAA is ALWAYS on vacation when it comes to common sense. Thomas must be somewhere laughing uncontrollably thinking, ‘you know what, you might not be able to fool ALL the people all the time, but as long as Jim Dolan is still around, I don’t need to fool anyone else.’
Amazing. Just amazing.
*****
Two notes from the weekend: Yes, I’m as stunned as anyone by Tiger Woods’ performance at Firestone. Sometimes though you have to hit rock bottom (this is a golf reference, not a life reference) before you head in the right direction. Woods may have hit it on Sunday. He was almost CHEERFUL talking to the media—after blowing them off two straight days—following his final round 77. Don’t write him off at Whistling Straits. You never write the great ones off and, whatever else he may be, Woods is still the most gifted golfer of my lifetime. And, thanks to Phil Mickelson completely gagging on the weekend (he shot one stroke HIGHER than Woods on Sunday) he’s still number one in the world.
And finally…Just happened to be watching The Athletics and Rangers on Sunday when Mike Maddux came to the mound to make a pitching change. He was stalling to give his reliever some extra time so—naturally—the home plate umpire came out to break up the mound conference. Only he never got the chance to do it really because Joe West charged over from FIRST BASE screaming at Maddux to make his move—waving his arms, yelling, the whole deal.
Question: Has anyone ever seen the first base umpire do that—WITH the home plate ump already on the mound? Second question: When will MLB crack down on umpires who think they’re God—West being the No. 1 offender? I mean please, who died and made Joe West into Doug Harvey? (whose nickname was God). Enough already.
Sure, and Barack Obama has hired Bernie Madoff as Secretary of The Treasury.
I mean seriously, the Knicks have hired Isiah Thomas? What are they going to do next bring back Stephon Marbury as their point guard?
This just in: Dan Snyder has signed Jeff George to play quarterback.
You see, even SNYDER isn’t stupid enough to repeat absolute folly. That’s what James Dolan apparently wants to do. He is bringing back a man who brought complete shame to his franchise on and off the court; a man who has about as many friends in the world as, well, Bernie Madoff.
Isiah Thomas?
Already there’s a story in The New York Daily News that Donnie Walsh thought about quitting as team president and general manager and may yet do it. Maybe then Dolan can bring Isiah back as general manager. While he’s at it maybe he can hire Kiki Vandeweghe, who had so much success with the Nets this past season, as his coach. Or Bernie Madoff. I mean, why not?
There are so many questions that are un-answered about all this. The most obvious one is why? But there are others. For example, how in the world can either the NBA or the NCAA be okay with Thomas continuing as coach at Florida International University while being on the Knicks payroll?
Let’s look at it from the NBA side first. The league has very strict rules about contact with players who aren’t draft eligible—either by being college seniors or having declared for the draft. That means, every time Thomas talks to his team, he’s breaking NBA rules. It means every time he talks to a recruit, he’s breaking NBA rules. It means any time he talks to an opposing player—even to put his arm around him and say, ‘nice game,’—he’s breaking NBA rules.
More important though is how it can be possible that the NCAA can allow this. Remember, this is an organization that has about 426 rules that relate to ‘unfair advantages,’ in recruiting. In 1988 when I wrote, ‘A Season Inside,’ and related stories about going on recruiting visits with a number of coaches to player’s homes, the NCAA passed a rule banning any member of the media from making a home visit with a coach. Why? Because (I was told) it was considered an unfair advantage for a coach to be able to imply that he had more access to media coverage than another coach might by bringing a reporter along with him.
The NCAA also passed a rule several years ago which banned any member of the media—even one WRITING A BOOK--from being in a team’s locker room before, during or right after an NCAA Tournament game—UNLESS the locker room was opened to all members of the media. The reason: If a coach can tell a recruit that there is enough interest in his program to merit being part of a book, it is an unfair advantage.
I swear I’m not making this stuff up.
Given all that, how can the NCAA think for one second that this is NOT an advantage for a college coach to be able to say to a recruit, “you know I’m a paid consultant for an NBA team.” That implies a connection to the NBA that other coaches don’t have.
Now, you might laugh and say, ‘who the heck is Isiah Thomas going to recruit at Florida International who is even a long-shot NBA prospect?’ Are you kidding? Ninety percent of the reason he was hired by the school is because it thinks his name will attract higher-level recruits, kids who might have pro ambitions. (By the way, in high school, they ALL have pro ambitions).
Beyond that, you can’t say it’s okay for the coach at Florida International to be on an NBA payroll but not okay for the coach at Duke or North Carolina or Kansas or UCLA or Maryland—or ANYONE—to be on an NBA payroll. Coaches complain all the time that Mike Krzyzewski has an unfair advantage in recruiting because he coaches NBA players as the Olympic Coach. Imagine if The Washington Wizards hired Krzyzewski as a consultant. Do you think Gary Williams (or Roy Williams or anyone else) might have a problem with that?
Imagine if a college coach on a recruiting visit can say to a kid, “you know, the other day Pat Riley (or you pick a general manager) called me to talk about what free agents we should go after next summer.” Or if he said, “Phil Jackson was asking me who the top five college freshmen are going to be next year and I mentioned you right away.”
Okay, which is a bigger recruiting advantage: being able to drop a line like that or having some reporter sitting in the corner taking notes?
If I were an NBA owner, I’d be on the phone with every top college coach right now asking if he wanted to be my consultant. If I were a top college coach, I’d take the extra money and any recruiting advantage it might bring in a heartbeat. And just think, very few of these guys have been sued for $11.6 million for sexual harassment—and lost.
Jim Dolan is the absolute prototype of a trust fund kid who has never gotten anything right in his life and, sadly, never really needed to get anything right in his life. He’s made more stupid, arrogant moves than any owner this side of my guy Snyder. In fact, he makes Snyder look like Steve Bisciotti by comparison.
But he’s not the only one who is screwing the pooch on this one. David Stern must be on vacation. The NCAA is ALWAYS on vacation when it comes to common sense. Thomas must be somewhere laughing uncontrollably thinking, ‘you know what, you might not be able to fool ALL the people all the time, but as long as Jim Dolan is still around, I don’t need to fool anyone else.’
Amazing. Just amazing.
*****
Two notes from the weekend: Yes, I’m as stunned as anyone by Tiger Woods’ performance at Firestone. Sometimes though you have to hit rock bottom (this is a golf reference, not a life reference) before you head in the right direction. Woods may have hit it on Sunday. He was almost CHEERFUL talking to the media—after blowing them off two straight days—following his final round 77. Don’t write him off at Whistling Straits. You never write the great ones off and, whatever else he may be, Woods is still the most gifted golfer of my lifetime. And, thanks to Phil Mickelson completely gagging on the weekend (he shot one stroke HIGHER than Woods on Sunday) he’s still number one in the world.
And finally…Just happened to be watching The Athletics and Rangers on Sunday when Mike Maddux came to the mound to make a pitching change. He was stalling to give his reliever some extra time so—naturally—the home plate umpire came out to break up the mound conference. Only he never got the chance to do it really because Joe West charged over from FIRST BASE screaming at Maddux to make his move—waving his arms, yelling, the whole deal.
Question: Has anyone ever seen the first base umpire do that—WITH the home plate ump already on the mound? Second question: When will MLB crack down on umpires who think they’re God—West being the No. 1 offender? I mean please, who died and made Joe West into Doug Harvey? (whose nickname was God). Enough already.
Comments (7)
Favre and ESPN made for each other; Tiger, Rodriguez talk
Fri, Aug 6 2010 09:29
| NFL, Ed Werder, Brett Favre, Tiger Woods, Alex Rodriguez, ESPN
| Permalink
Brett Favre is like the scene of a car accident. You know you shouldn’t look, that you should just keep going, but you find yourself slowing down to see if it really is as bad as it appears to be.
Of course he and ESPN are the perfect team: ESPN will report ANYTHING as long as it can claim it as some kind of news—even embarrassing infomercials like, ‘The Decision,’ which will be parodied for years to come—and Favre craves that sort of attention. Poor Ed Werder and Rachel Nichols must be paying income taxes in Mississippi by now.
Favre has now retired more times than Sugar Ray Leonard, George Foreman and Evander Holyfield. What is most amazing is he has done it without ever missing a GAME. Think about that: he cries in March; waffles in July and shows up in time to play in September. Why anyone—even the poor ESPN drones—would think for one second that he’s not going to play this season is a mystery. Heck, if the Vikings throw in an extra million or two he might fly to Washington en route to Minneapolis and take Albert Haynesworth’s conditioning test for him.
What we know about Favre after all these years and retirements and comebacks is the following: he can’t stand not being the center of attention. When he does finally have to retire in 2027, it’s going to kill him. Because as anyone can tell you, doing games or studio work on TV can’t give you the buzz or the high or the adoration that playing gives you. The one and only exception to that rule might be Dick Vitale.
We also know that this is all about BRETT, not about anyone else. Whatever team he happens to play for is just a tool to add to the legend of BRETT. What he did to the Green Bay Packers, to a town that embraced him and worshipped him, was shameful. Every year he rolled out the Hamlet act, topped in 2008 by the tearful farewell in which he told the Packers it was time for them to get Aaron Rodgers ready to play. Which they did until Brett decided about 15 minutes later he was just kidding and forced a trade to the Jets.
What he did to the Jets would have been worse except he’d only been messing with their heads for one year. He retired—again—this time by conference call and the Jets were naïve enough to take him at his word (If Favre told me the earth was round I would be very careful about sailing very far to the east or west) and put him on the retirement list. That meant he didn’t even have to wait for a trade as with the Packers, he was free to sign with the Vikings and then start his Hamlet routine with THEM.
Why does the guy get away with all this? Simple: he can play. If you can play you can lie, cheat, steal, bully, do drugs—you name it. They cheered Alex Rodriguez in Yankee Stadium the other day, didn’t they? People still cheer for Tiger Woods, whose crimes against his wife and children are not only unspeakable but were repeated over and over again. Why? Because they loved watching him play at his best and they want to see it again. Have you noticed that lately Tiger has been playing the “father card,” claiming he hasn’t been able to practice as much this year because he wants time with his kids?
My God! Do people actually believe this stuff? The answer’s yes—there will be people today who will post on this blog that who am I to question Tiger’s devotion to his kids, that people change, blah-blah-blah and his personal life is none of my business, just let him play golf.
You see, that’s the point. I didn’t bring up his kids—HE did. I didn’t talk at length about how being a father changed my life after my first child was born when I’d just been in Vegas cheating on my wife and my new-born child.
And I haven’t stood tearfully in front of assembled media and retired; then done it again and again when I was just trying to manipulate the system to get to a different team for more money. Look, there is NOTHING wrong with Favre playing until he’s 50 if he can play. Last year he clearly could still play—even though the old Achilles heel, the really dumb pass at the worst possible moment jumped up and nailed him at the end of regulation in the NFC Championship game. Even so, if you didn’t know the background, you’d have watched Favre in that game and been amazed by his guts and toughness: clearly hurt, even wobbly, he limped out there and kept moving his team down the field.
The day after that game, I jokingly wrote that the over-under on the first ESPN report that Favre was going to retire again would roll in about Wednesday. I was off by 24 hours—it came on Tuesday. Favre, ESPN reported, was “leaning towards retiring.”
Yeah, sure and there’s a new Tiger Woods who has embraced Buddhism.
Personally, I look forward to watching Favre play this season. He is a freak of nature and he makes the Vikings a viable contender. To me, the NFC North is football’s most interesting division because of the traditions involved, because a late-season game at Lambeau or Soldier Field is throw-back football (I didn’t say I wanted to go, but watching on TV is always fun) and because each city has a fascinating football culture in its own way. Yes, even Detroit.
But please don’t wake me up to tell me he’s retired again or un-retired or is getting his ankle checked or is talking to Ed Werder on a tractor or is throwing to high school kids or texting teammates. He’ll be in camp in time for the third exhibition game, which is the one the starters play at least a half in. He might play a series or two in the last exhibition game and then he’ll play all 16 games unless someone knocks him into next week at some point—which hasn’t happened since he first came into the league in 1953 so why should it happen now?
And then, 15 minutes after his last snap of the season, ESPN will report he’s leaning towards retiring. ESPN is Charlie Brown. Favre is Lucy holding the football. If you aren’t old enough to get that reference, look it up. Good Grief.
------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
Of course he and ESPN are the perfect team: ESPN will report ANYTHING as long as it can claim it as some kind of news—even embarrassing infomercials like, ‘The Decision,’ which will be parodied for years to come—and Favre craves that sort of attention. Poor Ed Werder and Rachel Nichols must be paying income taxes in Mississippi by now.
Favre has now retired more times than Sugar Ray Leonard, George Foreman and Evander Holyfield. What is most amazing is he has done it without ever missing a GAME. Think about that: he cries in March; waffles in July and shows up in time to play in September. Why anyone—even the poor ESPN drones—would think for one second that he’s not going to play this season is a mystery. Heck, if the Vikings throw in an extra million or two he might fly to Washington en route to Minneapolis and take Albert Haynesworth’s conditioning test for him.
What we know about Favre after all these years and retirements and comebacks is the following: he can’t stand not being the center of attention. When he does finally have to retire in 2027, it’s going to kill him. Because as anyone can tell you, doing games or studio work on TV can’t give you the buzz or the high or the adoration that playing gives you. The one and only exception to that rule might be Dick Vitale.
We also know that this is all about BRETT, not about anyone else. Whatever team he happens to play for is just a tool to add to the legend of BRETT. What he did to the Green Bay Packers, to a town that embraced him and worshipped him, was shameful. Every year he rolled out the Hamlet act, topped in 2008 by the tearful farewell in which he told the Packers it was time for them to get Aaron Rodgers ready to play. Which they did until Brett decided about 15 minutes later he was just kidding and forced a trade to the Jets.
What he did to the Jets would have been worse except he’d only been messing with their heads for one year. He retired—again—this time by conference call and the Jets were naïve enough to take him at his word (If Favre told me the earth was round I would be very careful about sailing very far to the east or west) and put him on the retirement list. That meant he didn’t even have to wait for a trade as with the Packers, he was free to sign with the Vikings and then start his Hamlet routine with THEM.
Why does the guy get away with all this? Simple: he can play. If you can play you can lie, cheat, steal, bully, do drugs—you name it. They cheered Alex Rodriguez in Yankee Stadium the other day, didn’t they? People still cheer for Tiger Woods, whose crimes against his wife and children are not only unspeakable but were repeated over and over again. Why? Because they loved watching him play at his best and they want to see it again. Have you noticed that lately Tiger has been playing the “father card,” claiming he hasn’t been able to practice as much this year because he wants time with his kids?
My God! Do people actually believe this stuff? The answer’s yes—there will be people today who will post on this blog that who am I to question Tiger’s devotion to his kids, that people change, blah-blah-blah and his personal life is none of my business, just let him play golf.
You see, that’s the point. I didn’t bring up his kids—HE did. I didn’t talk at length about how being a father changed my life after my first child was born when I’d just been in Vegas cheating on my wife and my new-born child.
And I haven’t stood tearfully in front of assembled media and retired; then done it again and again when I was just trying to manipulate the system to get to a different team for more money. Look, there is NOTHING wrong with Favre playing until he’s 50 if he can play. Last year he clearly could still play—even though the old Achilles heel, the really dumb pass at the worst possible moment jumped up and nailed him at the end of regulation in the NFC Championship game. Even so, if you didn’t know the background, you’d have watched Favre in that game and been amazed by his guts and toughness: clearly hurt, even wobbly, he limped out there and kept moving his team down the field.
The day after that game, I jokingly wrote that the over-under on the first ESPN report that Favre was going to retire again would roll in about Wednesday. I was off by 24 hours—it came on Tuesday. Favre, ESPN reported, was “leaning towards retiring.”
Yeah, sure and there’s a new Tiger Woods who has embraced Buddhism.
Personally, I look forward to watching Favre play this season. He is a freak of nature and he makes the Vikings a viable contender. To me, the NFC North is football’s most interesting division because of the traditions involved, because a late-season game at Lambeau or Soldier Field is throw-back football (I didn’t say I wanted to go, but watching on TV is always fun) and because each city has a fascinating football culture in its own way. Yes, even Detroit.
But please don’t wake me up to tell me he’s retired again or un-retired or is getting his ankle checked or is talking to Ed Werder on a tractor or is throwing to high school kids or texting teammates. He’ll be in camp in time for the third exhibition game, which is the one the starters play at least a half in. He might play a series or two in the last exhibition game and then he’ll play all 16 games unless someone knocks him into next week at some point—which hasn’t happened since he first came into the league in 1953 so why should it happen now?
And then, 15 minutes after his last snap of the season, ESPN will report he’s leaning towards retiring. ESPN is Charlie Brown. Favre is Lucy holding the football. If you aren’t old enough to get that reference, look it up. Good Grief.
------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
Comments (13)
This week's radio segments (The Sports Reporters, The Gas Man)
Thu, Jul 8 2010 09:51
| Sports Radio, Tiger Woods, LeBron James, Maryland
| Permalink
Yesterday I joined The Sports Reporters' Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin in the normal timeslot (5:25 ET on Wednesday's). Click the permalink, then the link below, to listen to the segment from this week. In it, we discussed today's upcoming LeBron show, the Athletic Director scenarios at Maryland and Tiger Woods.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters
--------------------
Also, I joined The Gas Man show on Wednesday evening in my normal 8:25 ET spot. This week we discussed the upcoming choice of formats for the NCAA on the new 68 team tournament, LeBron James and ESPN, the NBA in general with this summer process, and several other topics.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Gas Man
Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters
--------------------
Also, I joined The Gas Man show on Wednesday evening in my normal 8:25 ET spot. This week we discussed the upcoming choice of formats for the NCAA on the new 68 team tournament, LeBron James and ESPN, the NBA in general with this summer process, and several other topics.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Gas Man
Comments (1)
This is the week of Tiger Woods' annual golf tournament. Or is it?
Wed, Jun 30 2010 04:02
| PGA Tour, Tiger Woods, soccer, The World Cup
| Permalink
So, there is no soccer today. That means, I guess, there will be one goal fewer scored than were scored yesterday in 210 minutes of play. I realize this is where I get into trouble with the soccer-istas for not recognizing the beauty of the game; the opportunities denied; the beautiful passes that led to great opportunities that were denied by a great save.
I have no doubt that’s all true but ONE goal? Worse—as I’ve said before how can you take an event seriously that decided who advances and who does not by way of a shootout. Or, as it is technically called, penalty kicks. Whatever. The only thing sillier than a team advancing in something as important as The World Cup through a shootout is someone advancing in a shootout after a 0-0 tie for 120 minutes. Name me another sport where you can NOT SCORE for an entire game and still advance. (Don’t bring up regular season hockey, we’re talking advancing in a championship tournament here).
Anyway, enough soccer. Call me when someone scores or the U.S. scores first in a game that matters.
Back here where soccer matters most when people can scream, “USA,” this is the week of Tiger Woods’ annual golf tournament. Or is it?
The PGA Tour announced early in the year after Woods’ fall from grace that the tournament formerly known as, “The AT+T National hosted by Tiger Woods,” would be known this year as just, “THE AT+T National.” Apparently the sponsor wasn’t thrilled with seeing Woods’ name right after its name so it was removed. The tour announced—in classic tour fashion—that Tiger wouldn’t be the host because he was at that moment taking a leave of absence from golf so, given the uncertain nature of his future plans, it was best to remove his name for this year.
Of course Woods’ plans to come back and play crystallized soon after that and, apparently, his ‘people,’ went to the tour and asked to have Tiger’s name put back on the tournament title. They were told no.
That said, everything else has stayed the same. The tournament director is an employee of The Tiger Woods Foundation. The foundation still runs the event, received the bulk of the charity money from the event—even though a directive went out from the tour to its TV partners this week to be sure to emphasize that two other charities were also receiving funds—decided who received sponsor exemptions into the event and put together everything else associated with the event.
Woods has acted very much as you would expect a player host to act. He was here (Aronomink Country Club outside Philadelphia, more on that later) for media day; he took part in today’s opening ceremony; he referred in his press conference yesterday to ‘we,’ on several occasions when talking about the tournament. The general consensus is that his name will be on the event again in the future, perhaps as soon as next year, almost certainly by the time it returns to Congressional Country Club outside Washington in 2012.
All of which is fine. The tour gave this event a plum date—the middle week of the three between The U.S. Open and The British Open when most top players want to play—as a come on to get Woods involved. It helped him secure Congressional as a host site because Woods didn’t want his name on a tournament played at the tour owned TPC Avenel Farms, even after its redesign. Avenel was best described years ago by Davis Love III who said, “Avenel’s a nice course—unless you have to drive by Congressional to get there.”
Congressional was given huge money for a rental fee in 2007 and when it came time to try to extend the contract in 2008 both Woods and Commissioner Tim Finchem flew in for a meeting with club members because there was a good deal of pushback from the membership about giving up the club Fourth of July weekend. The club approved a new three year deal beginning in 2012 with a three year option on both sides—by a voting margin of 51 percent to 49 percent.
That vote took place when Woods was still a bullet-proof iconic figure. There’s little doubt if it took place today, the golf tournament would no longer be at Congressional. No one knows what Woods standing will be four years from now so it is hard to know whether either side will exercise its option then.
Of course everyone around here is claiming to know nothing. What percentage of the charity money is the Woods Foundation getting? No one seems to know. What is the likelihood his name will be back on the event next year or the year after? No one is sure. Will the tournament be at Congressional after 2014? Well, there is an option on both sides.
Aronomink isn’t a bad backup. The plan all along was for the tournament to come here this year and next because the U.S. Open was already scheduled for Congressional in 2011 and the greens had to be redone there this year to prepare for it. If Congressional doesn’t want the event back after 2014 it could come back here.
But there’s also the issue of sponsorship AT+T has four more years on its contract after this year. If it does NOT want Woods name back on the event an opt-out compromise might be reached. It’s a sure bet the tour is going to want Woods’ name back on the tournament as soon as possible. He still sells more tickets and sponsorships than anyone, regardless of the hits his reputation has taken the last six months.
That’s why the tour made no attempt to remove Woods’s foundation out of control here or attempted to take any of the charity money from the foundation. Finchem has made it clear almost since day one that he understands he still needs Woods more than Woods needs him. You can bet he’s negotiating with AT+T to get Tiger’s name back on the event for next year even as we speak.
Again, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just a tad hypocritical for the tour to act as if it, ‘took action,’ after the Woods revelations when in fact it did almost nothing. And what it did do was because the sponsor insisted on some kind of action.
Here’s one thing I’m willing to bet on: If AT+T (or another sponsor) hasn’t agreed by this time next year to put Woods’ name back on the tournament no later than 2012, Woods will find a reason to play somewhere else or not play at all while this event is going on in 2011.
That’s more of a sure thing than a 1-0 lead in soccer.
-------
John recently appeared on The Jim Rome Show (www.jimrome.com) to discuss 'Moment of Glory.' Click here to download, or listen in the player below:
------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
I have no doubt that’s all true but ONE goal? Worse—as I’ve said before how can you take an event seriously that decided who advances and who does not by way of a shootout. Or, as it is technically called, penalty kicks. Whatever. The only thing sillier than a team advancing in something as important as The World Cup through a shootout is someone advancing in a shootout after a 0-0 tie for 120 minutes. Name me another sport where you can NOT SCORE for an entire game and still advance. (Don’t bring up regular season hockey, we’re talking advancing in a championship tournament here).
Anyway, enough soccer. Call me when someone scores or the U.S. scores first in a game that matters.
Back here where soccer matters most when people can scream, “USA,” this is the week of Tiger Woods’ annual golf tournament. Or is it?
The PGA Tour announced early in the year after Woods’ fall from grace that the tournament formerly known as, “The AT+T National hosted by Tiger Woods,” would be known this year as just, “THE AT+T National.” Apparently the sponsor wasn’t thrilled with seeing Woods’ name right after its name so it was removed. The tour announced—in classic tour fashion—that Tiger wouldn’t be the host because he was at that moment taking a leave of absence from golf so, given the uncertain nature of his future plans, it was best to remove his name for this year.
Of course Woods’ plans to come back and play crystallized soon after that and, apparently, his ‘people,’ went to the tour and asked to have Tiger’s name put back on the tournament title. They were told no.
That said, everything else has stayed the same. The tournament director is an employee of The Tiger Woods Foundation. The foundation still runs the event, received the bulk of the charity money from the event—even though a directive went out from the tour to its TV partners this week to be sure to emphasize that two other charities were also receiving funds—decided who received sponsor exemptions into the event and put together everything else associated with the event.
Woods has acted very much as you would expect a player host to act. He was here (Aronomink Country Club outside Philadelphia, more on that later) for media day; he took part in today’s opening ceremony; he referred in his press conference yesterday to ‘we,’ on several occasions when talking about the tournament. The general consensus is that his name will be on the event again in the future, perhaps as soon as next year, almost certainly by the time it returns to Congressional Country Club outside Washington in 2012.
All of which is fine. The tour gave this event a plum date—the middle week of the three between The U.S. Open and The British Open when most top players want to play—as a come on to get Woods involved. It helped him secure Congressional as a host site because Woods didn’t want his name on a tournament played at the tour owned TPC Avenel Farms, even after its redesign. Avenel was best described years ago by Davis Love III who said, “Avenel’s a nice course—unless you have to drive by Congressional to get there.”
Congressional was given huge money for a rental fee in 2007 and when it came time to try to extend the contract in 2008 both Woods and Commissioner Tim Finchem flew in for a meeting with club members because there was a good deal of pushback from the membership about giving up the club Fourth of July weekend. The club approved a new three year deal beginning in 2012 with a three year option on both sides—by a voting margin of 51 percent to 49 percent.
That vote took place when Woods was still a bullet-proof iconic figure. There’s little doubt if it took place today, the golf tournament would no longer be at Congressional. No one knows what Woods standing will be four years from now so it is hard to know whether either side will exercise its option then.
Of course everyone around here is claiming to know nothing. What percentage of the charity money is the Woods Foundation getting? No one seems to know. What is the likelihood his name will be back on the event next year or the year after? No one is sure. Will the tournament be at Congressional after 2014? Well, there is an option on both sides.
Aronomink isn’t a bad backup. The plan all along was for the tournament to come here this year and next because the U.S. Open was already scheduled for Congressional in 2011 and the greens had to be redone there this year to prepare for it. If Congressional doesn’t want the event back after 2014 it could come back here.
But there’s also the issue of sponsorship AT+T has four more years on its contract after this year. If it does NOT want Woods name back on the event an opt-out compromise might be reached. It’s a sure bet the tour is going to want Woods’ name back on the tournament as soon as possible. He still sells more tickets and sponsorships than anyone, regardless of the hits his reputation has taken the last six months.
That’s why the tour made no attempt to remove Woods’s foundation out of control here or attempted to take any of the charity money from the foundation. Finchem has made it clear almost since day one that he understands he still needs Woods more than Woods needs him. You can bet he’s negotiating with AT+T to get Tiger’s name back on the event for next year even as we speak.
Again, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just a tad hypocritical for the tour to act as if it, ‘took action,’ after the Woods revelations when in fact it did almost nothing. And what it did do was because the sponsor insisted on some kind of action.
Here’s one thing I’m willing to bet on: If AT+T (or another sponsor) hasn’t agreed by this time next year to put Woods’ name back on the tournament no later than 2012, Woods will find a reason to play somewhere else or not play at all while this event is going on in 2011.
That’s more of a sure thing than a 1-0 lead in soccer.
-------
John recently appeared on The Jim Rome Show (www.jimrome.com) to discuss 'Moment of Glory.' Click here to download, or listen in the player below:
------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
Comments (7)
Fred Barakat, ACC insider, passed away last night; Comments on the comments
Tue, Jun 22 2010 10:57
| Tom Watson, college basketball, Rick Barnes, Tiger Woods, Fred Barakat, Maryland, Lefty Driesell, UNC, ACC, Dean Smith, Clemson
| Permalink
Fred Barakat died last night. He had a heart attack at a hospital in Greensboro where he had just undergone knee surgery. He was 71 and had dealt with all sorts of health issues for the past several years.
Unless you are a big-time ACC basketball fan you probably have no idea who Fred was. But he played an important role in changing the college game. He came to the ACC in 1981 as the supervisor of basketball officials after 11 years as the coach at Fairfield University. His hiring was an out-of-the-box move by the ACC. Until then, almost without exception, the men in charge of basketball officials had been former officials. They had a tendency to be very defensive about the guys who worked for them, often because they were former colleagues and friends.
There was an aura of secrecy that surrounded college basketball officials. When I was in college, I did a story on officiating in the ACC—a controversial subject then as now—and I was able to talk to all seven conference coaches. (To be fair, I got Dean Smith to call me back by saying I wanted to give him the chance to respond to what Lefty Driesell had said and I got Lefty to return my call by saying I thought he should hear what Dean had said about him. When Lefty asked me what Dean had said, I fessed up and said I’d just told his secretary that to get him to call. Lefty said, “that’s pretty good son, you got me.”).
I couldn’t get anyone from the ACC to comment on officiating. No one. That was the norm until Fred arrived. From day one, he took every call he got—from coaches, from the media, from just about anyone. “I let them talk,” Fred once told me, talking about the coaches. “I knew how they felt because I’d been a coach. Sometimes when they were done I told them why they were wrong. Other times I had to tell them they were right and we’d try to do better. But I think they always felt better because I let them talk.”
According to the coaches he was right. “You always knew Fred would listen,” said Gary Williams, who has complained about ACC officiating as much as anyone through the years. “Sometimes you’d get pissed at him because he’d defend someone you thought shouldn’t be defended but he never cut you off, he never got impatient and you knew he wanted his guys to do better the next time. That’s really all you can ask.”
When Rick Barnes was at Clemson he got so frustrated with what he saw as Duke-Carolina bias in the officiating that he flew to Greensboro armed with tapes to show Barakat what he was talking about. Barakat sat and watched all the tapes with him, then showed him some tapes of his own. “I still wasn’t happy when we were done,” Barnes said. “But I left there knowing that Fred was conscious of what I was talking about. He gave me an entire morning and never flinched.”
“I let him vent,” Fred said later.
Fred was the same way with the media. He always returned phone calls. Sometimes he called YOU if he thought what you’d written was unfair or not entirely correct. He defended his guys but he also knew they weren’t perfect. He was disliked by a number of officials because he stopped giving them ACC assignments. Officiating was very much a good old boy network into the 1980s. Fred began working with younger officials, bringing them along so they could work bigger games. Occasionally they were put in over their heads and couldn’t swim. Others did swim and became very good refs.
Fred and I had our battles but it was more over the way he ran the ACC Tournament than his work with the officials. Fred thought the tournament needed more discipline. He hired a thuggish security company run by a thug and pretty much gave them the run of whatever building the tournament was in. Sadly, that company is still working for the ACC. Two years ago in Atlanta, the guy who runs the company decided the hallway that led to the locker rooms and the interview rooms should be off-limits to the media—it’s about 100 yards wide—until the players and coaches had reached the interview room after a game. That created a five-to-seven minute delay in starting postgame interviews with people scrambling on deadline. When I asked him why he needed such a rule in such a large building he said, “I don’t, I just decided to do it.”
When I told him that was a ridiculous and arbitrary decision he looked at me and said, “What does arbitrary mean?” He was serious.
That disagreement aside, I always liked Fred. He and I had an annual routine at The Final Four (now it can be told I guess) where he would tell me on Friday who the nine referees were for the weekend. The NCAA always tries to keep the names of the refs a secret (I think it has something to do with the way the games are bet on depending on who might be calling them) and it always gave me great pleasure to tell Hank Nichols, who was then the officiating supervisor, who his nine officials were for the weekend. Fred didn’t think Nichols ever selected enough of his guys. This was one little payback for him.
It also helped me to know who the officials were when writing my advance stories: certain guys were going to ref the game one way; others in a different way.
Fred was a gentleman—always. You could disagree with him, argue with him, even tell him his security company buddy was a thug and he’d tell you why you were wrong and when it was over you’d always shake hands and vow to have a drink together soon. Coaches respected him because he’d coached and he understood their frustrations. The media respected him because he never ducked a question and those he worked with him respected him because he worked hard and was fun to work with and work for. My old friend Tom Mickle nicknamed him, The ‘Cat,’ early on and it stuck because Fred was quick and smart and sly.
I always looked forward to seeing him, especially in recent years. He had retired but still had his hand in and knew what was going on in college hoops. He was a good resource to get an expert’s honest opinion on officials, especially those he had NOT worked with because he was completely unbiased. And he always had a good story to tell, one he would tell with a big smile on his face.
I’ll miss him. So will a lot of people.
******
Two notes to some recent posters: For those of you who are bothered by my criticisms of Tiger Woods—seriously—just don’t read the blog anymore. There are enough people out there willing to kiss Tiger’s butt for anything and everything that he doesn’t need me to do it and you don’t need to get all bent out of shape reading what I think about him. As one poster said: “Tom Watson good, Tiger bad, what a surprise.”
Yup, that’s the way I feel. I don’t think Tiger’s changed even a little bit since his fall from grace—one reason he will start winning majors again soon—and I do like and respect Watson. Has he lived a perfect life as one angry e-mail pointed out? No. Neither have I and I suspect neither have you. But he’s learned as much as anyone I’ve ever met from his failings and changed considerably through the years.
Am I biased? Of course I’m biased. As I’ve written before, we’re ALL biased. I’m just more willing than some of my colleagues to admit my biases and try to be aware of them. I’ve always recognized Tiger’s brilliance as a golfer (tough to miss) and thought of him as bright and someone with great potential to do good. His failure to do that—and please don’t tell me about his foundation, that exists for PR purposes as with so many athletes—with his money, power and platform disappoints me. Sorry if you don’t like that. Again, there are plenty of places to go to read about what a great guy Tiger is.
And, as for the one comment that when I wrote “a lot of guys,” thought Tiger was acting like a baby last Thursday that I got that from other media members or The Golf Channel people? Are you kidding me? Do you watch Golf Channel? My God, Tiger walks on water there most of the time to the point where I tease people there about it. And I do NOT quote other media members. I should have written “a lot of players.” I thought that would be understood. But believe me it was players who thought he was being a baby.
So, as I said, if my being critical of Tiger is that bothersome, go on his website and find comfort there.
Second: To the poster who wondered how much I got paid for the rights to ‘A Season on the Brink.’ Let me answer that this way: If giving back the money would have kept the movie from ever being seen, I would have done it in a heartbeat.
-------
John recently appeared on The Jim Rome Show (www.jimrome.com) to discuss 'Moment of Glory.' Click here to download, or listen in the player below:
------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
Unless you are a big-time ACC basketball fan you probably have no idea who Fred was. But he played an important role in changing the college game. He came to the ACC in 1981 as the supervisor of basketball officials after 11 years as the coach at Fairfield University. His hiring was an out-of-the-box move by the ACC. Until then, almost without exception, the men in charge of basketball officials had been former officials. They had a tendency to be very defensive about the guys who worked for them, often because they were former colleagues and friends.
There was an aura of secrecy that surrounded college basketball officials. When I was in college, I did a story on officiating in the ACC—a controversial subject then as now—and I was able to talk to all seven conference coaches. (To be fair, I got Dean Smith to call me back by saying I wanted to give him the chance to respond to what Lefty Driesell had said and I got Lefty to return my call by saying I thought he should hear what Dean had said about him. When Lefty asked me what Dean had said, I fessed up and said I’d just told his secretary that to get him to call. Lefty said, “that’s pretty good son, you got me.”).
I couldn’t get anyone from the ACC to comment on officiating. No one. That was the norm until Fred arrived. From day one, he took every call he got—from coaches, from the media, from just about anyone. “I let them talk,” Fred once told me, talking about the coaches. “I knew how they felt because I’d been a coach. Sometimes when they were done I told them why they were wrong. Other times I had to tell them they were right and we’d try to do better. But I think they always felt better because I let them talk.”
According to the coaches he was right. “You always knew Fred would listen,” said Gary Williams, who has complained about ACC officiating as much as anyone through the years. “Sometimes you’d get pissed at him because he’d defend someone you thought shouldn’t be defended but he never cut you off, he never got impatient and you knew he wanted his guys to do better the next time. That’s really all you can ask.”
When Rick Barnes was at Clemson he got so frustrated with what he saw as Duke-Carolina bias in the officiating that he flew to Greensboro armed with tapes to show Barakat what he was talking about. Barakat sat and watched all the tapes with him, then showed him some tapes of his own. “I still wasn’t happy when we were done,” Barnes said. “But I left there knowing that Fred was conscious of what I was talking about. He gave me an entire morning and never flinched.”
“I let him vent,” Fred said later.
Fred was the same way with the media. He always returned phone calls. Sometimes he called YOU if he thought what you’d written was unfair or not entirely correct. He defended his guys but he also knew they weren’t perfect. He was disliked by a number of officials because he stopped giving them ACC assignments. Officiating was very much a good old boy network into the 1980s. Fred began working with younger officials, bringing them along so they could work bigger games. Occasionally they were put in over their heads and couldn’t swim. Others did swim and became very good refs.
Fred and I had our battles but it was more over the way he ran the ACC Tournament than his work with the officials. Fred thought the tournament needed more discipline. He hired a thuggish security company run by a thug and pretty much gave them the run of whatever building the tournament was in. Sadly, that company is still working for the ACC. Two years ago in Atlanta, the guy who runs the company decided the hallway that led to the locker rooms and the interview rooms should be off-limits to the media—it’s about 100 yards wide—until the players and coaches had reached the interview room after a game. That created a five-to-seven minute delay in starting postgame interviews with people scrambling on deadline. When I asked him why he needed such a rule in such a large building he said, “I don’t, I just decided to do it.”
When I told him that was a ridiculous and arbitrary decision he looked at me and said, “What does arbitrary mean?” He was serious.
That disagreement aside, I always liked Fred. He and I had an annual routine at The Final Four (now it can be told I guess) where he would tell me on Friday who the nine referees were for the weekend. The NCAA always tries to keep the names of the refs a secret (I think it has something to do with the way the games are bet on depending on who might be calling them) and it always gave me great pleasure to tell Hank Nichols, who was then the officiating supervisor, who his nine officials were for the weekend. Fred didn’t think Nichols ever selected enough of his guys. This was one little payback for him.
It also helped me to know who the officials were when writing my advance stories: certain guys were going to ref the game one way; others in a different way.
Fred was a gentleman—always. You could disagree with him, argue with him, even tell him his security company buddy was a thug and he’d tell you why you were wrong and when it was over you’d always shake hands and vow to have a drink together soon. Coaches respected him because he’d coached and he understood their frustrations. The media respected him because he never ducked a question and those he worked with him respected him because he worked hard and was fun to work with and work for. My old friend Tom Mickle nicknamed him, The ‘Cat,’ early on and it stuck because Fred was quick and smart and sly.
I always looked forward to seeing him, especially in recent years. He had retired but still had his hand in and knew what was going on in college hoops. He was a good resource to get an expert’s honest opinion on officials, especially those he had NOT worked with because he was completely unbiased. And he always had a good story to tell, one he would tell with a big smile on his face.
I’ll miss him. So will a lot of people.
******
Two notes to some recent posters: For those of you who are bothered by my criticisms of Tiger Woods—seriously—just don’t read the blog anymore. There are enough people out there willing to kiss Tiger’s butt for anything and everything that he doesn’t need me to do it and you don’t need to get all bent out of shape reading what I think about him. As one poster said: “Tom Watson good, Tiger bad, what a surprise.”
Yup, that’s the way I feel. I don’t think Tiger’s changed even a little bit since his fall from grace—one reason he will start winning majors again soon—and I do like and respect Watson. Has he lived a perfect life as one angry e-mail pointed out? No. Neither have I and I suspect neither have you. But he’s learned as much as anyone I’ve ever met from his failings and changed considerably through the years.
Am I biased? Of course I’m biased. As I’ve written before, we’re ALL biased. I’m just more willing than some of my colleagues to admit my biases and try to be aware of them. I’ve always recognized Tiger’s brilliance as a golfer (tough to miss) and thought of him as bright and someone with great potential to do good. His failure to do that—and please don’t tell me about his foundation, that exists for PR purposes as with so many athletes—with his money, power and platform disappoints me. Sorry if you don’t like that. Again, there are plenty of places to go to read about what a great guy Tiger is.
And, as for the one comment that when I wrote “a lot of guys,” thought Tiger was acting like a baby last Thursday that I got that from other media members or The Golf Channel people? Are you kidding me? Do you watch Golf Channel? My God, Tiger walks on water there most of the time to the point where I tease people there about it. And I do NOT quote other media members. I should have written “a lot of players.” I thought that would be understood. But believe me it was players who thought he was being a baby.
So, as I said, if my being critical of Tiger is that bothersome, go on his website and find comfort there.
Second: To the poster who wondered how much I got paid for the rights to ‘A Season on the Brink.’ Let me answer that this way: If giving back the money would have kept the movie from ever being seen, I would have done it in a heartbeat.
-------
John recently appeared on The Jim Rome Show (www.jimrome.com) to discuss 'Moment of Glory.' Click here to download, or listen in the player below:
------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
Comments (13)
There’s nothing like an Open at Pebble Beach; Is Tiger back?
Mon, Jun 21 2010 11:35
| Tom Watson, Phil Mickelson, PGA Tour, Pebble Beach, Graeme McDowell, Ernie Els, Tiger Woods, US Open, Shinnecock
| Permalink
Fifteen years ago, after playing his first practice round prior to the 1995 U.S. Open, Lee Janzen sat in the locker room at Shinnecock and said this: “They ought to forget all the other golf courses and just rotate this event between here and Pebble Beach. Those other places are nice, but they just can’t compare to these two.”
Janzen had already won one U.S. Open-at Baltusrol—at that point and would go on to win a second one three years later at The Olympic Club. He knows most of the Open courses that have been in the rota in the last 20 years. His point is well-taken: There’s just nothing like Pebble Beach and Shinnecock isn’t far behind. Personally, I would throw Pinehurst in every so often and perhaps Bethpage Black—but the latter no doubt reflects personal bias.
Of course that isn’t going to happen. The USGA is committed to moving the national championship around the country and to trying to find new venues. That’s why it is going to Chambers Bay outside Seattle in 2015 and last week announced it will be going to another new course, Erin Hills (in Wisconsin) in 2017. Right now, negotiations are continuing to try to go back to Shinnecock in 2018—the membership is apparently hard-balling negotiations—wanting a different (read, far more lucrative) deal than the USGA gives other places because, well, it’s Shinnecock. Stay tuned on that one.
If the USGA makes a deal with Shinnecock, that would mean Janzen would get his wish for two years (problem being he’s unlikely to still be playing Opens at that stage since he’ll be 54) since that would mean Shinnecock in 2018 and Pebble Beach in 2019.
I say all this as a way to getting to the headline from this past week: there’s nothing like an Open at Pebble Beach. The USGA should, at the very least, go there every five years the way The R+A goes to St. Andrews every five years. Even if it means I have to get on an airplane.
There were, as always, some complaints about the golf course—notably the greens, especially after Tiger Woods got finished whining on Thursday. Complaints from the players are as much a part of The Open as narrow fairways and fast greens. There will also be some who will say, ‘who the hell is Graeme McDowell and what is he doing in the same sentence as Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Tom Kite and Tiger Woods?’—the four previous winners of Opens at Pebble Beach.
Look, the stars don’t always win. Woods, Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els all had golden chances to win on Sunday and didn’t get it done. McDowell did. So too did Gregory Havret, the Frenchman who finished second. To show you how much I know I looked at the leaderboard on Saturday night and saw six names: Dustin Johnson, McDowell, Woods, Havret, Mickelson and Els and thought this: one of four guys is going to win this thing: Johnson, Woods, Mickelson or Els. So, McDowell and Havret beat all four of them. Shows you how much I know.
Of course I suspect I wasn’t alone and that’s comforting. Ironically, I walked with McDowell and got to see him up close on Thursday but it had nothing to do with any special golf acumen or ability to see the future. He was paired with Shaun Micheel and Rocco Mediate and I wanted to watch THEM play so, by accident, I ended up seeing McDowell. I’ll say this: I was impressed. He struggled at the start but stayed calm and pieced together an even par round that went un-noticed because everyone was screaming for Rocco and because Micheel ended up as one of the leaders that day after shooting 69. McDowell, who I’d never met, was also very friendly—even early on when he wasn’t playing well. I liked him.
His life is completely different now because he’s a major champion. As the first European winner in 40 years, he’s going to be a very wealthy man. Havret’s life will also be different because he’s an Open runner-up, but as I can tell you from my experience dealing with major winners and runners-up in, ‘Moment of Glory,’ the gulf between first and second is wider than The Atlantic Ocean.
Naturally, much of the talk today is going to be about Tiger Woods. The question that will be asked is this: Is he back? In my opinion—yes, he is. He was very much the old Tiger this week, on and off the golf course. He hit the ball far better than he has hit it all year and on the back nine Saturday it was all there again: putts going in from all over, the remarkable second shot on 18, the fist-pumps, the crowds roaring for him (which hadn’t happened at all before then) and that game-face of his, firmly in place as the thought crossed his mind that he could win another major.
It was electric stuff. The fact that he didn’t close the deal on Sunday changes nothing. He’s never come from behind to win a major on Sunday before so it wasn’t stunning that he didn’t do it on this Sunday. It is also difficult for ANYONE to back up a great round with another one the next day. Think about the three 66’s shot this week: Mickelson shot 66 on Friday; 73 on Saturday; Woods went from 66 to 75 and Johnson went from 66 to (gasp) 82.
He was also back to being totally-Tiger in his behavior. On the course there were the looks to the sky, the eye-rolling, the occasional slammed club when things didn’t go exactly as they were supposed to go. Off the course, more of the same. On Tuesday someone asked him a very carefully couched question about the fact that ANYONE dealing with personal troubles can find his job more difficult and he snapped, “it’s none of your business.” So much for getting back to Buddism. On Thursday he acted as if he had just discovered that the greens at Pebble Beach were poa annua and might get bouncy in the afternoon.
He said no one had been able to putt on them in the afternoon even though the three guys leading the golf tournament had played in the afternoon. Don’t bother Tiger with the facts. What’s more, the greens in 2010 were MUCH better than the greens were in 2000 when Tiger made every putt you could possibly make on them en route to his astonishing 15-shot victory. What wasn’t better was TIGER, not the greens. Or, to quote Nick Faldo, who was once asked if his problem was his putter: “No, the problem wasn’t the putter, it was the puttee.”
It wasn’t the greens either. Sure they bounced—this just in, poa bounces. On Saturday, after USGA executive director David Fay had pointed out that both Woods and Mickelson had used the word, ‘awful,’ in talking about their putting Thursday: one said the greens were awful; the other (Mickelson) said HE was awful, Woods was given a chance to say, ‘hey, I was frustrated, I didn’t make a birdie all day.’ Instead, looking away from the questioner as he always does to show his disdain, he said, “A lot of guys thought the greens were awful. I was just the only one who said it.”
Actually, a lot of guys thought Tiger was acting like a big baby.
Then on Sunday, Tiger threw Steve Williams under the bus, blaming him for several bad decisions. Look, no one likes seeing Stevie with tire tracks on his face more than me, but Tiger lost because Tiger lost. Period. Still, my guess is he will have a great chance at St. Andrews where he can keep the driver in the bag almost the entire week.
His whining brings me back to Tom Watson, whose emotional final Open at Pebble is something I will remember for a long, long time—especially the tears he shed without hesitation on the 18th green on Sunday. I know he was thinking about how cool it was to have his son Michael walking next to him at that moment; of all the memories he has of the golf course; of the ’82 Open and of Bruce Edwards.
Through my own tears I thought about Bruce telling me one reason he loved working for Watson was because he never blamed anyone but himself when things went wrong. Which is one more thing—among many—that Eldrick T. Woods might be able to learn from Thomas Sturges Watson.
-------
John recently appeared on The Jim Rome Show (www.jimrome.com) to discuss 'Moment of Glory.' Click here to download, or listen in the player below:
------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
Janzen had already won one U.S. Open-at Baltusrol—at that point and would go on to win a second one three years later at The Olympic Club. He knows most of the Open courses that have been in the rota in the last 20 years. His point is well-taken: There’s just nothing like Pebble Beach and Shinnecock isn’t far behind. Personally, I would throw Pinehurst in every so often and perhaps Bethpage Black—but the latter no doubt reflects personal bias.
Of course that isn’t going to happen. The USGA is committed to moving the national championship around the country and to trying to find new venues. That’s why it is going to Chambers Bay outside Seattle in 2015 and last week announced it will be going to another new course, Erin Hills (in Wisconsin) in 2017. Right now, negotiations are continuing to try to go back to Shinnecock in 2018—the membership is apparently hard-balling negotiations—wanting a different (read, far more lucrative) deal than the USGA gives other places because, well, it’s Shinnecock. Stay tuned on that one.
If the USGA makes a deal with Shinnecock, that would mean Janzen would get his wish for two years (problem being he’s unlikely to still be playing Opens at that stage since he’ll be 54) since that would mean Shinnecock in 2018 and Pebble Beach in 2019.
I say all this as a way to getting to the headline from this past week: there’s nothing like an Open at Pebble Beach. The USGA should, at the very least, go there every five years the way The R+A goes to St. Andrews every five years. Even if it means I have to get on an airplane.
There were, as always, some complaints about the golf course—notably the greens, especially after Tiger Woods got finished whining on Thursday. Complaints from the players are as much a part of The Open as narrow fairways and fast greens. There will also be some who will say, ‘who the hell is Graeme McDowell and what is he doing in the same sentence as Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Tom Kite and Tiger Woods?’—the four previous winners of Opens at Pebble Beach.
Look, the stars don’t always win. Woods, Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els all had golden chances to win on Sunday and didn’t get it done. McDowell did. So too did Gregory Havret, the Frenchman who finished second. To show you how much I know I looked at the leaderboard on Saturday night and saw six names: Dustin Johnson, McDowell, Woods, Havret, Mickelson and Els and thought this: one of four guys is going to win this thing: Johnson, Woods, Mickelson or Els. So, McDowell and Havret beat all four of them. Shows you how much I know.
Of course I suspect I wasn’t alone and that’s comforting. Ironically, I walked with McDowell and got to see him up close on Thursday but it had nothing to do with any special golf acumen or ability to see the future. He was paired with Shaun Micheel and Rocco Mediate and I wanted to watch THEM play so, by accident, I ended up seeing McDowell. I’ll say this: I was impressed. He struggled at the start but stayed calm and pieced together an even par round that went un-noticed because everyone was screaming for Rocco and because Micheel ended up as one of the leaders that day after shooting 69. McDowell, who I’d never met, was also very friendly—even early on when he wasn’t playing well. I liked him.
His life is completely different now because he’s a major champion. As the first European winner in 40 years, he’s going to be a very wealthy man. Havret’s life will also be different because he’s an Open runner-up, but as I can tell you from my experience dealing with major winners and runners-up in, ‘Moment of Glory,’ the gulf between first and second is wider than The Atlantic Ocean.
Naturally, much of the talk today is going to be about Tiger Woods. The question that will be asked is this: Is he back? In my opinion—yes, he is. He was very much the old Tiger this week, on and off the golf course. He hit the ball far better than he has hit it all year and on the back nine Saturday it was all there again: putts going in from all over, the remarkable second shot on 18, the fist-pumps, the crowds roaring for him (which hadn’t happened at all before then) and that game-face of his, firmly in place as the thought crossed his mind that he could win another major.
It was electric stuff. The fact that he didn’t close the deal on Sunday changes nothing. He’s never come from behind to win a major on Sunday before so it wasn’t stunning that he didn’t do it on this Sunday. It is also difficult for ANYONE to back up a great round with another one the next day. Think about the three 66’s shot this week: Mickelson shot 66 on Friday; 73 on Saturday; Woods went from 66 to 75 and Johnson went from 66 to (gasp) 82.
He was also back to being totally-Tiger in his behavior. On the course there were the looks to the sky, the eye-rolling, the occasional slammed club when things didn’t go exactly as they were supposed to go. Off the course, more of the same. On Tuesday someone asked him a very carefully couched question about the fact that ANYONE dealing with personal troubles can find his job more difficult and he snapped, “it’s none of your business.” So much for getting back to Buddism. On Thursday he acted as if he had just discovered that the greens at Pebble Beach were poa annua and might get bouncy in the afternoon.
He said no one had been able to putt on them in the afternoon even though the three guys leading the golf tournament had played in the afternoon. Don’t bother Tiger with the facts. What’s more, the greens in 2010 were MUCH better than the greens were in 2000 when Tiger made every putt you could possibly make on them en route to his astonishing 15-shot victory. What wasn’t better was TIGER, not the greens. Or, to quote Nick Faldo, who was once asked if his problem was his putter: “No, the problem wasn’t the putter, it was the puttee.”
It wasn’t the greens either. Sure they bounced—this just in, poa bounces. On Saturday, after USGA executive director David Fay had pointed out that both Woods and Mickelson had used the word, ‘awful,’ in talking about their putting Thursday: one said the greens were awful; the other (Mickelson) said HE was awful, Woods was given a chance to say, ‘hey, I was frustrated, I didn’t make a birdie all day.’ Instead, looking away from the questioner as he always does to show his disdain, he said, “A lot of guys thought the greens were awful. I was just the only one who said it.”
Actually, a lot of guys thought Tiger was acting like a big baby.
Then on Sunday, Tiger threw Steve Williams under the bus, blaming him for several bad decisions. Look, no one likes seeing Stevie with tire tracks on his face more than me, but Tiger lost because Tiger lost. Period. Still, my guess is he will have a great chance at St. Andrews where he can keep the driver in the bag almost the entire week.
His whining brings me back to Tom Watson, whose emotional final Open at Pebble is something I will remember for a long, long time—especially the tears he shed without hesitation on the 18th green on Sunday. I know he was thinking about how cool it was to have his son Michael walking next to him at that moment; of all the memories he has of the golf course; of the ’82 Open and of Bruce Edwards.
Through my own tears I thought about Bruce telling me one reason he loved working for Watson was because he never blamed anyone but himself when things went wrong. Which is one more thing—among many—that Eldrick T. Woods might be able to learn from Thomas Sturges Watson.
-------
John recently appeared on The Jim Rome Show (www.jimrome.com) to discuss 'Moment of Glory.' Click here to download, or listen in the player below:
------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
Comments (10)
Erik Compton –THE best story of this US Open
Wed, Jun 16 2010 06:00
| PGA Tour, Tiger Woods, US Open, Erik Compton
| Permalink
Well, I made it.
As it turned out, the easiest part of the day was the plane flight. Seriously though, I do not know how people who fly all the time do it. First you wait in line to get your ticket checked and then you go through the degrading experience of practically stripping to go through security.
I made two mistakes today: First I started to pick up my bag while the guy was still scanning my driver’s license. “I’ll tell you when to pick up the bag sir.”
Sorry.
Then, after taking off my shoes and my belt, I forgot to take my sports coat off (!!). I was so focused on making sure I didn’t put anything in the wrong place I flat out forgot to take off the jacket. I got snapped at for that too.
Dulles Airport used to be one of the world’s simplest. You went through security—a lot different back then obviously—and got on what they called a “people-mover,” that delivered you to your plane. Now they have a subway system ala Atlanta and you take an escalator to the center of the earth to get to it and then walk forever once you get off the escalator to get within range of your gate.
I do this stuff maybe three times a year and it makes me nuts. How do people do it three times a week? Or more?
The flight—drug-aided—was fine. Then we landed in San Francisco and boy has that airport changed. Again, I’m old enough to remember WALKING to my rent-a-car. Now you walk miles to a train, take the train through about 100 stops, wait on line forever at the rental car counter and then wait AGAIN until your car pulls up. I swear it almost took longer to get out of the airport than to fly across the country.
I made it down the Monterey Peninsula fine but then must have driven 170 miles on 17-mile drive to find the parking lot. But I found it. So I’m here. When I walked in two things happened, one nice and one predictable. The nice thing was that a number of people came up to say how much they enjoyed the ‘Caddy For Life,’ documentary last night. There were also a lot of nice e-mails saying the same thing.
The predictable thing that happened was that someone apparently asked Tiger Woods in his pre-U.S. Open press conference today if, given that one’s personal life can affect one’s performance, there was anything new on his impending divorce. (Not sure how it was phrased EXACTLY, I haven’t looked up the transcript. I’m sure it is online if anyone is curious). Tiger’s answer was apparently something to the affect of, “none of your business.”
I guess it’s not, unless HE thinks it may be affecting his play. But it is a legitimate question to ask. I honestly don’t care whether he answers it or not at this point. I just don’t want to hear from ANYONE—including the BCS Presidents and Ari Fleischer—that Tiger is a changed man.
Enough about that. My brother Bobby says I take the bait on Tiger too often, that I shouldn’t write about him or talk about him anymore until and unless something REALLY happens. I agree except for this one problem: people ASK me about Tiger all the time. A few days after John Wooden died I was on Tony Kornheiser’s show. Maybe Tony didn’t ask me about Wooden because he was afraid I’d tell the hotel lobby story again—no apologies, it’s a great story—but he wanted to talk about Tiger. I swear I don’t even remember what he was asking about but that’s where HE went with the conversation, not me.
The last month when I’ve been promoting, ‘Moment of Glory,’ how many times do you think I’ve been asked about Tiger? Granted, I have a set answer designed to steer the conversation back to the book. At least I DON’T go around saying I know Tiger well or believe I have any handle on his psyche. I don’t—neither does anyone else who does what I do for a living.
The best story at this U.S. Open, regardless of who wins the championship, is Erik Compton. No one else comes close. This is a guy who has had TWO heart transplants—one at the age of 12, the other at the age of 28 after he had a major heart attack six months earlier.
I had the chance to talk to Compton after he made it through Open qualifying—walking 39 holes that day because he had to go three holes in a playoff to earn his spot. If he has any complaints about how tough his life has been (The guy has had more than 1,000 biopsies; that’s not a typo) he doesn’t let on.
“When I had the heart attack I was trying to get myself to the hospital (he blew through a toll booth on The Florida Turnpike en route) I was honestly thinking two things,” he said. “One was that I was lucky that I had lived this long and two, I hoped I would make it to the hospital so I’d have a chance to call my parents and say goodbye.”
He was in intensive care for 30 days after the surgery and there were times, he said, when he regretted the transplant, wished he hadn’t done it. But his parents sat with him for hours and hours and his father, Peter, wouldn’t allow him to give up.
“He sat there and said, ‘you’re going to play golf again,’” Compton said. “I’d say, ‘dad, it’s over.’ He simply refused to accept that. Eventually I came to believe what he believed.”
Five months after the surgery, Compton made the cut at Disney. He’s playing this year on sponsor exemptions wherever he can get in and he’s five-for-five making cuts. But the weekends still wear him out. Walking four days in a row is still difficult. Which is what makes what he did in the Open qualifier remarkable: on Sunday he shot 82 at The Memorial and thought about not even going to the golf course for the qualifier on Monday. He went—and made it, his first trip to a major.
“Two years ago I was lying in a hospital bed wondering if I’d ever get out of that bed, now I’m playing the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach,” he said. “This is my journey this week. It isn’t about being in the same field with Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson or anyone else it’s about me getting to play in this event.”
If you really want someone to pull for this week, here’s your answer. He tees it up at 5:30 eastern on Thursday.
At the end of our conversation, Compton jokingly asked if I’d write a book on him if he won the Open. I told him, if he was game for it and wanted me as the author, we’d start Monday morning.
I wasn’t kidding.
-------
John recently appeared on The Jim Rome Show (www.jimrome.com) to discuss 'Moment of Glory.' Click here to download, or listen in the player below:
------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
As it turned out, the easiest part of the day was the plane flight. Seriously though, I do not know how people who fly all the time do it. First you wait in line to get your ticket checked and then you go through the degrading experience of practically stripping to go through security.
I made two mistakes today: First I started to pick up my bag while the guy was still scanning my driver’s license. “I’ll tell you when to pick up the bag sir.”
Sorry.
Then, after taking off my shoes and my belt, I forgot to take my sports coat off (!!). I was so focused on making sure I didn’t put anything in the wrong place I flat out forgot to take off the jacket. I got snapped at for that too.
Dulles Airport used to be one of the world’s simplest. You went through security—a lot different back then obviously—and got on what they called a “people-mover,” that delivered you to your plane. Now they have a subway system ala Atlanta and you take an escalator to the center of the earth to get to it and then walk forever once you get off the escalator to get within range of your gate.
I do this stuff maybe three times a year and it makes me nuts. How do people do it three times a week? Or more?
The flight—drug-aided—was fine. Then we landed in San Francisco and boy has that airport changed. Again, I’m old enough to remember WALKING to my rent-a-car. Now you walk miles to a train, take the train through about 100 stops, wait on line forever at the rental car counter and then wait AGAIN until your car pulls up. I swear it almost took longer to get out of the airport than to fly across the country.
I made it down the Monterey Peninsula fine but then must have driven 170 miles on 17-mile drive to find the parking lot. But I found it. So I’m here. When I walked in two things happened, one nice and one predictable. The nice thing was that a number of people came up to say how much they enjoyed the ‘Caddy For Life,’ documentary last night. There were also a lot of nice e-mails saying the same thing.
The predictable thing that happened was that someone apparently asked Tiger Woods in his pre-U.S. Open press conference today if, given that one’s personal life can affect one’s performance, there was anything new on his impending divorce. (Not sure how it was phrased EXACTLY, I haven’t looked up the transcript. I’m sure it is online if anyone is curious). Tiger’s answer was apparently something to the affect of, “none of your business.”
I guess it’s not, unless HE thinks it may be affecting his play. But it is a legitimate question to ask. I honestly don’t care whether he answers it or not at this point. I just don’t want to hear from ANYONE—including the BCS Presidents and Ari Fleischer—that Tiger is a changed man.
Enough about that. My brother Bobby says I take the bait on Tiger too often, that I shouldn’t write about him or talk about him anymore until and unless something REALLY happens. I agree except for this one problem: people ASK me about Tiger all the time. A few days after John Wooden died I was on Tony Kornheiser’s show. Maybe Tony didn’t ask me about Wooden because he was afraid I’d tell the hotel lobby story again—no apologies, it’s a great story—but he wanted to talk about Tiger. I swear I don’t even remember what he was asking about but that’s where HE went with the conversation, not me.
The last month when I’ve been promoting, ‘Moment of Glory,’ how many times do you think I’ve been asked about Tiger? Granted, I have a set answer designed to steer the conversation back to the book. At least I DON’T go around saying I know Tiger well or believe I have any handle on his psyche. I don’t—neither does anyone else who does what I do for a living.
The best story at this U.S. Open, regardless of who wins the championship, is Erik Compton. No one else comes close. This is a guy who has had TWO heart transplants—one at the age of 12, the other at the age of 28 after he had a major heart attack six months earlier.
I had the chance to talk to Compton after he made it through Open qualifying—walking 39 holes that day because he had to go three holes in a playoff to earn his spot. If he has any complaints about how tough his life has been (The guy has had more than 1,000 biopsies; that’s not a typo) he doesn’t let on.
“When I had the heart attack I was trying to get myself to the hospital (he blew through a toll booth on The Florida Turnpike en route) I was honestly thinking two things,” he said. “One was that I was lucky that I had lived this long and two, I hoped I would make it to the hospital so I’d have a chance to call my parents and say goodbye.”
He was in intensive care for 30 days after the surgery and there were times, he said, when he regretted the transplant, wished he hadn’t done it. But his parents sat with him for hours and hours and his father, Peter, wouldn’t allow him to give up.
“He sat there and said, ‘you’re going to play golf again,’” Compton said. “I’d say, ‘dad, it’s over.’ He simply refused to accept that. Eventually I came to believe what he believed.”
Five months after the surgery, Compton made the cut at Disney. He’s playing this year on sponsor exemptions wherever he can get in and he’s five-for-five making cuts. But the weekends still wear him out. Walking four days in a row is still difficult. Which is what makes what he did in the Open qualifier remarkable: on Sunday he shot 82 at The Memorial and thought about not even going to the golf course for the qualifier on Monday. He went—and made it, his first trip to a major.
“Two years ago I was lying in a hospital bed wondering if I’d ever get out of that bed, now I’m playing the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach,” he said. “This is my journey this week. It isn’t about being in the same field with Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson or anyone else it’s about me getting to play in this event.”
If you really want someone to pull for this week, here’s your answer. He tees it up at 5:30 eastern on Thursday.
At the end of our conversation, Compton jokingly asked if I’d write a book on him if he won the Open. I told him, if he was game for it and wanted me as the author, we’d start Monday morning.
I wasn’t kidding.
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John recently appeared on The Jim Rome Show (www.jimrome.com) to discuss 'Moment of Glory.' Click here to download, or listen in the player below:
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John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
Comments (6)
PED’s back in the forefront -- Tiger, Armstrong, Moss –- and no one can be certain of the truth
Fri, May 21 2010 10:12
| Santana Moss, Mark McGwire, Tiger Woods, Washington Redskins, Lance Armstrong
| Permalink
During my weekly appearance on Tony Kornheiser’s radio show yesterday, Tony asked me if I thought Tiger Woods had used performance enhancing drugs. My answer was direct: “I don’t know.”
I’m well aware of the circumstantial evidence, or as some people call it, the “PED checklist,” that seems to fit Woods in many ways. I’m also aware of his categorical denials and the fact that he was one of the more outspoken golfers in favor of drug-testing when the subject first became an issue on The PGA Tour. Since neither Woods nor anyone in his inner circle confides in me very often the only honest answer was that I simply don’t know.
After I’d finished my segment, Tony, as he was going to break, said dismissively: “’I don’t know,’ that’s a really good radio answer.”
That, to be honest, annoyed me. Tony and I make fun of one another all the time and it is almost always good-spirited. I called him during the break and asked him if he would have preferred I pretend to have inside information or that I just rip Tiger and declare him guilty of all sins—something I’ve been accused of doing (incorrectly in my humble opinion) by Tony and others in the past. Tony conceded the point and that was that.
Maybe I was sensitive to the situation because the night before, while watching TV, I heard a golf writer say this: “I know Tiger pretty good and I’m sure he never took PED’s.”
Really? If there’s one thing we know for sure about Tiger since November 27th it is that those who thought they, ‘knew him pretty good,’ were fooling themselves. I used to joke about it when Tiger would call guys by nicknames during press conferences—Tiger’s like a hockey player, he loves adding Y’s to people’s names or shortening them—and you could almost see the guys blow up with pride at the recognition.
No one—let me repeat this NO ONE—in the media knows Tiger, ‘pretty good,’ and none of us have a clue as to whether he has used PED’s or not.
All of which brings me in a long-winded way to today’s drug-accusations: Floyd Landis, four years after being stripped of his Tour de France title and vehemently denying he did any blood-doping, now says he systematically doped his blood for at least four years. He also says that Lance Armstrong and just about every American who ever rode a bike—and I think Paul Revere in prepping for his midnight ride on a horse—was involved in blood doping.
There’s also the story about Santana Moss of The Washington Redskins receiving HGH from Dr. HGH himself, Anthony Galea—who also treated Woods in this six degrees of Everyone’s on Drugs World—and everyone here in Washington being in a tizzy over that.
You know what: Santana Moss doesn’t matter. Oh he matters to the Redskins and their fans who want him on the field September 13th against the Cowboys but there’s no moral issue here for most people. The only real question on Moss isn’t so much did he do it but if he did it how big a penalty will Commissioner Roger Goodell slap on him for the transgression. Moss issued a non-denial, denial a couple days ago—a weak one at that—and Coach Mike Shanahan reverted to the, “just because he saw a doctor (who hands out HGH like jelly beans) doesn’t mean he’s guilty.”
Fine. As with all athletes in team sports, Moss may be an HGH user but he’s WASHINGTON’s HGH user and people will stand behind him—as long as they believe he can get deep on the Cowboys secondary.
Lance Armstrong is an entirely different story. Armstrong is a genuine American hero: a guy who not only recovered from cancer to win The Tour de France seven times, but has used his fame to raise millions and millions of dollars for cancer research. You can call him cocky and arrogant and a lousy husband/boyfriend or any other name you want but there’s no getting away from what the guy has done and from the people he has inspired.
On Thursday, the fifth graders at my daughter’s school put on a ‘wax museum,’ exhibition in which each kid picked an American hero and dressed up like them as if they were part of a wax museum. You pressed a button on the kid and they read you that person’s biography. My daughter was Lance Armstrong.
Which is yet another reason on a long list why I don’t want to believe Armstrong was a cheater. Landis has now become another voice claiming he was, giving details about—among other things—storing blood for Armstrong in an apartment in 2002. Armstrong has already pointed out that the race Landis claims he was in while this was going on took place in 2001, that Landis doesn’t even have his dates correct and has denied Landis’s charges. So have the other American riders accused by Landis. We’re still waiting for comment from Paul Revere.
I am skeptical of just about every person accused of using PED’s who denies using them because history shows that in almost all cases, the denier becomes the confessor at some point in time. How much would you like to bet that some time in the future Barry Bonds will write a book copping to everything, saying the pressure got to him after Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa broke all the home run records in 1998.
Of course there’s a big difference between being skeptical and KNOWING. I can’t have it both ways can I? I can’t say, yeah, Moss is probably guilty because I don’t have any feelings for him at all and he plays for a team owned by a bad guy and then turn around and say that Armstrong is innocent because he’s a truly heroic figure and my daughter chose him as her subject for the wax museum exhibition.
If only life were that easy. If only I could sit on a TV set somewhere and say, ‘I know (fill-in-the-blank) pretty good and he would never use PED’s.’ I knew Mark McGwire, if not pretty good at least a little bit and I didn’t know he was using steroids. I wondered, but I didn’t know. I DO know a lot of college basketball coaches pretty good and I can’t swear to you that any of them cheat or any of them don’t cheat. I have my suspicions but, as with Armstrong and Moss and Paul Revere, I certainly don’t know one way or the other.
What’s saddest about this is that, know-it-alls aside, none of us DOES know and therefore we end up having to wonder about just about everyone. That’s really a terrible way to have to approach sports isn’t it?
Here’s the one and only thing I THINK I know for sure about sports right now: When they run The Presidents Race tonight at Nationals Park after the top of the fourth inning, Teddy Roosevelt will lose. Then again, someone said to me last night that word is Teddy’s going to break his five year losing streak the night Stephen Strasburg makes his debut.
If that happens then there is NOTHING I know for certain about sports.
--------------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
To listen to 'The Bob and Tom Show' interview about 'Moment of Glory', please click the play button below:
I’m well aware of the circumstantial evidence, or as some people call it, the “PED checklist,” that seems to fit Woods in many ways. I’m also aware of his categorical denials and the fact that he was one of the more outspoken golfers in favor of drug-testing when the subject first became an issue on The PGA Tour. Since neither Woods nor anyone in his inner circle confides in me very often the only honest answer was that I simply don’t know.
After I’d finished my segment, Tony, as he was going to break, said dismissively: “’I don’t know,’ that’s a really good radio answer.”
That, to be honest, annoyed me. Tony and I make fun of one another all the time and it is almost always good-spirited. I called him during the break and asked him if he would have preferred I pretend to have inside information or that I just rip Tiger and declare him guilty of all sins—something I’ve been accused of doing (incorrectly in my humble opinion) by Tony and others in the past. Tony conceded the point and that was that.
Maybe I was sensitive to the situation because the night before, while watching TV, I heard a golf writer say this: “I know Tiger pretty good and I’m sure he never took PED’s.”
Really? If there’s one thing we know for sure about Tiger since November 27th it is that those who thought they, ‘knew him pretty good,’ were fooling themselves. I used to joke about it when Tiger would call guys by nicknames during press conferences—Tiger’s like a hockey player, he loves adding Y’s to people’s names or shortening them—and you could almost see the guys blow up with pride at the recognition.
No one—let me repeat this NO ONE—in the media knows Tiger, ‘pretty good,’ and none of us have a clue as to whether he has used PED’s or not.
All of which brings me in a long-winded way to today’s drug-accusations: Floyd Landis, four years after being stripped of his Tour de France title and vehemently denying he did any blood-doping, now says he systematically doped his blood for at least four years. He also says that Lance Armstrong and just about every American who ever rode a bike—and I think Paul Revere in prepping for his midnight ride on a horse—was involved in blood doping.
There’s also the story about Santana Moss of The Washington Redskins receiving HGH from Dr. HGH himself, Anthony Galea—who also treated Woods in this six degrees of Everyone’s on Drugs World—and everyone here in Washington being in a tizzy over that.
You know what: Santana Moss doesn’t matter. Oh he matters to the Redskins and their fans who want him on the field September 13th against the Cowboys but there’s no moral issue here for most people. The only real question on Moss isn’t so much did he do it but if he did it how big a penalty will Commissioner Roger Goodell slap on him for the transgression. Moss issued a non-denial, denial a couple days ago—a weak one at that—and Coach Mike Shanahan reverted to the, “just because he saw a doctor (who hands out HGH like jelly beans) doesn’t mean he’s guilty.”
Fine. As with all athletes in team sports, Moss may be an HGH user but he’s WASHINGTON’s HGH user and people will stand behind him—as long as they believe he can get deep on the Cowboys secondary.
Lance Armstrong is an entirely different story. Armstrong is a genuine American hero: a guy who not only recovered from cancer to win The Tour de France seven times, but has used his fame to raise millions and millions of dollars for cancer research. You can call him cocky and arrogant and a lousy husband/boyfriend or any other name you want but there’s no getting away from what the guy has done and from the people he has inspired.
On Thursday, the fifth graders at my daughter’s school put on a ‘wax museum,’ exhibition in which each kid picked an American hero and dressed up like them as if they were part of a wax museum. You pressed a button on the kid and they read you that person’s biography. My daughter was Lance Armstrong.
Which is yet another reason on a long list why I don’t want to believe Armstrong was a cheater. Landis has now become another voice claiming he was, giving details about—among other things—storing blood for Armstrong in an apartment in 2002. Armstrong has already pointed out that the race Landis claims he was in while this was going on took place in 2001, that Landis doesn’t even have his dates correct and has denied Landis’s charges. So have the other American riders accused by Landis. We’re still waiting for comment from Paul Revere.
I am skeptical of just about every person accused of using PED’s who denies using them because history shows that in almost all cases, the denier becomes the confessor at some point in time. How much would you like to bet that some time in the future Barry Bonds will write a book copping to everything, saying the pressure got to him after Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa broke all the home run records in 1998.
Of course there’s a big difference between being skeptical and KNOWING. I can’t have it both ways can I? I can’t say, yeah, Moss is probably guilty because I don’t have any feelings for him at all and he plays for a team owned by a bad guy and then turn around and say that Armstrong is innocent because he’s a truly heroic figure and my daughter chose him as her subject for the wax museum exhibition.
If only life were that easy. If only I could sit on a TV set somewhere and say, ‘I know (fill-in-the-blank) pretty good and he would never use PED’s.’ I knew Mark McGwire, if not pretty good at least a little bit and I didn’t know he was using steroids. I wondered, but I didn’t know. I DO know a lot of college basketball coaches pretty good and I can’t swear to you that any of them cheat or any of them don’t cheat. I have my suspicions but, as with Armstrong and Moss and Paul Revere, I certainly don’t know one way or the other.
What’s saddest about this is that, know-it-alls aside, none of us DOES know and therefore we end up having to wonder about just about everyone. That’s really a terrible way to have to approach sports isn’t it?
Here’s the one and only thing I THINK I know for sure about sports right now: When they run The Presidents Race tonight at Nationals Park after the top of the fourth inning, Teddy Roosevelt will lose. Then again, someone said to me last night that word is Teddy’s going to break his five year losing streak the night Stephen Strasburg makes his debut.
If that happens then there is NOTHING I know for certain about sports.
--------------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
To listen to 'The Bob and Tom Show' interview about 'Moment of Glory', please click the play button below:
Comments (16)
This week's radio segments:
Thu, May 20 2010 10:51
| Sports Radio, Tiger Woods, Washington Wizards
| Permalink
Yesterday I joined The Sports Reporters' Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin in the normal timeslot (5:25 ET on Wednesday's). Click the permalink, then the link below, to listen to the segment from this week. Today, we spoke a great deal about the Wizards choices with the #1 pick, including my view of what they should do, and talked a little bit of Tiger on the news of the Dr. Galea indictment.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters
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Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters
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To Paul (and others): after today, I will do my best to not write about Tiger anytime soon
Mon, May 10 2010 10:31
| Paul Goydos, Phil Mickelson, PGA Tour, Tiger Woods, The Players Championship
| Permalink
On Saturday night I went to dinner with a group that included Paul Goydos, who people on the golf tour half-jokingly refer to as, “my guy,” because we’ve been friends since 1993 and because I openly root for him to play well. In fact, I felt a little bit guilty on Sunday when he played an awful final round at The Players Championship to drop from a tie for 15th to a tie for 52nd. In the vernacular of golfers, he spent a lot of cash on Sunday.
I like Paul because he’s smart and opinionated and funny and never afraid to share his opinions. On Saturday, as is always the case when people who care about golf get together, the subject turned inevitably to Tiger Woods.
“You write about him every day,” Paul said—referring to this blog and, as always, exaggerating, if only a little bit. “You just can’t resist.”
I told him he was right—and wrong. It isn’t so much that I can’t resist, it’s that the guy simply can’t stay out of the news these days. He’s a train wreck right now that keeps barreling through barriers day after day.
If there was ever a weekend when Woods should have been an after thought, it was this past one. He did NOT miss the cut at The Players so there was no reason for people to go off on tangents about the fact that he had missed consecutive cuts for the first time in his career. He did NOT make any kind of a move on the leaders on Saturday (Phil Mickelson did). He played early, finished bogey-bogey to shoot a one-under-par 71 and was tied for 39th place.
The only thing that even approached a news-making moment came as he was walking into the scoring cabin after finishing his round. Mickelson was standing outside signing autographs when a little boy, no more than 7 or 8-years-old, actually began heckling Tiger, saying something like, “You can forget about being number one Tiger, it’s over!”
Woods kept walking. Mickelson leaned down to the youngster and said, “hey come on, be polite.”
Sunday should have been a quick and easy day for Woods: play early (10:30 tee time) finish back in the pack and head for his plane to fly to Philadelphia for a media day scheduled Monday to promote The AT+T Invitational NOT hosted by Tiger Woods (according to a PGA Tour edict) but still benefiting his foundation and still being run by his employees. (A subject for another day).
Except it didn’t turn out that way. After two early bogeys and after missing the green at the 7th hole, Woods shook hands with fellow competitor Jason Bohn and told officials he was withdrawing. His neck hurt. Bohn, who has had serious back and neck problems in his career, said later he could see Woods was in pain.
And so, the last day of The Players Championship became NOT about eventual winner Tim Clark or runner-up Robert Allenby or Mickelson or anyone else in the field. It became about the pain in Tiger Woods’ neck. When Tiger’s neck hurts, the golf world needs therapy.
No sane person would question Woods’ pain threshold. He won the United States Open in 2008 playing on a broken leg. He’s had all sorts of physical problems throughout his career and played through them. Here’s what you do question: On Friday, after a desultory 71 left him well back in the pack, someone asked Woods how his knee felt. “Knee’s good,” he answered. Asked if he had any physical issues at all, Woods said: “No. Zero. Absolutely 100 percent.”
On Sunday, when Woods was asked by a small gaggle of reporters in the locker room what had happened on the golf course his first answer—helpful as always—was, “I withdrew.”
When he finally elaborated, he said his neck hurt; that he might have a bulging disc, that he’d been playing in pain for, “quite a while,” and that the neck problem had started before The Masters. Check me if I’m wrong on this: Is that the same as, “zero, absolutely, 100 percent?”
There are two issues here: the first is the fact that Woods and his IMG/Tiger Woods Inc. spin doctors simply refuse to give straight answers to straight questions. Is golf now hockey? Is Woods afraid that Mickelson will check him into a tree if he thinks his neck is sore? Maybe Woods should have told people Sunday he has “an upper body injury.”
If he was hurt before The Masters why did he play The Masters? If the pain was getting worse, why continue in a tournament that really means nothing to him? Neck injuries are a serious deal. They can ruin a golfer’s career (Jerry Pate comes to mind). Why mess with it at all if there was ANY kind of pain? Let’s not go down the path of, “he wanted to finish what he started,” because there isn’t a soul alive who is going to blame a player—especially one who is injury-prone to begin with—for being careful about an injury like this one.
If Woods would just answer direct questions directly—no one is sure to this moment whether Hank Haney is fired or not fired, his denial was a non-denial denial earlier in the week; no one knows if the clubs on e-bay were his or not although every equipment rep in golf swears that the ex-Titleist rep who put them up for sale is telling the truth—we all wouldn’t be left to speculate on what this means or what that means. Reading Tiger-talk right now is like plowing through a Latin test.
Of course there are far more important questions going on here. Does his neck need a massage or surgery? Should he even be trying to play golf right now? After Tiger had Left The Building on Sunday surrounded by EIGHT sheriff’s deputies plus his usual posse, I talked to a couple of players—no, Goydos wasn’t one of them—who have gone through a divorce.
Both made the same point: It took them at least a year, maybe longer, to even think about focusing on golf. The circumstances of the divorce don’t matter; nor does it matter who is to blame for it. “All you can think about,” said one, “is what’s going to happen to my children? Even Tiger Woods HAS to be affected by that.”
Maybe Woods’ neck will leave him no choice but to take an extended break from golf. Or maybe he’ll play more often than he planned—something he hinted at Friday while telling people he was 100 percent healthy—to get ready for the U.S. Open. But one thing one player said on Sunday resonates with me: “When he said at that first public appearance that it would be a while before he played golf I thought, ‘that’s the right play.’ I wish he’d stuck to that.”
Right now, Woods may be wishing that too. Of course he’s not about to tell us what he’s wishing or thinking anytime soon.
Paul, my apologies. I will try my best not to write about Tiger again anytime soon. But you might want to talk to HIM too. Believe me, I’d have rather have written about Dallas Braden’s perfect game today.
***
Several people asked last week for more details on, ‘Moment of Glory,” which will officially be published on Thursday. I will write about it later in the week but it is on sale online right now and at most bookstores. One person raised a question: How have most of my subjects reacted to the books I’ve written. I can honestly say that, with the notable exception of Bob Knight, I think just about everyone I’ve written about in detail has either been happy with what I’ve written or believed what I wrote was fair, even if some of the facts were painful. (The Navy kids reading about their 14-13 loss to Army in the final chapters of ‘A Civil War,’ come to mind). As for the response to a book that meant the most to me it would almost certainly be the note Tom Watson sent me after I had sent him an early copy of ‘Caddy For Life.’ (Which by the way will air as a documentary on Golf Channel on June 15th).
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John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and will be in bookstores nationwide May 13th. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
I like Paul because he’s smart and opinionated and funny and never afraid to share his opinions. On Saturday, as is always the case when people who care about golf get together, the subject turned inevitably to Tiger Woods.
“You write about him every day,” Paul said—referring to this blog and, as always, exaggerating, if only a little bit. “You just can’t resist.”
I told him he was right—and wrong. It isn’t so much that I can’t resist, it’s that the guy simply can’t stay out of the news these days. He’s a train wreck right now that keeps barreling through barriers day after day.
If there was ever a weekend when Woods should have been an after thought, it was this past one. He did NOT miss the cut at The Players so there was no reason for people to go off on tangents about the fact that he had missed consecutive cuts for the first time in his career. He did NOT make any kind of a move on the leaders on Saturday (Phil Mickelson did). He played early, finished bogey-bogey to shoot a one-under-par 71 and was tied for 39th place.
The only thing that even approached a news-making moment came as he was walking into the scoring cabin after finishing his round. Mickelson was standing outside signing autographs when a little boy, no more than 7 or 8-years-old, actually began heckling Tiger, saying something like, “You can forget about being number one Tiger, it’s over!”
Woods kept walking. Mickelson leaned down to the youngster and said, “hey come on, be polite.”
Sunday should have been a quick and easy day for Woods: play early (10:30 tee time) finish back in the pack and head for his plane to fly to Philadelphia for a media day scheduled Monday to promote The AT+T Invitational NOT hosted by Tiger Woods (according to a PGA Tour edict) but still benefiting his foundation and still being run by his employees. (A subject for another day).
Except it didn’t turn out that way. After two early bogeys and after missing the green at the 7th hole, Woods shook hands with fellow competitor Jason Bohn and told officials he was withdrawing. His neck hurt. Bohn, who has had serious back and neck problems in his career, said later he could see Woods was in pain.
And so, the last day of The Players Championship became NOT about eventual winner Tim Clark or runner-up Robert Allenby or Mickelson or anyone else in the field. It became about the pain in Tiger Woods’ neck. When Tiger’s neck hurts, the golf world needs therapy.
No sane person would question Woods’ pain threshold. He won the United States Open in 2008 playing on a broken leg. He’s had all sorts of physical problems throughout his career and played through them. Here’s what you do question: On Friday, after a desultory 71 left him well back in the pack, someone asked Woods how his knee felt. “Knee’s good,” he answered. Asked if he had any physical issues at all, Woods said: “No. Zero. Absolutely 100 percent.”
On Sunday, when Woods was asked by a small gaggle of reporters in the locker room what had happened on the golf course his first answer—helpful as always—was, “I withdrew.”
When he finally elaborated, he said his neck hurt; that he might have a bulging disc, that he’d been playing in pain for, “quite a while,” and that the neck problem had started before The Masters. Check me if I’m wrong on this: Is that the same as, “zero, absolutely, 100 percent?”
There are two issues here: the first is the fact that Woods and his IMG/Tiger Woods Inc. spin doctors simply refuse to give straight answers to straight questions. Is golf now hockey? Is Woods afraid that Mickelson will check him into a tree if he thinks his neck is sore? Maybe Woods should have told people Sunday he has “an upper body injury.”
If he was hurt before The Masters why did he play The Masters? If the pain was getting worse, why continue in a tournament that really means nothing to him? Neck injuries are a serious deal. They can ruin a golfer’s career (Jerry Pate comes to mind). Why mess with it at all if there was ANY kind of pain? Let’s not go down the path of, “he wanted to finish what he started,” because there isn’t a soul alive who is going to blame a player—especially one who is injury-prone to begin with—for being careful about an injury like this one.
If Woods would just answer direct questions directly—no one is sure to this moment whether Hank Haney is fired or not fired, his denial was a non-denial denial earlier in the week; no one knows if the clubs on e-bay were his or not although every equipment rep in golf swears that the ex-Titleist rep who put them up for sale is telling the truth—we all wouldn’t be left to speculate on what this means or what that means. Reading Tiger-talk right now is like plowing through a Latin test.
Of course there are far more important questions going on here. Does his neck need a massage or surgery? Should he even be trying to play golf right now? After Tiger had Left The Building on Sunday surrounded by EIGHT sheriff’s deputies plus his usual posse, I talked to a couple of players—no, Goydos wasn’t one of them—who have gone through a divorce.
Both made the same point: It took them at least a year, maybe longer, to even think about focusing on golf. The circumstances of the divorce don’t matter; nor does it matter who is to blame for it. “All you can think about,” said one, “is what’s going to happen to my children? Even Tiger Woods HAS to be affected by that.”
Maybe Woods’ neck will leave him no choice but to take an extended break from golf. Or maybe he’ll play more often than he planned—something he hinted at Friday while telling people he was 100 percent healthy—to get ready for the U.S. Open. But one thing one player said on Sunday resonates with me: “When he said at that first public appearance that it would be a while before he played golf I thought, ‘that’s the right play.’ I wish he’d stuck to that.”
Right now, Woods may be wishing that too. Of course he’s not about to tell us what he’s wishing or thinking anytime soon.
Paul, my apologies. I will try my best not to write about Tiger again anytime soon. But you might want to talk to HIM too. Believe me, I’d have rather have written about Dallas Braden’s perfect game today.
***
Several people asked last week for more details on, ‘Moment of Glory,” which will officially be published on Thursday. I will write about it later in the week but it is on sale online right now and at most bookstores. One person raised a question: How have most of my subjects reacted to the books I’ve written. I can honestly say that, with the notable exception of Bob Knight, I think just about everyone I’ve written about in detail has either been happy with what I’ve written or believed what I wrote was fair, even if some of the facts were painful. (The Navy kids reading about their 14-13 loss to Army in the final chapters of ‘A Civil War,’ come to mind). As for the response to a book that meant the most to me it would almost certainly be the note Tom Watson sent me after I had sent him an early copy of ‘Caddy For Life.’ (Which by the way will air as a documentary on Golf Channel on June 15th).
----------------------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and will be in bookstores nationwide May 13th. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
Comments (8)
Tiger still draws all eyes, but to make quick judgment on his game right now is silly
Fri, May 7 2010 11:47
| Phil Mickelson, PGA Tour, Tiger Woods, The Golf Channel, Rory McIlroy
| Permalink
There’s a golf tournament going on this week—an important one. It isn’t a major but it is one that players do care about; in part because they are playing for a lot of money; in part because a win carries a five year exemption on tour (as opposed to two years for other non-majors); in part because it is called “The Players,” and makes the tour a lot of money.
But I’m not sure anyone who isn’t a golf geek really cares that much. Oh sure, the whole world wants to know everything that Tiger Woods does all day, every day. But he could be playing in Charlotte, the way he was last week, or in Milwaukee—where he played his first tournament as a pro—and the same would be true.
There might be a little bit of extra interest in Phil Mickelson because, at least in theory, he has a chance to pass Woods as the world’s number one player this week. If Mickelson wins here and Woods finishes outside the top five, Mickelson will go to No. 1 in the world rankings.
Seriously though, if you aren’t a golf geek, do you really care about that? You might look up and take note of it, but if you stop and think about the fact that Woods has only played in three tournaments this year and his life is a complete mess, what’s the big deal? What Mickelson has done that’s truly important this year is win The Masters.
The next truly important moment in golf will come at Pebble Beach next month at the U.S. Open. If Woods doesn’t play well THERE, a place where he won the Open by fifteen shots 10 years ago, then it will be time to begin wondering if he’s going to make it back close to the level he was at as recently as two years ago when he won the Open while playing on one leg at Torrey Pines.
For now though, all the analysis of his swing and his mindset and his game and his life is kind of moot. As he correctly pointed out after shooting a two-under-par 70 on Thursday, he had only played six rounds of golf this year before arriving at The Players. So, to make any kind of judgment on his game RIGHT NOW, is just plain silly. Sure he was awful in Charlotte last week—all that does is prove that he’s human; that the carnage he has left in his wake the last six months has had some affect on him.
This week there are all sorts of rumors going around that he’s fired Hank Haney, his swing coach. It was the talk of the range on Wednesday and Woods’ denials don’t sound all that convincing. Maybe he hasn’t fired Haney, but technically he never fired Butch Harmon back in 2002. He just stopped working with him during The British Open and hasn’t worked with him since.
There was also a Woods-Haney joke making the rounds on the range on Thursday: “If Tiger keeps working with Hank for another few months, his swing will look like Ray Romano’s.” For those of you who aren’t Golf Channel geeks, Haney is involved in a show in which he is trying to coach Romano to the point where he can break 80. The good news in Charlotte was that one of his clients—Woods—did break 80, shooting 79 on Friday.
What is remarkable to me is the continuing fascination with all things Tiger. Maybe nowadays it is just people rubbernecking at the scene of a car accident but no one can seem to take their eyes off of Woods—regardless of how he’s playing or what he happens to be doing. Vanity Fair just came out with a SECOND story on Tiger’s various trysts (the first one did some serious damage to Mark Steinberg’s, “I know nothing,” claims not to mention to the late Earl Woods) and people are acting like the news that Woods is getting a divorce is going to be news.
It will be, sort of along the lines of tomorrow being Saturday.
On Thursday, I was on The Golf Channel set as part of their, “Live From,” show. We went into a break and the plan was to come back and talk about, I think, Vijay Singh, who has dropped to No. 42 in the world and could actually be in jeopardy of dropping out of the top 50 between now and May 23d—which would knock him out of the U.S. Open for the first time since 1994.
Suddenly, mid-break, the producer’s voice came into our ears saying, “Change of plan guys. We have video of Tiger walking in from the parking lot so we’re going to that.”
Yup, Tiger walking in from the parking lot. Look, I get why Golf Channel wants to cover every move he makes. It is what people want to see. I may have written this before but Tommy Roy, who has produced golf on NBC forever, once told me that a survey he’d seen showed that more golf fans would prefer to see Tiger Woods leaning on his bag than another golfer hitting a shot.
Last week in Charlotte, with Mickelson in contention, with Rory McIlroy playing a spectacular round of golf, ratings on CBS were down 37 percent from a year ago—when Woods was in contention. To we golf geeks that’s unfathomable. I sit here looking at the names in the field here at ‘The Players,’ and I can literally find 100 stories I find interesting. Most people would have little interest in at least 99 of them.
The Players, as I said, is a big-time tournament. But if Henrik Stenson defends his title or if my buddy Paul Goydos somehow wins or if Jim Furyk wins—or if any of the 154 players in the field not named Woods or Mickelson wins—very few people will remember two weeks from now who the champion was in 2010.
But they’ll know there were Tiger Woods-used golf clubs on E-Bay this week. There’s no sense rolling our eyes about any of that, it’s just the way of the world. It was before November 27, 2009, it is now and it is going to be for a long time to come.
Tiger may not be the hero he used to be but he’s still the guy no one can take their eyes off.
-----------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and will be in bookstores nationwide May 13th. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
But I’m not sure anyone who isn’t a golf geek really cares that much. Oh sure, the whole world wants to know everything that Tiger Woods does all day, every day. But he could be playing in Charlotte, the way he was last week, or in Milwaukee—where he played his first tournament as a pro—and the same would be true.
There might be a little bit of extra interest in Phil Mickelson because, at least in theory, he has a chance to pass Woods as the world’s number one player this week. If Mickelson wins here and Woods finishes outside the top five, Mickelson will go to No. 1 in the world rankings.
Seriously though, if you aren’t a golf geek, do you really care about that? You might look up and take note of it, but if you stop and think about the fact that Woods has only played in three tournaments this year and his life is a complete mess, what’s the big deal? What Mickelson has done that’s truly important this year is win The Masters.
The next truly important moment in golf will come at Pebble Beach next month at the U.S. Open. If Woods doesn’t play well THERE, a place where he won the Open by fifteen shots 10 years ago, then it will be time to begin wondering if he’s going to make it back close to the level he was at as recently as two years ago when he won the Open while playing on one leg at Torrey Pines.
For now though, all the analysis of his swing and his mindset and his game and his life is kind of moot. As he correctly pointed out after shooting a two-under-par 70 on Thursday, he had only played six rounds of golf this year before arriving at The Players. So, to make any kind of judgment on his game RIGHT NOW, is just plain silly. Sure he was awful in Charlotte last week—all that does is prove that he’s human; that the carnage he has left in his wake the last six months has had some affect on him.
This week there are all sorts of rumors going around that he’s fired Hank Haney, his swing coach. It was the talk of the range on Wednesday and Woods’ denials don’t sound all that convincing. Maybe he hasn’t fired Haney, but technically he never fired Butch Harmon back in 2002. He just stopped working with him during The British Open and hasn’t worked with him since.
There was also a Woods-Haney joke making the rounds on the range on Thursday: “If Tiger keeps working with Hank for another few months, his swing will look like Ray Romano’s.” For those of you who aren’t Golf Channel geeks, Haney is involved in a show in which he is trying to coach Romano to the point where he can break 80. The good news in Charlotte was that one of his clients—Woods—did break 80, shooting 79 on Friday.
What is remarkable to me is the continuing fascination with all things Tiger. Maybe nowadays it is just people rubbernecking at the scene of a car accident but no one can seem to take their eyes off of Woods—regardless of how he’s playing or what he happens to be doing. Vanity Fair just came out with a SECOND story on Tiger’s various trysts (the first one did some serious damage to Mark Steinberg’s, “I know nothing,” claims not to mention to the late Earl Woods) and people are acting like the news that Woods is getting a divorce is going to be news.
It will be, sort of along the lines of tomorrow being Saturday.
On Thursday, I was on The Golf Channel set as part of their, “Live From,” show. We went into a break and the plan was to come back and talk about, I think, Vijay Singh, who has dropped to No. 42 in the world and could actually be in jeopardy of dropping out of the top 50 between now and May 23d—which would knock him out of the U.S. Open for the first time since 1994.
Suddenly, mid-break, the producer’s voice came into our ears saying, “Change of plan guys. We have video of Tiger walking in from the parking lot so we’re going to that.”
Yup, Tiger walking in from the parking lot. Look, I get why Golf Channel wants to cover every move he makes. It is what people want to see. I may have written this before but Tommy Roy, who has produced golf on NBC forever, once told me that a survey he’d seen showed that more golf fans would prefer to see Tiger Woods leaning on his bag than another golfer hitting a shot.
Last week in Charlotte, with Mickelson in contention, with Rory McIlroy playing a spectacular round of golf, ratings on CBS were down 37 percent from a year ago—when Woods was in contention. To we golf geeks that’s unfathomable. I sit here looking at the names in the field here at ‘The Players,’ and I can literally find 100 stories I find interesting. Most people would have little interest in at least 99 of them.
The Players, as I said, is a big-time tournament. But if Henrik Stenson defends his title or if my buddy Paul Goydos somehow wins or if Jim Furyk wins—or if any of the 154 players in the field not named Woods or Mickelson wins—very few people will remember two weeks from now who the champion was in 2010.
But they’ll know there were Tiger Woods-used golf clubs on E-Bay this week. There’s no sense rolling our eyes about any of that, it’s just the way of the world. It was before November 27, 2009, it is now and it is going to be for a long time to come.
Tiger may not be the hero he used to be but he’s still the guy no one can take their eyes off.
-----------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and will be in bookstores nationwide May 13th. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases
Comments (4)
Rory McIlroy’s bravura performance; Tennis schedule reminds me of a player in the past
Mon, May 3 2010 11:18
| Paul Goydos, Angel Cabrera, Andrei Chesnokov, Phil Mickelson, PGA Tour, Jim Furyk, Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Tennis, Bud Collins
| Permalink
I’m not sure who to write about this morning: Rory McIlroy or Andrei Chesnokov.
Andrei Chesnokov?
Let me come back to him in a minute. It is impossible to ignore McIlroy this morning given his performance on Sunday at The Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte. Looking up at a leaderboard that included Phil Mickelson, Davis Love III, Angel Cabrera and Jim Furyk—to name a few—McIlroy went out on Sunday and shot 62—finishing his round with six straight 3’s—to win The Quail Hollow Championship by four shots over Mickelson and five over Cabrera.
It was a bravura performance, climaxing with a 40-foot birdie putt on 18 that was never going anywhere but the middle of the hole almost from the moment it left his putter. I just finished writing my weekly Golf Channel essay and the thing I kept coming back to wasn’t so much the brilliant golf but the absolute joy McIlroy clearly brings to the golf course.
The kid turns 21 on Tuesday, which means he’s about the same age that Tiger Woods and Mickelson were when they burst onto the scene—Mickelson by winning a tournament while still a junior in college; Woods by winning twice on tour at the end of 1996 a few months before his 21st birthday.
Woods was always a golf prodigy, a genius on the golf course—and still is in spite of his performance this past week—but one thing he never was going to be was fun. Mickelson tried a little harder. He’s always made a point of signing autographs and smiling back at people but it has never been something that has come naturally to him.
This kid has a little Arnold Palmer in him. He’s got all the shots but he’s also got a natural way of connecting with the fans that you rarely see on the golf course. A lot of players complain that it is unfair for fans to expect them to smile or acknowledge them when they’re working—which is what they’re doing on the golf course. I get that. But when a player is naturally inclined to be that way it is all the better for him, for the fans and for the game.
McIlroy walking up 18 on Sunday applauding for the fans was cool. It also was natural, not concocted in any way. Fans like him; other players like him; the media likes him and he can flat out play. If Tom Watson doesn’t win the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach next month, a McIlroy victory might be the next best thing. That’s no knock on Mickelson by the way, it would just be a fresh new story line.
Okay, onto Chesnokov. Unless you are a real tennis geek you have no idea who I’m talking about. In fact, unless you are a real tennis geek you are probably wondering why in the world tennis would be on my mind at all right now. I do keep up with the tour, at least enough to know who is winning week-to-week. This past week, the men were in Rome for what was once known as The Italian Open. Now, thanks to some marketing silliness it is called The Rome Masters or some such thing. Rafael Nadal won for, I think the sixth time.
When I was a kid, NBC used to televise The Italian Open, The French Open and Wimbledon. Only Wimbledon was actually on live, but I watched raptly anyway. Bud Collins called it, “The Old World Triple.” I still remember Vitas Gerulaitis winning The Italian one year and how big a deal it was back then.
I dreamed back then of someday doing the “Old World Triple,” in the same year. Not only did I get to do it in 1990 when I was researching, “Hard Courts,” I got to do it while hanging out with Bud a lot of the time which only made it about 1,000 times more fun. Bud believes he is part-Italian and traveling around Rome with him was a little bit like being with Vito Corleone at Connie’s wedding—except Luca Brasi was nowhere in sight.
My fondest memories of that week in Rome though center on Chesnokov—who liked to be called Chezzy. He was then a solid clay court player, the first really good player to come out of the Soviet Union in years. He liked to pretend he didn’t speak much English but in truth he spoke it about as well as I did. He and Natalia Zvereva were in a battle back then with the Soviet Tennis Federation about purses. The federation was getting about 90 percent of the money they were making on tour. Chezzy and Zvereva didn’t see that as fair.
It took a while for me to get Chezzy to trust me—which was understandable. At first when I told him I was writing a book on life on the tennis tour, he was suspicious. “Why do you want to talk to me?” he asked. “I never win anything important.”
He never did win a major, but he had beaten Mats Wilander at The French in 1986—the first time I encountered him—and had been in the French semis in 1989, losing in four sets to Michael Chang. He won at Monte Carlo in 1990 and made it to the Italian final a couple of weeks later. What was amazing was HOW he made it to the final. He kept losing the first set, falling behind in the second and then rallying—somehow—to win. The matches took longer and longer--Chezzy was a classic stay-back clay-courter who simply wore you down—but he kept winning.
Every time he was asked in a press conference what he was going to do to get ready for his next match he would smile and say, “I go to disco.”
He was joking. He was very serious about his tennis, but not about much else. When I finally got him to sit down and talk to me over a long breakfast that week, he talked in detail about how he had fallen in love with the game as a kid and had known early on that it was his ticket out of a rudimentary job in Moscow.
“I know this because of the Olympics,” he said. “Once they say tennis will be in Olympics (1988) I know the government will put serious money into the tennis programs and I will have a chance. If not for the Olympics, they don’t let us travel to compete.”
I like to think that Chezzy and I found common ground that year. He became one of the non-star stars of “Hard Courts,” much the same way Paul Goydos did in “A Good Walk Spoiled.” Unlike with Goydos, who I am still friends with and see all the time on tour, I haven’t seen Chezzy for years. There aren’t that many people I’d like to sit down with at length again from my years covering tennis, but Chezzy would be right near the top of that short list.
He was a very good player. And a better guy, though I doubt he ever did see the inside of a disco.
Andrei Chesnokov?
Let me come back to him in a minute. It is impossible to ignore McIlroy this morning given his performance on Sunday at The Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte. Looking up at a leaderboard that included Phil Mickelson, Davis Love III, Angel Cabrera and Jim Furyk—to name a few—McIlroy went out on Sunday and shot 62—finishing his round with six straight 3’s—to win The Quail Hollow Championship by four shots over Mickelson and five over Cabrera.
It was a bravura performance, climaxing with a 40-foot birdie putt on 18 that was never going anywhere but the middle of the hole almost from the moment it left his putter. I just finished writing my weekly Golf Channel essay and the thing I kept coming back to wasn’t so much the brilliant golf but the absolute joy McIlroy clearly brings to the golf course.
The kid turns 21 on Tuesday, which means he’s about the same age that Tiger Woods and Mickelson were when they burst onto the scene—Mickelson by winning a tournament while still a junior in college; Woods by winning twice on tour at the end of 1996 a few months before his 21st birthday.
Woods was always a golf prodigy, a genius on the golf course—and still is in spite of his performance this past week—but one thing he never was going to be was fun. Mickelson tried a little harder. He’s always made a point of signing autographs and smiling back at people but it has never been something that has come naturally to him.
This kid has a little Arnold Palmer in him. He’s got all the shots but he’s also got a natural way of connecting with the fans that you rarely see on the golf course. A lot of players complain that it is unfair for fans to expect them to smile or acknowledge them when they’re working—which is what they’re doing on the golf course. I get that. But when a player is naturally inclined to be that way it is all the better for him, for the fans and for the game.
McIlroy walking up 18 on Sunday applauding for the fans was cool. It also was natural, not concocted in any way. Fans like him; other players like him; the media likes him and he can flat out play. If Tom Watson doesn’t win the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach next month, a McIlroy victory might be the next best thing. That’s no knock on Mickelson by the way, it would just be a fresh new story line.
Okay, onto Chesnokov. Unless you are a real tennis geek you have no idea who I’m talking about. In fact, unless you are a real tennis geek you are probably wondering why in the world tennis would be on my mind at all right now. I do keep up with the tour, at least enough to know who is winning week-to-week. This past week, the men were in Rome for what was once known as The Italian Open. Now, thanks to some marketing silliness it is called The Rome Masters or some such thing. Rafael Nadal won for, I think the sixth time.
When I was a kid, NBC used to televise The Italian Open, The French Open and Wimbledon. Only Wimbledon was actually on live, but I watched raptly anyway. Bud Collins called it, “The Old World Triple.” I still remember Vitas Gerulaitis winning The Italian one year and how big a deal it was back then.
I dreamed back then of someday doing the “Old World Triple,” in the same year. Not only did I get to do it in 1990 when I was researching, “Hard Courts,” I got to do it while hanging out with Bud a lot of the time which only made it about 1,000 times more fun. Bud believes he is part-Italian and traveling around Rome with him was a little bit like being with Vito Corleone at Connie’s wedding—except Luca Brasi was nowhere in sight.
My fondest memories of that week in Rome though center on Chesnokov—who liked to be called Chezzy. He was then a solid clay court player, the first really good player to come out of the Soviet Union in years. He liked to pretend he didn’t speak much English but in truth he spoke it about as well as I did. He and Natalia Zvereva were in a battle back then with the Soviet Tennis Federation about purses. The federation was getting about 90 percent of the money they were making on tour. Chezzy and Zvereva didn’t see that as fair.
It took a while for me to get Chezzy to trust me—which was understandable. At first when I told him I was writing a book on life on the tennis tour, he was suspicious. “Why do you want to talk to me?” he asked. “I never win anything important.”
He never did win a major, but he had beaten Mats Wilander at The French in 1986—the first time I encountered him—and had been in the French semis in 1989, losing in four sets to Michael Chang. He won at Monte Carlo in 1990 and made it to the Italian final a couple of weeks later. What was amazing was HOW he made it to the final. He kept losing the first set, falling behind in the second and then rallying—somehow—to win. The matches took longer and longer--Chezzy was a classic stay-back clay-courter who simply wore you down—but he kept winning.
Every time he was asked in a press conference what he was going to do to get ready for his next match he would smile and say, “I go to disco.”
He was joking. He was very serious about his tennis, but not about much else. When I finally got him to sit down and talk to me over a long breakfast that week, he talked in detail about how he had fallen in love with the game as a kid and had known early on that it was his ticket out of a rudimentary job in Moscow.
“I know this because of the Olympics,” he said. “Once they say tennis will be in Olympics (1988) I know the government will put serious money into the tennis programs and I will have a chance. If not for the Olympics, they don’t let us travel to compete.”
I like to think that Chezzy and I found common ground that year. He became one of the non-star stars of “Hard Courts,” much the same way Paul Goydos did in “A Good Walk Spoiled.” Unlike with Goydos, who I am still friends with and see all the time on tour, I haven’t seen Chezzy for years. There aren’t that many people I’d like to sit down with at length again from my years covering tennis, but Chezzy would be right near the top of that short list.
He was a very good player. And a better guy, though I doubt he ever did see the inside of a disco.
Comments (5)
Great baseball broadcasters, led by Vin Scully; Addressing comments
Wed, Apr 14 2010 10:18
| Mets, LA Dodgers, Tiger Woods, MLB, Vin Scully, broadcasting
| Permalink
A few weeks ago, when Vin Scully took a fall getting out of bed and was hospitalized briefly, a friend of mine who is a big baseball fan shook his head and said, “You get to a certain age, you should just hang it up and go home.”
In a lot of cases, that’s true. It isn’t true of Scully. I was reminded of this yesterday afternoon when—thanks to the baseball package, one of the great inventions of this century—I was able to sit and watch Scully work his magic during the Dodgers-Diamondbacks game. For a baseball fan, listening to Scully broadcast a baseball game is like someone who loves classical music listening to Mozart or Beethoven.
Some of it no doubt is familiarity. Although I never got to hear Scully work Dodger games as a kid, he was there every Saturday for many years doing the NBC Game of the Week and he was also around a lot doing the NFL and golf on CBS. Part of it also is that unique cadence of his: the way he draws out ‘one and one,’ can be imitated but it is unique to him. It also seems as if every Dodger broadcaster who has followed him—I’m thinking mostly of Ross Porter and Rick Monday—has ended up picking up on Scullyspeak. The Dodgers are never the Dodgers they are the ‘Daaadgers,’ and Daaadger Stadium is almost always referred to as Chavez Ravine—which for those of you under 40 is the area where it is located.
I’ve written before about how much I enjoy listening to great baseball broadcasters. Bob Murphy was a huge part of my boyhood and I get a big kick out of listening to Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling on the Mets telecasts now. I don’t enjoy watching the team very much, but the broadcast is terrific, especially since there’s no covering up the team’s deficiencies in the booth. If you’d like to experience the opposite end of that spectrum tune in the Orioles or Nationals sometime. (Disclaimer: Cohen is a friend. Having said that, I don’t think you have to be his friend to appreciate his work).
There are plenty of other baseball broadcasters who are great fun to listen to: Joe Castiglione in Boston; Marty Brenneman in Cincinnati (also a friend though we agree on almost nothing); Dave Niehaus in Seattle and Howie Rose on radio for the Mets (okay, I have a Mets bias) come to mind. The game really misses Skip Caray and Harry Kalas.
But there’s still only one Scully. His calls are lyrical and his familiarity with the players and the game is still astonishing even at 82. Yesterday when the camera showed a shot of injured Diamondbacks pitcher Brandon Webb, he basically went through Webb’s entire life story in about 90 seconds. He wasn’t reading from the media guide either, you can tell when someone is doing that. Webb popped up on camera in the dugout and Scully just started talking.
There’s another thing about Scully: he’s a genuine star—he’s only been doing Dodger games for 61 years (!!!) now—who never acts like one. Although he doesn’t travel east anymore in the regular season, he does during the playoffs. Last October I ran into him—almost literally—in the press box in Philadelphia. We were walking through a door from the dining area to the press box area.
When I stopped to open the door for him, Scully said to me, “Aaah yes John, a man who believes in age before beauty, something I can admire.”
I told him I wasn’t sure if he was right on either count but that I was honored to open the door for him. He laughed and said, “We’re all just honored and lucky to be here aren’t we?”
I’m pretty sure he was 100 percent sincere when he said that which might explain why he still sounds so happy to be in the broadcast booth even after all these years. I hope he keeps doing what he’s doing for as long as he can do it because the day he isn’t doing Dodger games is the day that the ‘Daaadgers,’ won’t really be the ‘Daaadgers,’ anymore. Someone will sit in Vin Scully’s chair, but no one will ever replace him.
I am SO glad it is baseball season.
*****
On a far less pleasant topic I am going to go over this Tiger Woods issue one last time and then people like ‘anonymous,’ who kept insisting on the posting site the last few days that there is some deep, dark secret I am hiding can either accept what I’m saying or not accept it and we’ll all move on.
I have never had any sort of personal run-in with Woods and he has never ‘done,’ anything to me that has caused me to dislike him. When Mike Wilbon said a few months ago I was angry with Woods for not talking to me for the book I did on Rocco Mediate and that’s why I was criticizing him for his behavior, he was, quite simply, mistaken. As I said before, I told Rocco when he first called about doing the book that I KNEW Tiger wouldn’t talk to me for the book and doubted, quite honestly, he’d talk to anyone but he’d have a better shot at it if someone else did the writing. The person who was upset was ROCCO because he’d done a number of favors for Tiger post-U.S. Open. If you don’t believe that, ask him sometime. He’s a very approachable guy.
‘Anonymous,’ sort of wants it both ways: On the one hand he says he bases his disbelief in what I’m saying on the Wilbon theory—which Mike has since withdrawn by the way after we talked the whole thing through. On the other hand he says I’ve disliked Tiger for years. How can both be true? Then he throws in John Hawkins silly comment about my ‘lack of a relationship,’ with Tiger because I don’t cover golf ‘fulltime,’ like he and some others do. I responded to that too: I’ve never claimed to have a ‘relationship,’ with Woods although I’d bet I’ve spent more one-on-one time with him than a lot of the guys he calls by nicknames in press conferences. That isn’t a lot of time but it is probably more than almost anyone other than Jaime Diaz, who may be the one writer who has some sense of who Woods is, having known him since he was 15.
My objection to Woods has more to do with the way he has treated people through the years than anything else: I’ve seen him blow by kids looking for autographs consistently since the day he turned pro (and the excuse that he can’t sign for everyone so therefore he signs for no one is not only tired and worn out it isn’t true; you have one of your flunkies cut off the line at some point and say, ‘Tiger has to go, but he’ll be signing again tomorrow.’ Sure, he might disappoint a couple kids but he’d thrill a hundred of them. Phil Mickelson, for the record, signs every single day for 45 minutes. Most players plan some time into their day to sign).
Woods has also been disdainful and condescending in most of his dealings with the media; he does almost nothing if it doesn’t involve money; he tells TV networks who he will or will not talk to based on how much they have or have not sucked up to him during broadcasts and his on-course behavior has been lousy from day one. (I’m not talking the profanity as much as the club-throwing and club-pounding. By 34 you should have that under control).
Tiger and I have had one major disagreement from day one and it is something we have discussed on a number of occasions: I always saw his dad as just another pushy stage-jock parent who got lucky that his kid was the one with ridiculous talent. Obviously—and understandably—he didn’t see his dad that way.
We had a lengthy conversation about this years ago over dinner in San Diego—yes, we had dinner—during which I said I objected to Earl cashing in on Tiger by writing not one but TWO autobiographies. “He wrote the first one because people kept asking him how he did it,” Tiger said.
“Okay,” I said, “Even though I don’t buy that he did anything, I’ll accept that. Why’d he write the second one?”
Tiger smiled. “Okay, good point,” he said.
So we agreed to disagree and we’ve done that through the years. I know the people around him—except for Glenn Greenspan who I knew for a long time before he joined ETW Inc. two years ago—think I’m the devil because I have consistently not bought into the Tiger off-course myth. Ironically, I thought Tiger was headed in the right direction a couple years ago (I wish I could remember exactly what he did, but there was something that impressed me. It may have been—sadly—his seemingly changed demeanor after he became a father) and actually wrote to Mark Steinberg to tell him that. Turns out I got that one wrong.
Bottom line: I don’t hate Tiger and he’s never ‘done,’ anything to me. I just disagree with a lot of what he’s done and feel like there are enough cheerleaders and apologists out there for him that I don’t need to be another one. I felt that way before November 27th and still feel that way. If cringing when Nick Faldo says, “after all Tiger’s been through,” means I’m ‘out to get Tiger,’ in some people’s minds, so be it.
And, to quote Forrest Gump, that’s all I have to say about that.
In a lot of cases, that’s true. It isn’t true of Scully. I was reminded of this yesterday afternoon when—thanks to the baseball package, one of the great inventions of this century—I was able to sit and watch Scully work his magic during the Dodgers-Diamondbacks game. For a baseball fan, listening to Scully broadcast a baseball game is like someone who loves classical music listening to Mozart or Beethoven.
Some of it no doubt is familiarity. Although I never got to hear Scully work Dodger games as a kid, he was there every Saturday for many years doing the NBC Game of the Week and he was also around a lot doing the NFL and golf on CBS. Part of it also is that unique cadence of his: the way he draws out ‘one and one,’ can be imitated but it is unique to him. It also seems as if every Dodger broadcaster who has followed him—I’m thinking mostly of Ross Porter and Rick Monday—has ended up picking up on Scullyspeak. The Dodgers are never the Dodgers they are the ‘Daaadgers,’ and Daaadger Stadium is almost always referred to as Chavez Ravine—which for those of you under 40 is the area where it is located.
I’ve written before about how much I enjoy listening to great baseball broadcasters. Bob Murphy was a huge part of my boyhood and I get a big kick out of listening to Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling on the Mets telecasts now. I don’t enjoy watching the team very much, but the broadcast is terrific, especially since there’s no covering up the team’s deficiencies in the booth. If you’d like to experience the opposite end of that spectrum tune in the Orioles or Nationals sometime. (Disclaimer: Cohen is a friend. Having said that, I don’t think you have to be his friend to appreciate his work).
There are plenty of other baseball broadcasters who are great fun to listen to: Joe Castiglione in Boston; Marty Brenneman in Cincinnati (also a friend though we agree on almost nothing); Dave Niehaus in Seattle and Howie Rose on radio for the Mets (okay, I have a Mets bias) come to mind. The game really misses Skip Caray and Harry Kalas.
But there’s still only one Scully. His calls are lyrical and his familiarity with the players and the game is still astonishing even at 82. Yesterday when the camera showed a shot of injured Diamondbacks pitcher Brandon Webb, he basically went through Webb’s entire life story in about 90 seconds. He wasn’t reading from the media guide either, you can tell when someone is doing that. Webb popped up on camera in the dugout and Scully just started talking.
There’s another thing about Scully: he’s a genuine star—he’s only been doing Dodger games for 61 years (!!!) now—who never acts like one. Although he doesn’t travel east anymore in the regular season, he does during the playoffs. Last October I ran into him—almost literally—in the press box in Philadelphia. We were walking through a door from the dining area to the press box area.
When I stopped to open the door for him, Scully said to me, “Aaah yes John, a man who believes in age before beauty, something I can admire.”
I told him I wasn’t sure if he was right on either count but that I was honored to open the door for him. He laughed and said, “We’re all just honored and lucky to be here aren’t we?”
I’m pretty sure he was 100 percent sincere when he said that which might explain why he still sounds so happy to be in the broadcast booth even after all these years. I hope he keeps doing what he’s doing for as long as he can do it because the day he isn’t doing Dodger games is the day that the ‘Daaadgers,’ won’t really be the ‘Daaadgers,’ anymore. Someone will sit in Vin Scully’s chair, but no one will ever replace him.
I am SO glad it is baseball season.
*****
On a far less pleasant topic I am going to go over this Tiger Woods issue one last time and then people like ‘anonymous,’ who kept insisting on the posting site the last few days that there is some deep, dark secret I am hiding can either accept what I’m saying or not accept it and we’ll all move on.
I have never had any sort of personal run-in with Woods and he has never ‘done,’ anything to me that has caused me to dislike him. When Mike Wilbon said a few months ago I was angry with Woods for not talking to me for the book I did on Rocco Mediate and that’s why I was criticizing him for his behavior, he was, quite simply, mistaken. As I said before, I told Rocco when he first called about doing the book that I KNEW Tiger wouldn’t talk to me for the book and doubted, quite honestly, he’d talk to anyone but he’d have a better shot at it if someone else did the writing. The person who was upset was ROCCO because he’d done a number of favors for Tiger post-U.S. Open. If you don’t believe that, ask him sometime. He’s a very approachable guy.
‘Anonymous,’ sort of wants it both ways: On the one hand he says he bases his disbelief in what I’m saying on the Wilbon theory—which Mike has since withdrawn by the way after we talked the whole thing through. On the other hand he says I’ve disliked Tiger for years. How can both be true? Then he throws in John Hawkins silly comment about my ‘lack of a relationship,’ with Tiger because I don’t cover golf ‘fulltime,’ like he and some others do. I responded to that too: I’ve never claimed to have a ‘relationship,’ with Woods although I’d bet I’ve spent more one-on-one time with him than a lot of the guys he calls by nicknames in press conferences. That isn’t a lot of time but it is probably more than almost anyone other than Jaime Diaz, who may be the one writer who has some sense of who Woods is, having known him since he was 15.
My objection to Woods has more to do with the way he has treated people through the years than anything else: I’ve seen him blow by kids looking for autographs consistently since the day he turned pro (and the excuse that he can’t sign for everyone so therefore he signs for no one is not only tired and worn out it isn’t true; you have one of your flunkies cut off the line at some point and say, ‘Tiger has to go, but he’ll be signing again tomorrow.’ Sure, he might disappoint a couple kids but he’d thrill a hundred of them. Phil Mickelson, for the record, signs every single day for 45 minutes. Most players plan some time into their day to sign).
Woods has also been disdainful and condescending in most of his dealings with the media; he does almost nothing if it doesn’t involve money; he tells TV networks who he will or will not talk to based on how much they have or have not sucked up to him during broadcasts and his on-course behavior has been lousy from day one. (I’m not talking the profanity as much as the club-throwing and club-pounding. By 34 you should have that under control).
Tiger and I have had one major disagreement from day one and it is something we have discussed on a number of occasions: I always saw his dad as just another pushy stage-jock parent who got lucky that his kid was the one with ridiculous talent. Obviously—and understandably—he didn’t see his dad that way.
We had a lengthy conversation about this years ago over dinner in San Diego—yes, we had dinner—during which I said I objected to Earl cashing in on Tiger by writing not one but TWO autobiographies. “He wrote the first one because people kept asking him how he did it,” Tiger said.
“Okay,” I said, “Even though I don’t buy that he did anything, I’ll accept that. Why’d he write the second one?”
Tiger smiled. “Okay, good point,” he said.
So we agreed to disagree and we’ve done that through the years. I know the people around him—except for Glenn Greenspan who I knew for a long time before he joined ETW Inc. two years ago—think I’m the devil because I have consistently not bought into the Tiger off-course myth. Ironically, I thought Tiger was headed in the right direction a couple years ago (I wish I could remember exactly what he did, but there was something that impressed me. It may have been—sadly—his seemingly changed demeanor after he became a father) and actually wrote to Mark Steinberg to tell him that. Turns out I got that one wrong.
Bottom line: I don’t hate Tiger and he’s never ‘done,’ anything to me. I just disagree with a lot of what he’s done and feel like there are enough cheerleaders and apologists out there for him that I don’t need to be another one. I felt that way before November 27th and still feel that way. If cringing when Nick Faldo says, “after all Tiger’s been through,” means I’m ‘out to get Tiger,’ in some people’s minds, so be it.
And, to quote Forrest Gump, that’s all I have to say about that.
Comments (23)
The Masters puts a cap on an amazing two weeks in sports
Mon, Apr 12 2010 10:26
| Fred Couples, Tom Watson, Phil Mickelson, The Masters, Tiger Woods
| Permalink
So what did we learn from The Masters?
First—and foremost—Phil Mickelson has put the ghosts of Winged Foot behind him once and for all. He put on a remarkable display on the back nine on both Saturday and Sunday to win going away after it appeared likely the tournament would be decided on the 18th green or in sudden death.
Second, Tiger Woods is still Tiger Woods: for good and for bad. There is not another player on the planet who could have come back after a five month layoff and all the self-created tumult in his life and figured out a way to tie for fourth in a major championship. He’s still the same golfer. He’s also still the same person: pitching himself to corporate America during his Monday press conference; authorizing the release of a creepy ad in which his dead father is used to try and sell product; slamming clubs and barking profanities (but no f-bombs) and then getting upset when Peter Kostis asked him about it.
If you expected different, I hope you weren’t disappointed. Those of us who didn’t expect different just sort of shrug, move on and focus on all the truly wonderful stories that made for a remarkable week at Augusta.
The weather was beyond spectacular, which—along with some very inviting pin placements—made for very low scoring. Think about this for a second: Mickelson’s winning score of 272 was two shots higher than Woods’ winning score of 270 back in 1997 when the golf course was 500 yards shorter. I wonder if The Lords of Augusta will lengthen the golf course to 8,000 yards before next year.
Actually, I doubt it. I think they learned a lesson when they went too far with their course alterations that—along with cold, windy weather—led to Zach Johnson winning with a one-over-par 289 three years ago. That was about as dreary a Masters as anyone could remember (no knock on Johnson) and I think the green jackets enjoyed all the roars echoing off the trees on Saturday and Sunday. So don’t expect anything more than the usual tweaks the club makes every year if only to figure out how to spend some of its endless supply of money.
The golf tournament had almost every possible story line imaginable: Tom Watson, who hadn’t made a cut since 2002, shot 67 the first day and finished tied for 18th with his son Michael caddying for him and reminding him constantly that he could still play the golf course even at 60. Fred Couples was in contention almost until the end, looking for all the world as if he was playing a casual round at dusk back home. It looked as if the most serious thing on his mind Sunday afternoon was wondering who was going to win the Rangers-Flyers showdown for the last playoff spot in The East.
Of course that’s not true. One thing people tend to miss about Couples is how competitive he is. Because he looks and sounds casual about his golf game, people think he’s just strolling around making birdies. I remember back in 1998 when I was working on “The Majors,” I spent a lot of time with Couples. That was the year he led The Masters almost the entire week before losing by a stroke to Mark O’Meara. I remember talking to him a month later at The Memorial and he still wasn’t over it.
“A bunch of us went to dinner that night (after The Masters) and I remember no one said a word,” he said back then. “I kind of felt bad because everyone was looking at me to see how I was doing and I was just too down to talk at all.”
You don’t win as much as Couples has won without caring. You don’t have to slam clubs or scream, “goddammit Tiger you suck,” to be competitive. I’m the last person in the world who should or will give anyone a hard time for using profanity. Those of us who use it too much try to control it and sometimes we fail—which is our fault. But when we’re called on it, the best thing to do is not to say, “I don’t think it’s a big deal,” especially if you’ve said a few days earlier that it’s a big deal.
Back to Mickelson: A lot of people, myself included, wondered if he’d ever recover from the Winged Foot meltdown and win another major. He was 36 at the time, two years older than Arnold Palmer was when he won his last major and three years older than Watson was when he won the British Open in 1983. Clearly, the loss scarred him and his attempt to declare his win at the 2007 Players a major win came off as kind of silly.
But he hung in there. One thing people miss about Mickelson is that he’s a grinder. For all the talk about his great talent and ability to pull of magical shots (or not pull off magical shots) he is constantly trying to figure out how to get better: changing swing coaches, bringing in different people to help with his short game and his putting, trying different routines to prepare for majors.
Of course everything in his life changed last year when his wife Amy and then his mother were diagnosed with breast cancer. If he had managed to win the U.S. open at Bethpage last June they would have started filming the movie the next day. He took a break from the tour while Amy underwent surgery and when he came back in August—to slightly less fanfare than Woods at Augusta—he lingered in the press room in Akron after his first meeting with the media, thanking people for their good wishes and trading jokes with writers he IS friendly with as opposed to his long-time rival.
“You know I hate to say this,” he said at one point, “but I think I actually missed you guys.”
He hadn’t played well this year prior to Augusta. Whether it was the genuine distraction of Amy’s continuing struggles to feel well because of the side-affects of her medication or missing the emotional jolt he gets when Woods is playing, he never seriously contended. In the end, none of those tournaments mattered and they certainly don’t matter now. He played memorably down the stretch and it is probably fair to say that his hug with Amy behind the 18th green will be replayed a lot more in the future than Woods’s hug with his father back in ’97 which feels a lot different now to many people than it did prior to November 27th.
In all, it was an amazing two weeks in sports. The Final Four produced a national championship game for the ages and The Masters had so much shot-making your head needed to be on a swivel to keep up. I’m always exhausted when I get home from The Final Four/Masters trip but I remind myself on the way home how incredibly lucky I am to get to go to both events every year.
This year, especially after what happened to me last June, I’ve never felt that way more than I did last night.
*****
Now that I am finally home after 29 of the last 42 days on the road, I’m going to try to take some time to get my life back in order. (You should see my office right now). So, I’m going to skip the blog on Tuesday and Thursday this week unless something monumental occurs—like a two-game Mets winning streak. I hope everyone understands.
First—and foremost—Phil Mickelson has put the ghosts of Winged Foot behind him once and for all. He put on a remarkable display on the back nine on both Saturday and Sunday to win going away after it appeared likely the tournament would be decided on the 18th green or in sudden death.
Second, Tiger Woods is still Tiger Woods: for good and for bad. There is not another player on the planet who could have come back after a five month layoff and all the self-created tumult in his life and figured out a way to tie for fourth in a major championship. He’s still the same golfer. He’s also still the same person: pitching himself to corporate America during his Monday press conference; authorizing the release of a creepy ad in which his dead father is used to try and sell product; slamming clubs and barking profanities (but no f-bombs) and then getting upset when Peter Kostis asked him about it.
If you expected different, I hope you weren’t disappointed. Those of us who didn’t expect different just sort of shrug, move on and focus on all the truly wonderful stories that made for a remarkable week at Augusta.
The weather was beyond spectacular, which—along with some very inviting pin placements—made for very low scoring. Think about this for a second: Mickelson’s winning score of 272 was two shots higher than Woods’ winning score of 270 back in 1997 when the golf course was 500 yards shorter. I wonder if The Lords of Augusta will lengthen the golf course to 8,000 yards before next year.
Actually, I doubt it. I think they learned a lesson when they went too far with their course alterations that—along with cold, windy weather—led to Zach Johnson winning with a one-over-par 289 three years ago. That was about as dreary a Masters as anyone could remember (no knock on Johnson) and I think the green jackets enjoyed all the roars echoing off the trees on Saturday and Sunday. So don’t expect anything more than the usual tweaks the club makes every year if only to figure out how to spend some of its endless supply of money.
The golf tournament had almost every possible story line imaginable: Tom Watson, who hadn’t made a cut since 2002, shot 67 the first day and finished tied for 18th with his son Michael caddying for him and reminding him constantly that he could still play the golf course even at 60. Fred Couples was in contention almost until the end, looking for all the world as if he was playing a casual round at dusk back home. It looked as if the most serious thing on his mind Sunday afternoon was wondering who was going to win the Rangers-Flyers showdown for the last playoff spot in The East.
Of course that’s not true. One thing people tend to miss about Couples is how competitive he is. Because he looks and sounds casual about his golf game, people think he’s just strolling around making birdies. I remember back in 1998 when I was working on “The Majors,” I spent a lot of time with Couples. That was the year he led The Masters almost the entire week before losing by a stroke to Mark O’Meara. I remember talking to him a month later at The Memorial and he still wasn’t over it.
“A bunch of us went to dinner that night (after The Masters) and I remember no one said a word,” he said back then. “I kind of felt bad because everyone was looking at me to see how I was doing and I was just too down to talk at all.”
You don’t win as much as Couples has won without caring. You don’t have to slam clubs or scream, “goddammit Tiger you suck,” to be competitive. I’m the last person in the world who should or will give anyone a hard time for using profanity. Those of us who use it too much try to control it and sometimes we fail—which is our fault. But when we’re called on it, the best thing to do is not to say, “I don’t think it’s a big deal,” especially if you’ve said a few days earlier that it’s a big deal.
Back to Mickelson: A lot of people, myself included, wondered if he’d ever recover from the Winged Foot meltdown and win another major. He was 36 at the time, two years older than Arnold Palmer was when he won his last major and three years older than Watson was when he won the British Open in 1983. Clearly, the loss scarred him and his attempt to declare his win at the 2007 Players a major win came off as kind of silly.
But he hung in there. One thing people miss about Mickelson is that he’s a grinder. For all the talk about his great talent and ability to pull of magical shots (or not pull off magical shots) he is constantly trying to figure out how to get better: changing swing coaches, bringing in different people to help with his short game and his putting, trying different routines to prepare for majors.
Of course everything in his life changed last year when his wife Amy and then his mother were diagnosed with breast cancer. If he had managed to win the U.S. open at Bethpage last June they would have started filming the movie the next day. He took a break from the tour while Amy underwent surgery and when he came back in August—to slightly less fanfare than Woods at Augusta—he lingered in the press room in Akron after his first meeting with the media, thanking people for their good wishes and trading jokes with writers he IS friendly with as opposed to his long-time rival.
“You know I hate to say this,” he said at one point, “but I think I actually missed you guys.”
He hadn’t played well this year prior to Augusta. Whether it was the genuine distraction of Amy’s continuing struggles to feel well because of the side-affects of her medication or missing the emotional jolt he gets when Woods is playing, he never seriously contended. In the end, none of those tournaments mattered and they certainly don’t matter now. He played memorably down the stretch and it is probably fair to say that his hug with Amy behind the 18th green will be replayed a lot more in the future than Woods’s hug with his father back in ’97 which feels a lot different now to many people than it did prior to November 27th.
In all, it was an amazing two weeks in sports. The Final Four produced a national championship game for the ages and The Masters had so much shot-making your head needed to be on a swivel to keep up. I’m always exhausted when I get home from The Final Four/Masters trip but I remind myself on the way home how incredibly lucky I am to get to go to both events every year.
This year, especially after what happened to me last June, I’ve never felt that way more than I did last night.
*****
Now that I am finally home after 29 of the last 42 days on the road, I’m going to try to take some time to get my life back in order. (You should see my office right now). So, I’m going to skip the blog on Tuesday and Thursday this week unless something monumental occurs—like a two-game Mets winning streak. I hope everyone understands.
Comments (23)
Remarkable first day at the Masters -- Woods emphatically returned, Couples leads and Watson still on a roll
Fri, Apr 9 2010 10:06
| Fred Couples, Tom Watson, The Masters, Tiger Woods
| Permalink
Well, no one ever said the guy couldn’t play golf.
All of those who wondered if Tiger Woods could come back and play well after a 144-day layoff from competition got a swift and emphatic answer yesterday. Miss the cut? How about he might win the tournament?
At the climax of one of the more remarkable first days anyone has ever seen at The Masters, Woods shot the best first round score in the 16 Masters he has played, a four-under-par 68. The round included two eagles—one at the eighth where he caught a break with a good hop on his second shot, the other at the 15th where he hit two perfect shots to about 10-feet and drained the putt. He also hit one of those shots that he seems to have invented: a twisting, draw-hook around the trees at the 9th hole. The ball somehow stayed on the green, sucked back to about 10-feet and he made a remarkable birdie.
His behavior wasn’t perfect—there were a couple of club slams—but overall was more subdued, as he had promised it would be. As the round went on and his play improved, the crowd warmed to him more and more. To say he was in a good mood when the round was over is an understatement.
If he puts on a green jacket here on Sunday evening, which is entirely possible, he will be re-deified by most.
And yet, he and his friends at Nike managed to do exactly what Woods said he didn’t want to do: take the focus off his golf. By airing the new Tiger-‘Earl,’ commercial on Wednesday they reminded everyone about the events of the past few months that turned golf from a sport into a soap opera.
Woods was asked about the ad after he finished his round and said this: “Well, I think it’s very apropos. I think that’s what my dad would say. It’s amazing how it—how my dad can speak to me from different ways, even he’s long gone. He’s still helping me. I think any son who has lost a father and who meant so much in their life, I think they would understand the spot.”
Really? I’m a son who has lost a father who meant a lot to me and I don’t get the spot. I certainly don’t get the timing, coming at the precise moment when everyone—EVERYONE—is ready to focus on Woods as a golfer again and put all that’s gone on at the very least on a backburner for a while.
Nike has always gone for edgy ads and it has worked for the company, especially in terms of calling attention to itself. This one may backfire. My sense is that people are offended by the notion of Tiger and Nike somehow trying to cash in on what’s occurred especially NOW. On the one hand he says he wants to move on with his life—which he should be able to do—on the other hand he’s making a commercial that is somehow supposed to rehabilitate his image by saying, ‘Earl would have known better.’
Okay, I’m not even going to get into that. But the timing was bad and the ad is already being parodied on the internet. Enough said.
Meanwhile, even if Woods had NOT been in the field, the Thursday leaderboard would have been fabulous. Fred Couples at 50? Tom Watson at 60??!—again? Not to mention Phil Mickelson—remember him, pretty good player I think—Y.E. Yang, Ian Poulter and Ricky Barnes. All are on the leaderboard, led by Couples who shot his low round ever at The Masters—a 66—to take the lead.
Okay, it’s only Thursday, but it was still pretty cool. I’m biased, but the story of the day for me was Watson. For a long time now he has talked about not being able to play this golf course anymore since he’s not as long as he was years ago and the golf course has been super-sized. He’s only made one cut here since 1998—in 2002—and missed the cut by one two years ago when he played the last three holes in four-over-par.
This year, his son Michael is caddying for him. Michael is a very good amateur player in his own right, in fact father and son finished second in the Pro-Am at Pebble Beach two years ago which Watson called one of the bigger thrills of his career.
Michael Watson works in commercial real estate these days but he’s taking his job this week very seriously. Over the weekend he gave his father a serious talking to, telling him he needed to stop talking about where he USED to hit the ball from before the golf course was lengthened and his drives were shortened. “Okay, you aren’t hitting seven iron anymore, but you can still hit a four or five iron really well,” he told him. “You can still play here if you believe you can play here.”
Both Watsons were in great spirits on Thursday morning. On Sunday afternoon, by pre-arrangement, Tom hit his second shot on the 13th hole way left, using a four iron. On Sunday, families can walk inside the ropes when players go out to practice since there are no fans on the grounds, so Michael’s girlfriend, Beth Lindquist, was walking along.
When everyone walked over to try to find the ball, Michael stunned Beth by taking out an engagement ring, dropping to a knee and proposing.
“The first thing I said was, ‘are you kidding?’” she said on Wednesday. “He said, ‘I’m on one knee, I’m holding an engagement ring do you THINK I’m kidding?’”
So, the week got off to a good start in more ways than one.
In spite of his great round Thursday, Watson’s realistic. He pointed out to the media that he had made two 30-foot bombs on putts that were moving fast when they hit the hole and had gotten it up and down five straight times from the 10th to the 14th holes. Still, it was a great way to start The Masters and it is pretty clear that Watson is still on the roll that began last July with his near miss at Turnberry.
“There’s been a glow since then,” he said. “It’s come really from people coming up to me and saying, ‘hey, you showed me I’m not too old to still do things.’ That’s meant a lot to me.”
If Watson and Couples can somehow stick around the leaderboard through Sunday, it would mean a lot to a lot of people.
All of those who wondered if Tiger Woods could come back and play well after a 144-day layoff from competition got a swift and emphatic answer yesterday. Miss the cut? How about he might win the tournament?
At the climax of one of the more remarkable first days anyone has ever seen at The Masters, Woods shot the best first round score in the 16 Masters he has played, a four-under-par 68. The round included two eagles—one at the eighth where he caught a break with a good hop on his second shot, the other at the 15th where he hit two perfect shots to about 10-feet and drained the putt. He also hit one of those shots that he seems to have invented: a twisting, draw-hook around the trees at the 9th hole. The ball somehow stayed on the green, sucked back to about 10-feet and he made a remarkable birdie.
His behavior wasn’t perfect—there were a couple of club slams—but overall was more subdued, as he had promised it would be. As the round went on and his play improved, the crowd warmed to him more and more. To say he was in a good mood when the round was over is an understatement.
If he puts on a green jacket here on Sunday evening, which is entirely possible, he will be re-deified by most.
And yet, he and his friends at Nike managed to do exactly what Woods said he didn’t want to do: take the focus off his golf. By airing the new Tiger-‘Earl,’ commercial on Wednesday they reminded everyone about the events of the past few months that turned golf from a sport into a soap opera.
Woods was asked about the ad after he finished his round and said this: “Well, I think it’s very apropos. I think that’s what my dad would say. It’s amazing how it—how my dad can speak to me from different ways, even he’s long gone. He’s still helping me. I think any son who has lost a father and who meant so much in their life, I think they would understand the spot.”
Really? I’m a son who has lost a father who meant a lot to me and I don’t get the spot. I certainly don’t get the timing, coming at the precise moment when everyone—EVERYONE—is ready to focus on Woods as a golfer again and put all that’s gone on at the very least on a backburner for a while.
Nike has always gone for edgy ads and it has worked for the company, especially in terms of calling attention to itself. This one may backfire. My sense is that people are offended by the notion of Tiger and Nike somehow trying to cash in on what’s occurred especially NOW. On the one hand he says he wants to move on with his life—which he should be able to do—on the other hand he’s making a commercial that is somehow supposed to rehabilitate his image by saying, ‘Earl would have known better.’
Okay, I’m not even going to get into that. But the timing was bad and the ad is already being parodied on the internet. Enough said.
Meanwhile, even if Woods had NOT been in the field, the Thursday leaderboard would have been fabulous. Fred Couples at 50? Tom Watson at 60??!—again? Not to mention Phil Mickelson—remember him, pretty good player I think—Y.E. Yang, Ian Poulter and Ricky Barnes. All are on the leaderboard, led by Couples who shot his low round ever at The Masters—a 66—to take the lead.
Okay, it’s only Thursday, but it was still pretty cool. I’m biased, but the story of the day for me was Watson. For a long time now he has talked about not being able to play this golf course anymore since he’s not as long as he was years ago and the golf course has been super-sized. He’s only made one cut here since 1998—in 2002—and missed the cut by one two years ago when he played the last three holes in four-over-par.
This year, his son Michael is caddying for him. Michael is a very good amateur player in his own right, in fact father and son finished second in the Pro-Am at Pebble Beach two years ago which Watson called one of the bigger thrills of his career.
Michael Watson works in commercial real estate these days but he’s taking his job this week very seriously. Over the weekend he gave his father a serious talking to, telling him he needed to stop talking about where he USED to hit the ball from before the golf course was lengthened and his drives were shortened. “Okay, you aren’t hitting seven iron anymore, but you can still hit a four or five iron really well,” he told him. “You can still play here if you believe you can play here.”
Both Watsons were in great spirits on Thursday morning. On Sunday afternoon, by pre-arrangement, Tom hit his second shot on the 13th hole way left, using a four iron. On Sunday, families can walk inside the ropes when players go out to practice since there are no fans on the grounds, so Michael’s girlfriend, Beth Lindquist, was walking along.
When everyone walked over to try to find the ball, Michael stunned Beth by taking out an engagement ring, dropping to a knee and proposing.
“The first thing I said was, ‘are you kidding?’” she said on Wednesday. “He said, ‘I’m on one knee, I’m holding an engagement ring do you THINK I’m kidding?’”
So, the week got off to a good start in more ways than one.
In spite of his great round Thursday, Watson’s realistic. He pointed out to the media that he had made two 30-foot bombs on putts that were moving fast when they hit the hole and had gotten it up and down five straight times from the 10th to the 14th holes. Still, it was a great way to start The Masters and it is pretty clear that Watson is still on the roll that began last July with his near miss at Turnberry.
“There’s been a glow since then,” he said. “It’s come really from people coming up to me and saying, ‘hey, you showed me I’m not too old to still do things.’ That’s meant a lot to me.”
If Watson and Couples can somehow stick around the leaderboard through Sunday, it would mean a lot to a lot of people.
Comments (6)
One of the greatest championship games ever played; ‘The Captain’ proved me wrong this year
Wed, Apr 7 2010 12:10
| Mike Krzyzewski, Duke, Brian Zoubek, The Masters, NCAA Tournament, college basketball, Brad Stevens, Tiger Woods, Butler
| Permalink
Walking into Augusta National this morning a number of people asked me what I thought about the national championship game on Monday. My answer was simple: “It was one of the greatest championship games ever played and if Gordon Hayward’s shot had gone in, it would have been THE greatest game and THE greatest moment in the history of college basketball.”
Yup, it was that good.
I’ve heard a few people say the game was exciting but not that well played—they say that looking at the shooting percentages. They also say that because they don’t understand basketball. Go back and look at the tape. I’m not sure there more than a half-dozen shots in the entire game that were uncontested. Every single possession was an absolute war. Throwing a simple perimeter pass was difficult. Both teams had help waiting for anyone who tried to drive the ball to the goal. There were almost no transition baskets because the teams changed ends of the court so quickly.
It is almost 36 hours since Hayward’s 45-foot shot hit the backboard and the rim and rolled off and I can still see it in the air and I can still remember thinking, ‘that has a chance.’
If it had gone in I would have been thrilled to have been there for the greatest moment in college basketball history. When it missed I was delighted for Mike Krzyzewski and all the people I know at Duke.
Let’s deal with Krzyzewski for a moment. Let’s start with this: He proved me wrong this season. I thought he made a mistake taking the Olympic job for a second time, especially at a time when Roy Williams had just won his second national championship in five years.
I forgot a lesson I learned—or thought I’d learned a long time ago—never underestimate The Captain. That’s the nickname my pal Keith Drum and put on him when he first came to Duke. Since Bob Knight liked to call himself ‘The General,’ we started calling Krzyzewski ‘The Captain,’ since that was his rank in the Army—unlike Knight who was actually a private.
Drum, who has been an NBA scout for almost 20 years, was the sports editor of The Durham Morning Herald in those days and was probably the only member of the local media who didn’t jump off the Krzyzewski bandwagon—not that there was one—when Mike went 38-47 his first three years at Duke. He was vocal enough in his belief that Krzyzewski was going to be a successful coach that Dean Smith noticed.
In 1984, after Krzyzewski’s first good team had stunned North Carolina (with Michael Jordan, Sam Perkins and Brad Daugherty among others) in the ACC semifinals, Drum and I walked down the steps in The Greensboro Coliseum into the hallway where the locker rooms were. Dean was standing outside his locker room and when he spotted us, he walked across the hall, making a beeline for Keith.
“Congratulations,” he said. “Your team played very well.”
It was a funny line since Drummer went to North Carolina. Dean was making a point about his support of Krzyzewski.
Turns out Drum had it right. Turns out I had it wrong this season. Here are the numbers: Four national championships, behind only John Wooden (10) and tied with Adolph Rupp. Eleven Final Fours—one behind Wooden and tied with Dean. Twelve ACC championships—one behind Dean. And, last but not least, 868 victories—11 behind Dean and 34 behind Knight.
Of course there are people out there who will say about 800 of those wins came because Duke gets all the calls. There are also people—just about all of whom have never met Krzyzewski or talked to him—who think he’s a bad guy, who make up things about him (like the columnist in Miami who claimed last week he ‘faked,’ his back injury in 1995) and who simply can’t stand to see him win.
Sorry folks, the guy is just good at what he does. And he’s a good man. The work he does very quietly for charities, for people who are sick, for friends—is endless. He just doesn’t make a big deal of it. For that matter, neither did Dean, who has always been that way too. That’s why I wrote a column Saturday saying they are a lot more alike than either would probably care to admit. If you want to say I’m saying these things because I went to Duke—fine. I’m saying these things because I’ve known the guy since 1977 and I know that they’re true.
He did a great job coaching this team, the key moment coming when he made Brian Zoubek a starter. Until then, this was another nice Duke team that probably would have lost in the Sweet 16. Zoubek changed everything. He gave the team an inside presence it hadn’t had since Shelden Williams graduated. He made Lance Thomas more effective because he knew he had help behind him and could be aggressive on defense. He made the Plumlee brothers better because they could play limited minutes and just buzz around when they were in the game.
As Bob Ryan said on Saturday night after Duke had dismantled West Virginia, “they have three piano players and three piano movers and they all know their roles.”
And, as Krzyzewski said, they became a very good team that did a great thing even though they didn’t have anywhere close to the pure talent many of his previous teams have had. And if Kyle Singler comes back next year—probably 50-50—they’re going to have a chance to do it again.
So will Butler if Hayward comes back. If there’s anyone left who didn’t think this was a wonderful team, they should find another sport. The only team I saw all year that played half court defense at Duke’s level was Butler. Hayward is superb; so is Shelvin Mack and the players around them all knew their roles. Matt Howard played as smart and as tough a game on Monday as I’ve ever seen.
And Brad Stevens proved he can coach with anyone. He beat Jim Boeheim, beat Frank Martin, beat Tom Izzo and missed beating Krzyzewski by two inches. He matched Krzyzewski move-for-move most the entire night. Every time out he called worked. So did his rotation, especially the way he went defense-offense the last few minutes.
It would be nuts for him to leave Butler for any second tier job in a BCS conference. His next job should be one of the BIG ones: Krzyzewski isn’t going to coach forever; neither will Roy Williams or Ben Howland and you never know when someone at a big school might be tempted by the NBA. (Forget The Captain to the Nets. He’d never coach a game if he even thought about it because his wife Mickie would kill him first). That’s where Stevens belongs. Butler right now is a better job than any of those other jobs anyway.
The only sad thing about Monday Night, especially one like this one, is that someone loses and has to live with the ‘what-ifs,’ the rest of their lives. To be honest, the Butler kids deserve better than that because they gave us memories we’ll all keep with us for a long, long time.
You see, Monday Night in college basketball is about forever. And this one was one worth savoring for at least that long.
******
Quick note on the ‘new,’ Tiger Woods. He’s not playing in the par-3 tournament at Augusta today, which is by far the most fan friendly event of the week. The excuse from his camp is that he hasn’t done it for years and if he did and played poorly tomorrow someone would say (not me for the record) that it was because he’d played the par-3. He should have just played. He should have auctioned off caddying for him and given the money to a charity of the winner’s choice—NOT his own foundation.
But no, he’s not doing that. He IS, I’m told, signing a lot more autographs than in the past. Good for him. But he should have played in the par-3.
Yup, it was that good.
I’ve heard a few people say the game was exciting but not that well played—they say that looking at the shooting percentages. They also say that because they don’t understand basketball. Go back and look at the tape. I’m not sure there more than a half-dozen shots in the entire game that were uncontested. Every single possession was an absolute war. Throwing a simple perimeter pass was difficult. Both teams had help waiting for anyone who tried to drive the ball to the goal. There were almost no transition baskets because the teams changed ends of the court so quickly.
It is almost 36 hours since Hayward’s 45-foot shot hit the backboard and the rim and rolled off and I can still see it in the air and I can still remember thinking, ‘that has a chance.’
If it had gone in I would have been thrilled to have been there for the greatest moment in college basketball history. When it missed I was delighted for Mike Krzyzewski and all the people I know at Duke.
Let’s deal with Krzyzewski for a moment. Let’s start with this: He proved me wrong this season. I thought he made a mistake taking the Olympic job for a second time, especially at a time when Roy Williams had just won his second national championship in five years.
I forgot a lesson I learned—or thought I’d learned a long time ago—never underestimate The Captain. That’s the nickname my pal Keith Drum and put on him when he first came to Duke. Since Bob Knight liked to call himself ‘The General,’ we started calling Krzyzewski ‘The Captain,’ since that was his rank in the Army—unlike Knight who was actually a private.
Drum, who has been an NBA scout for almost 20 years, was the sports editor of The Durham Morning Herald in those days and was probably the only member of the local media who didn’t jump off the Krzyzewski bandwagon—not that there was one—when Mike went 38-47 his first three years at Duke. He was vocal enough in his belief that Krzyzewski was going to be a successful coach that Dean Smith noticed.
In 1984, after Krzyzewski’s first good team had stunned North Carolina (with Michael Jordan, Sam Perkins and Brad Daugherty among others) in the ACC semifinals, Drum and I walked down the steps in The Greensboro Coliseum into the hallway where the locker rooms were. Dean was standing outside his locker room and when he spotted us, he walked across the hall, making a beeline for Keith.
“Congratulations,” he said. “Your team played very well.”
It was a funny line since Drummer went to North Carolina. Dean was making a point about his support of Krzyzewski.
Turns out Drum had it right. Turns out I had it wrong this season. Here are the numbers: Four national championships, behind only John Wooden (10) and tied with Adolph Rupp. Eleven Final Fours—one behind Wooden and tied with Dean. Twelve ACC championships—one behind Dean. And, last but not least, 868 victories—11 behind Dean and 34 behind Knight.
Of course there are people out there who will say about 800 of those wins came because Duke gets all the calls. There are also people—just about all of whom have never met Krzyzewski or talked to him—who think he’s a bad guy, who make up things about him (like the columnist in Miami who claimed last week he ‘faked,’ his back injury in 1995) and who simply can’t stand to see him win.
Sorry folks, the guy is just good at what he does. And he’s a good man. The work he does very quietly for charities, for people who are sick, for friends—is endless. He just doesn’t make a big deal of it. For that matter, neither did Dean, who has always been that way too. That’s why I wrote a column Saturday saying they are a lot more alike than either would probably care to admit. If you want to say I’m saying these things because I went to Duke—fine. I’m saying these things because I’ve known the guy since 1977 and I know that they’re true.
He did a great job coaching this team, the key moment coming when he made Brian Zoubek a starter. Until then, this was another nice Duke team that probably would have lost in the Sweet 16. Zoubek changed everything. He gave the team an inside presence it hadn’t had since Shelden Williams graduated. He made Lance Thomas more effective because he knew he had help behind him and could be aggressive on defense. He made the Plumlee brothers better because they could play limited minutes and just buzz around when they were in the game.
As Bob Ryan said on Saturday night after Duke had dismantled West Virginia, “they have three piano players and three piano movers and they all know their roles.”
And, as Krzyzewski said, they became a very good team that did a great thing even though they didn’t have anywhere close to the pure talent many of his previous teams have had. And if Kyle Singler comes back next year—probably 50-50—they’re going to have a chance to do it again.
So will Butler if Hayward comes back. If there’s anyone left who didn’t think this was a wonderful team, they should find another sport. The only team I saw all year that played half court defense at Duke’s level was Butler. Hayward is superb; so is Shelvin Mack and the players around them all knew their roles. Matt Howard played as smart and as tough a game on Monday as I’ve ever seen.
And Brad Stevens proved he can coach with anyone. He beat Jim Boeheim, beat Frank Martin, beat Tom Izzo and missed beating Krzyzewski by two inches. He matched Krzyzewski move-for-move most the entire night. Every time out he called worked. So did his rotation, especially the way he went defense-offense the last few minutes.
It would be nuts for him to leave Butler for any second tier job in a BCS conference. His next job should be one of the BIG ones: Krzyzewski isn’t going to coach forever; neither will Roy Williams or Ben Howland and you never know when someone at a big school might be tempted by the NBA. (Forget The Captain to the Nets. He’d never coach a game if he even thought about it because his wife Mickie would kill him first). That’s where Stevens belongs. Butler right now is a better job than any of those other jobs anyway.
The only sad thing about Monday Night, especially one like this one, is that someone loses and has to live with the ‘what-ifs,’ the rest of their lives. To be honest, the Butler kids deserve better than that because they gave us memories we’ll all keep with us for a long, long time.
You see, Monday Night in college basketball is about forever. And this one was one worth savoring for at least that long.
******
Quick note on the ‘new,’ Tiger Woods. He’s not playing in the par-3 tournament at Augusta today, which is by far the most fan friendly event of the week. The excuse from his camp is that he hasn’t done it for years and if he did and played poorly tomorrow someone would say (not me for the record) that it was because he’d played the par-3. He should have just played. He should have auctioned off caddying for him and given the money to a charity of the winner’s choice—NOT his own foundation.
But no, he’s not doing that. He IS, I’m told, signing a lot more autographs than in the past. Good for him. But he should have played in the par-3.
Comments (29)
Tiger's press conference – let's call it a start
Tue, Apr 6 2010 05:42
| PGA Tour, The Masters, Tiger Woods
| Permalink
Just so everyone understands what’s going on today: I’m writing this a little more than an hour before tipoff of the national championship game, sitting courtside at Lucas Oil Stadium. Tuesday morning, I’ll be on the road to Augusta (which is very different than the road to The Final Four) so I will write about the title game for Wednesday.
The subject today is—surprise—Tiger Woods. I sincerely hope this will be the last time I write about L’affaires Eldrick (or the affairs of Eldrick). He gave all the answers he’s going to give on the subject Monday afternoon during his 33 minutes in The Masters media room.
My sense when he was finished was that many of my colleagues in the media couldn’t wait to start falling over themselves to compliment his performance—which is what it was. One guy on Golf Channel instantly gave him an “A+.” For what exactly? For being smooth and under control? For looking people in the eye when he answered questions—which I thought was a good sign. For repeating that he did his family wrong, lied to himself and behaved horribly? Good for him but an A+?
Here are the places where I took his grade down a few notches:
----He’s still complaining about the tabloid media hounding his family. Look, I probably like the tabloid media LESS than he does because they give all of us in the media a bad name. We’re constantly lumped in with them. I have no sympathy for their behavior. But who gave them the opening to hound Elin and the kids? If you’re going to admit you were guilty, you also have to accept the consequences of your guilt. It’s not fair to Elin and the kids but guess who was LEAST fair to Elin and the kids?
----He still won’t talk about what he’s been in rehab for. I will repeat myself here: whatever it is, he’s got nothing to be ashamed of if he’s seeking help. A lot of people need help and, whatever he’s done wrong, he deserves credit for going. The old saying that recognizing you have a problem is half the battle is true. But if you are going to talk about rehab and what it is doing for you, you should talk about what you’re there for if for no other reason than to end speculation. If you’ve ever been to an AA meeting you know the first thing anyone says when he or she begins to talk is: “My name is ----- and I’m an alcoholic.” There’s not a thing wrong with that.
----He absolutely ducked the question about how Elin felt about his returning to competition this week. He said she wasn’t there, which would become evident fairly quickly, then ignored the question about how she felt about him playing in Augusta.
----He refused to say what caused him to crash his car so quickly outside his house on November 27th. “It’s in the police report,” he said twice. Actually, no it’s not.
Here’s what I thought he did well: He handled the question about the Canadian doctor treating him for his various knee injuries in detail and said very firmly he had never used PED’s or HGH. No waffling there. A completely believable answer. I think he was sincere when he talked about the pain of missing his son’s first birthday. Any parent would get that.
There was no sighing or rolling his eyes at questions. He was clearly making an effort to use people’s names—which is smart public relations. He talked about how he hopes to clean up his act on the golf course even if it means he may be less exuberant when he makes a big putt. He apologized to the other players who have had to answer constant questions about him since the accident in November.
Now, here’s where I thought my media brethren failed: When he talked about all the hugs he’d gotten from other players they didn’t ask if he’d seen Ernie Els yet. When he said he hadn’t spoken to the media in December because he was following the “letter of the law,” and following the advice of his lawyer, they didn’t ask why it was okay for him to contact his sponsors in an apparent effort to save his contracts. No one asked him if his new relationship with the public would include signing more autographs, an area in which he has been seriously lacking in the past.
If it seems as if I’m being hard on Tiger, fine, I’ll take the heat for that. There are plenty of people out there who are going to talk about how wonderfully he did Monday and buy into the ‘new Tiger,’ theory. In fact, as soon as I finished saying on Golf Channel that I thought there were questions Tiger had failed to answer that he should answer, John Hawkins started yammering about how I didn’t have a good relationship with Tiger the way he and some others did.
Are you kidding me? The one truly funny moment of the press conference was when Woods said he had, “many good friends in this room.” If any of the people in that room believed that comment they are either too naïve to have a press pass or just stupid. Tiger doesn’t like any of us or respect any of us. Tiger does what helps Tiger where the media is concerned. Which is fine. If you can get away with it and people are willing to buy in, then why shouldn’t you handle yourself that way? But friends? Don’t think so.
The bottom line in all this is something Woods quoted his wife as saying during his Tiger and Pony show back in February. I’m paraphrasing a bit here but I think this is pretty close: “As Elin said to me, it isn’t what I say that matters, it is what I do in the future that matters.”
She’s right. And I’m not talking about his golf, which I expect to be spectacular again, if not this week then in the near future. (Although if he plays well this week I won’t be shocked. The guy is an absolute freak as we all know). I’m talking about how he treats people—NOT just his family and NOT just people who are paying him or he considers important. That’s the real test. Monday was a trial balloon.
It had some holes in it but I’m willing to call it a start. The rest is up to Tiger. In the meantime there’s no need for me to go ga-ga over a few well-spoken sentences. There are plenty of other people lined up to do that.
The subject today is—surprise—Tiger Woods. I sincerely hope this will be the last time I write about L’affaires Eldrick (or the affairs of Eldrick). He gave all the answers he’s going to give on the subject Monday afternoon during his 33 minutes in The Masters media room.
My sense when he was finished was that many of my colleagues in the media couldn’t wait to start falling over themselves to compliment his performance—which is what it was. One guy on Golf Channel instantly gave him an “A+.” For what exactly? For being smooth and under control? For looking people in the eye when he answered questions—which I thought was a good sign. For repeating that he did his family wrong, lied to himself and behaved horribly? Good for him but an A+?
Here are the places where I took his grade down a few notches:
----He’s still complaining about the tabloid media hounding his family. Look, I probably like the tabloid media LESS than he does because they give all of us in the media a bad name. We’re constantly lumped in with them. I have no sympathy for their behavior. But who gave them the opening to hound Elin and the kids? If you’re going to admit you were guilty, you also have to accept the consequences of your guilt. It’s not fair to Elin and the kids but guess who was LEAST fair to Elin and the kids?
----He still won’t talk about what he’s been in rehab for. I will repeat myself here: whatever it is, he’s got nothing to be ashamed of if he’s seeking help. A lot of people need help and, whatever he’s done wrong, he deserves credit for going. The old saying that recognizing you have a problem is half the battle is true. But if you are going to talk about rehab and what it is doing for you, you should talk about what you’re there for if for no other reason than to end speculation. If you’ve ever been to an AA meeting you know the first thing anyone says when he or she begins to talk is: “My name is ----- and I’m an alcoholic.” There’s not a thing wrong with that.
----He absolutely ducked the question about how Elin felt about his returning to competition this week. He said she wasn’t there, which would become evident fairly quickly, then ignored the question about how she felt about him playing in Augusta.
----He refused to say what caused him to crash his car so quickly outside his house on November 27th. “It’s in the police report,” he said twice. Actually, no it’s not.
Here’s what I thought he did well: He handled the question about the Canadian doctor treating him for his various knee injuries in detail and said very firmly he had never used PED’s or HGH. No waffling there. A completely believable answer. I think he was sincere when he talked about the pain of missing his son’s first birthday. Any parent would get that.
There was no sighing or rolling his eyes at questions. He was clearly making an effort to use people’s names—which is smart public relations. He talked about how he hopes to clean up his act on the golf course even if it means he may be less exuberant when he makes a big putt. He apologized to the other players who have had to answer constant questions about him since the accident in November.
Now, here’s where I thought my media brethren failed: When he talked about all the hugs he’d gotten from other players they didn’t ask if he’d seen Ernie Els yet. When he said he hadn’t spoken to the media in December because he was following the “letter of the law,” and following the advice of his lawyer, they didn’t ask why it was okay for him to contact his sponsors in an apparent effort to save his contracts. No one asked him if his new relationship with the public would include signing more autographs, an area in which he has been seriously lacking in the past.
If it seems as if I’m being hard on Tiger, fine, I’ll take the heat for that. There are plenty of people out there who are going to talk about how wonderfully he did Monday and buy into the ‘new Tiger,’ theory. In fact, as soon as I finished saying on Golf Channel that I thought there were questions Tiger had failed to answer that he should answer, John Hawkins started yammering about how I didn’t have a good relationship with Tiger the way he and some others did.
Are you kidding me? The one truly funny moment of the press conference was when Woods said he had, “many good friends in this room.” If any of the people in that room believed that comment they are either too naïve to have a press pass or just stupid. Tiger doesn’t like any of us or respect any of us. Tiger does what helps Tiger where the media is concerned. Which is fine. If you can get away with it and people are willing to buy in, then why shouldn’t you handle yourself that way? But friends? Don’t think so.
The bottom line in all this is something Woods quoted his wife as saying during his Tiger and Pony show back in February. I’m paraphrasing a bit here but I think this is pretty close: “As Elin said to me, it isn’t what I say that matters, it is what I do in the future that matters.”
She’s right. And I’m not talking about his golf, which I expect to be spectacular again, if not this week then in the near future. (Although if he plays well this week I won’t be shocked. The guy is an absolute freak as we all know). I’m talking about how he treats people—NOT just his family and NOT just people who are paying him or he considers important. That’s the real test. Monday was a trial balloon.
It had some holes in it but I’m willing to call it a start. The rest is up to Tiger. In the meantime there’s no need for me to go ga-ga over a few well-spoken sentences. There are plenty of other people lined up to do that.
Comments (19)
A long day – USBWA brunch, Hall of Fame fiasco, Tiger Woods – filling time before what I expect to be a great game starting at 9:21
Mon, Apr 5 2010 08:17
| Mike Krzyzewski, Duke, college basketball, Brad Stevens, Tiger Woods, Butler, Final Four
| Permalink
Monday is the longest day at The Final Four.
It is really all about waiting since the championship game doesn’t start until 9:21—why the heck it can’t just be 9:20 I’m not sure—but regardless there is a lot of time to kill.
The USBWA has its awards brunch in the morning and then the Hall of Fame announces its inductees right after that. I refuse to go to the Hall of Fame press conference (although I’m glad that long-time St. Anthony’s Coach Bob Hurley is going in) because I object to the secretive nature of the Hall’s voting system and the fact that the NBA has completely taken over the process and the Hall of Fame itself.
This year not a single college coach is going in. No Lefty Driesell, no Guy Lewis, no Jim Phelan—among others. It’s a joke and you can’t complain to the 24 voters because their identities are a deep, dark secret. The Hall says it is so they won’t be lobbied—which is garbage. If you have the privilege of voting you should be able to withstand any lobbying if you think someone isn’t worthy. And, under any circumstances, you should have to publicly stand behind your vote.
So, I have no interest in the Hall of Fame or its press conference. On the other hand I guess I could go and ask them embarrassing questions but I’ve already done that once this week in a press conference and that’s enough for me.
We can also kill some time today watching The Tiger Woods press conference. The only reason I’ll be watching is because I have to on ‘Golf Channel,’ afterwards and talk about it. I expect another lecture on Buddhism and meditation and someone in a green jacket to jump in and say, ‘golf questions only please,’ if someone strays into a question deemed ‘personal,’ in any way. (Maybe someone can ask Tiger if he thinks the NCAA Tournament is really about the ‘student-athletes,’ or if he’s as sick of that tired song as the rest of us. Heck, we might even agree on something for a change).
When the title game does finally begin tonight, I expect a great game. If people haven’t figured out yet how good Butler is then they’re missing the boat entirely. Was the Bulldogs win on Saturday over Michigan State pretty to watch? No. But this isn’t about style points and Butler, even with point guard Shelvin Mack and center Matt Howard both missing most of the last few minutes, managed to hang on and win. I’m hoping both are okay to play tonight. The last thing you want in a championship game is either team missing a key player.
The Butler kids are having fun and they ARE fun. Saturday night, when guard Ronald Nored—who made two critical free throws with six seconds left—was asked about the team’s tradition of patting the REAL Bulldog mascot on the head after being introduced he said this: “It’s part of what we do. Sometimes he barks, sometimes he bites but you gotta play through it.”
How good a line is that?
When Gordon Hayward, who plays the role of Jimmy Chitwood in this version of ‘Hoosiers,’ was asked if he had gotten a piece of the ball on Draymond Green’s last shot that came with Butler leading 52-49, he smiled the perfect ‘aw-shucks,’ grin and said. “I might have gotten a piece of the ball. Or I might have gotten a piece of his arm.”
The Duke kids aren’t nearly as fun or as funny—at least not in public—as the Butler kids. Combine that with their reputations as college basketball’s bad guys (which in most ways other than the fact that they win a lot isn’t deserved) and it is easy to understand why everyone in the country who doesn’t have a Duke affiliation will be pulling for Butler.
It also explains why CBS is over-the-moon about this matchup. It’s ‘Hoosiers,’; it’s a Cinderella story; it’s the white hats vs. the black hats; it’s the team you have to love against the team people love to hate. Ratings gold.
Duke is playing very well right now. It has gotten better, much better, since the start of the season. The Blue Devils play airtight defense—so does Butler—and if they have a night like Saturday when all of their so-called Big Three are on, they are very tough to beat. Saturday, Kyle Singler, whose shot was MIA against Baylor (zero-for-10) was eight-of-16, had nine rebounds and played superb defense on West Virginia’s Da’Sean Butler until Butler went down with a knee injury with 8:59 to go. Duke was up 15 at the time and Butler’s injury basically ended any thought that West Virginia might come back.
I just hate to see a kid end his college career like that. Butler, who is an absolute class act, sat in the locker room and answered questions after the game was over. Let me tell you something, if you didn’t like this West Virginia team, you were missing something.
That’s the nice thing about this Final Four: these are four very likeable teams. Oh sure, the Duke-haters have to do their thing and that’s par for the course. There was a lot of hoo-ha about a silly cartoon that appeared for one edition in The Indianapolis Star on Friday that depicted Mike Krzyzewski as ‘the devil,’ but that really wasn’t close to the dumbest thing said or written. That came from some guy in The Miami Herald who wrote a column claiming (among other things) that Krzyzewski, ‘faked,’ his back injury in 1995. No doubt he has access to the medical records that prove Krzyzewski ‘faked,’ the surgery he had for the back. I also know for a fact that the only thing that got him to go to the hospital and stop coaching was his wife Mickie telling him she was ready to leave him because he was killing himself by not getting medical help.
You see, it’s fine to criticize Krzyzewski. I wrote a column in The Post Saturday kind of lampooning his one-time animus for Dean Smith and how that’s changed over the years. Everyone knows I’m not exactly tight with my alma mater—in fact the Duke basketball website sometimes makes fun of me for being critical of Duke.
But the sometimes-crazed hatred of Krzyzewski makes no sense. It comes 99.99 percent of the time from people who’ve never met him. As Mickie once eloquently said, “I know the life my husband’s led and he doesn’t deserve the hatred that’s been aimed at him.”
She’s right. Tonight though, Duke will be wearing a black hat in a way it has perhaps never worn it before. Butler would be America’s Sweethearts regardless of the opponent tonight. They deserve to be in that role but let’s remember one thing: They aren’t here because they’re nice kids or because their 33-year-old coach (Brad Stevens) doesn’t look old enough to shave. They’re here because they’re a damn good basketball team that has already beaten Syracuse, Kansas State and Michigan State.
If the Bulldogs win it will be the best story we’ve seen in this tournament since Texas Western won in 1966—although for entirely different reasons. Those who shrug off the notion that Butler is Cinderella simply because it has been good for many years and was a No. 5 seed miss the point entirely.
Duke, like Michigan State and West Virginia, has all the advantages that schools from the power conferences have: money to recruit; money for top-notch facilities; money from TV; exposure from TV; a highly-thought of conference to pitch to players and the ability to buy eight-to-10 wins a year playing guarantee games at home.
Butler has none of that. It has a great old gym with an amazing history but that’s about it. The Bulldogs play in The Horizon League. Quick, name four Horizon League teams. They ARE Cinderella and if they win tonight you can throw every melodramatic cliché you can think of in their direction and you will be right.
I expect a very dramatic night. And to say I can’t wait for it to get started is a massive understatement.
It is really all about waiting since the championship game doesn’t start until 9:21—why the heck it can’t just be 9:20 I’m not sure—but regardless there is a lot of time to kill.
The USBWA has its awards brunch in the morning and then the Hall of Fame announces its inductees right after that. I refuse to go to the Hall of Fame press conference (although I’m glad that long-time St. Anthony’s Coach Bob Hurley is going in) because I object to the secretive nature of the Hall’s voting system and the fact that the NBA has completely taken over the process and the Hall of Fame itself.
This year not a single college coach is going in. No Lefty Driesell, no Guy Lewis, no Jim Phelan—among others. It’s a joke and you can’t complain to the 24 voters because their identities are a deep, dark secret. The Hall says it is so they won’t be lobbied—which is garbage. If you have the privilege of voting you should be able to withstand any lobbying if you think someone isn’t worthy. And, under any circumstances, you should have to publicly stand behind your vote.
So, I have no interest in the Hall of Fame or its press conference. On the other hand I guess I could go and ask them embarrassing questions but I’ve already done that once this week in a press conference and that’s enough for me.
We can also kill some time today watching The Tiger Woods press conference. The only reason I’ll be watching is because I have to on ‘Golf Channel,’ afterwards and talk about it. I expect another lecture on Buddhism and meditation and someone in a green jacket to jump in and say, ‘golf questions only please,’ if someone strays into a question deemed ‘personal,’ in any way. (Maybe someone can ask Tiger if he thinks the NCAA Tournament is really about the ‘student-athletes,’ or if he’s as sick of that tired song as the rest of us. Heck, we might even agree on something for a change).
When the title game does finally begin tonight, I expect a great game. If people haven’t figured out yet how good Butler is then they’re missing the boat entirely. Was the Bulldogs win on Saturday over Michigan State pretty to watch? No. But this isn’t about style points and Butler, even with point guard Shelvin Mack and center Matt Howard both missing most of the last few minutes, managed to hang on and win. I’m hoping both are okay to play tonight. The last thing you want in a championship game is either team missing a key player.
The Butler kids are having fun and they ARE fun. Saturday night, when guard Ronald Nored—who made two critical free throws with six seconds left—was asked about the team’s tradition of patting the REAL Bulldog mascot on the head after being introduced he said this: “It’s part of what we do. Sometimes he barks, sometimes he bites but you gotta play through it.”
How good a line is that?
When Gordon Hayward, who plays the role of Jimmy Chitwood in this version of ‘Hoosiers,’ was asked if he had gotten a piece of the ball on Draymond Green’s last shot that came with Butler leading 52-49, he smiled the perfect ‘aw-shucks,’ grin and said. “I might have gotten a piece of the ball. Or I might have gotten a piece of his arm.”
The Duke kids aren’t nearly as fun or as funny—at least not in public—as the Butler kids. Combine that with their reputations as college basketball’s bad guys (which in most ways other than the fact that they win a lot isn’t deserved) and it is easy to understand why everyone in the country who doesn’t have a Duke affiliation will be pulling for Butler.
It also explains why CBS is over-the-moon about this matchup. It’s ‘Hoosiers,’; it’s a Cinderella story; it’s the white hats vs. the black hats; it’s the team you have to love against the team people love to hate. Ratings gold.
Duke is playing very well right now. It has gotten better, much better, since the start of the season. The Blue Devils play airtight defense—so does Butler—and if they have a night like Saturday when all of their so-called Big Three are on, they are very tough to beat. Saturday, Kyle Singler, whose shot was MIA against Baylor (zero-for-10) was eight-of-16, had nine rebounds and played superb defense on West Virginia’s Da’Sean Butler until Butler went down with a knee injury with 8:59 to go. Duke was up 15 at the time and Butler’s injury basically ended any thought that West Virginia might come back.
I just hate to see a kid end his college career like that. Butler, who is an absolute class act, sat in the locker room and answered questions after the game was over. Let me tell you something, if you didn’t like this West Virginia team, you were missing something.
That’s the nice thing about this Final Four: these are four very likeable teams. Oh sure, the Duke-haters have to do their thing and that’s par for the course. There was a lot of hoo-ha about a silly cartoon that appeared for one edition in The Indianapolis Star on Friday that depicted Mike Krzyzewski as ‘the devil,’ but that really wasn’t close to the dumbest thing said or written. That came from some guy in The Miami Herald who wrote a column claiming (among other things) that Krzyzewski, ‘faked,’ his back injury in 1995. No doubt he has access to the medical records that prove Krzyzewski ‘faked,’ the surgery he had for the back. I also know for a fact that the only thing that got him to go to the hospital and stop coaching was his wife Mickie telling him she was ready to leave him because he was killing himself by not getting medical help.
You see, it’s fine to criticize Krzyzewski. I wrote a column in The Post Saturday kind of lampooning his one-time animus for Dean Smith and how that’s changed over the years. Everyone knows I’m not exactly tight with my alma mater—in fact the Duke basketball website sometimes makes fun of me for being critical of Duke.
But the sometimes-crazed hatred of Krzyzewski makes no sense. It comes 99.99 percent of the time from people who’ve never met him. As Mickie once eloquently said, “I know the life my husband’s led and he doesn’t deserve the hatred that’s been aimed at him.”
She’s right. Tonight though, Duke will be wearing a black hat in a way it has perhaps never worn it before. Butler would be America’s Sweethearts regardless of the opponent tonight. They deserve to be in that role but let’s remember one thing: They aren’t here because they’re nice kids or because their 33-year-old coach (Brad Stevens) doesn’t look old enough to shave. They’re here because they’re a damn good basketball team that has already beaten Syracuse, Kansas State and Michigan State.
If the Bulldogs win it will be the best story we’ve seen in this tournament since Texas Western won in 1966—although for entirely different reasons. Those who shrug off the notion that Butler is Cinderella simply because it has been good for many years and was a No. 5 seed miss the point entirely.
Duke, like Michigan State and West Virginia, has all the advantages that schools from the power conferences have: money to recruit; money for top-notch facilities; money from TV; exposure from TV; a highly-thought of conference to pitch to players and the ability to buy eight-to-10 wins a year playing guarantee games at home.
Butler has none of that. It has a great old gym with an amazing history but that’s about it. The Bulldogs play in The Horizon League. Quick, name four Horizon League teams. They ARE Cinderella and if they win tonight you can throw every melodramatic cliché you can think of in their direction and you will be right.
I expect a very dramatic night. And to say I can’t wait for it to get started is a massive understatement.
Comments (12)
Updated - This week's radio segments (The Sports Reporters, The Gas Man, Tony Kornheiser Show)
Wed, Mar 31 2010 07:17
| NCAA Tournament, Tiger Woods, Tony Kornheiser
| Permalink
On Wednesday I joined The Sports Reporters' Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin in the normal timeslot (5:25 ET on Wednesday's). Click the permalink, then the link below, to listen to the segment that takes a look at Tiger Woods' upcoming press conference, this weekends Final Four, and the REAL meaning of Cinderella.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters
--------------------
I also joined The Gas Man in my normal Wednesday evening slot (8:25 pm PT). This week our segment took a long look at the great NCAA Tournament along with some great stories of the state of Indiana and its great basketball fans.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Gas Man
--------------------
And once again on Thursday, I joined Tony Kornheiser's newest The Tony Kornheiser Show in my normal slot at 11:05 am ET. This week it was the normal Tony, and we spent much of the time discussing this weekend's Final Four.
Click here to listen to the segment (starts within the 1st minute): Tony Kornheiser Show
Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters
--------------------
I also joined The Gas Man in my normal Wednesday evening slot (8:25 pm PT). This week our segment took a long look at the great NCAA Tournament along with some great stories of the state of Indiana and its great basketball fans.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Gas Man
--------------------
And once again on Thursday, I joined Tony Kornheiser's newest The Tony Kornheiser Show in my normal slot at 11:05 am ET. This week it was the normal Tony, and we spent much of the time discussing this weekend's Final Four.
Click here to listen to the segment (starts within the 1st minute): Tony Kornheiser Show
Tiger Woods decided to pull an A-Rod, but great NCAA Tourney puts in on the back burner for me
Mon, Mar 22 2010 11:09
| Northern Iowa, NCAA Tournament, Tiger Woods, John Swofford, St. Mary's, Cornell, ACC
| Permalink
It was a spectacular weekend of basketball, sullied only by Tiger Woods deciding to pull an A-Rod by showing up un-announced and un-invited in the middle of the NCAA basketball tournament to give his first two, ‘interviews,’ since the morning of November 27th.
Let’s dispense with Tiger first because it won’t take long. He said absolutely nothing new. This was nothing more than another staged step in the ‘Tiger Over America Image-Rehab Tour.’ Although Golf Channel reported Sunday night that Ari Fleischer was leaving ‘Team Tiger,’ (maybe because people are catching on to his act) this had his fingerprints all over it.
Hand-pick two interviewers: in this case Golf Channel’s Kelly Tilghman and ESPN’s Tom Rinaldi and tell them they have exactly SIX minutes on camera. That makes follow-up virtually impossible, allowing Woods to duck and weave whenever specific questions were asked. He’s always been good at talking in generalities and now he’s added, “that’s private,” to his arsenal.
So, he essentially said nothing. He repeated that his behavior was ‘disgusting,’; said it all happened because he quit meditating and got away from Buddhism (seriously) and said he loved his wife very much.
Specifics? Forget it. What are you in rehab for?—a legitimate question since he brings it up every 30 seconds—that’s private. What happened on the morning of November 27th?—legit again because he insists that Elin never did anything to him and those who said she did are lying—it’s all in the police report. No, not exactly. What’s your schedule like the rest of the year after Augusta?—don’t know. Of course he knows, he knows EXACTLY what he’s going to be doing on July 18th at 10:48 a.m. That’s who he is.
You know what—it’s fine. At this point I think 99 percent of us simply don’t care anymore. Just tee it up and go play Tiger. Except one thing: don’t tell us you’ve changed. You’re still an absolute control freak; you still got yourself logo’ed up for your 12 minutes on camera; you still are the king of dodge-ball on almost any subject and you’re still dictating terms to anyone and everyone who is willing to let you dictate.
Yes, you are still Tiger Woods. Go win The Masters and a bunch more majors; go sell yourself to a public that no doubt will be willing to be sold. But don’t tell us you’ve changed. Maybe—MAYBE—you can change your on-course behavior. That would be a step in the right direction. Maybe you can sign more than 12 autographs a year. That would be progress.
Okay, now for the important stuff that happened this weekend. Let’s start with the three teams I’d most like to see at The Final Four: Cornell, Northern Iowa and St. Mary’s. Each is a great story in a different way.
The Northern Iowa-Kansas game was one of the wildest and most entertaining games—not to mention stunning—I’ve seen in years. The Panthers were rock solid for about 36 minutes and then, when they had the upset in their sights, they woke up and realized where they were. Suddenly, they couldn’t get the ball inbounds. I actually found myself thinking, ‘this is going to be the game Kansas looks back on as the key moment of the year when it cuts down the nets in Indy.’
Wrong again. Ali Farokhmanesh hit one of the all-time gutsy shots with the lead down to 63-62 and Northern Iowa held on. As my friend Tom Brennnan, the former Vermont coach said later, “there are going to be an amazing number of kids named Ali in Iowa in the next couple of years.”
I had the chance to talk to Northern Iowa Coach Ben Jacobsen on the weekly radio show I’m doing during the tournament and I asked him what went through his mind when Farokemanesh launched the shot. His answer, I thought, was interesting: “I figured we had a better chance with Ali taking the shot than trying to dribble the clock for 20 seconds and probably getting trapped again.”
You have to feel for Bill Self and his players. They had a spectacular season but their year will be defined by the loss on Saturday. That’s the way college basketball works. For all the paeans being sung to Maryland’s Greivis Vasquez and his gutty teammates here in the DC area today, the bottom line is they didn’t make the Sweet 16. And, even though the Vasquezites are saying he’s one of the best five players in Maryland history the stat the matters most is this: wins. In four years, Vasquez played on Maryland teams that won three NCAA Tournament games and never got to the second weekend.
Juan Dixon and Lonny Baxter—comparable because they played in the same era as Vasquez, unlike guys like John Lucas, Len Elmore, Tom McMillen, Albert King, Buck Williams, Len Bias and Walt Williams to name a few—won 13 tournament games, played in two Final Fours and won a national title.
Don’t get me wrong. Vasquez had a fabulous year. He deserved ACC player-of-the-year and he hit a bunch of big shots, including the one that gave Maryland the lead on Sunday with six seconds left. And you can’t criticize him for shooting too soon because when you’re down one you need to get a shot up and hope for a rebound if you miss.
But let’s not overstate all this. The Terrapins got into a habit of falling too far behind and figuring their press would bail them out. Often, it did. In postseason—Georgia Tech and Michigan State—it almost did. But almost doesn’t count. On the other hand, they got a lot closer to the Sweet 16 than Georgetown did.
Back to the Cinderellas. If you think Cornell is a fluke, look again. If the Big Red did nothing else this weekend they proved without any doubt that the committee must have been watching another team when it evaluated them and thought they were a No. 12 seed. Their two wins over Temple and Wisconsin, both solid, very well-coached teams, were dominating. In 80 minutes of basketball they trailed for, I think, about one minute. Their margins were 13 and 18 and in both cases they backed off at the finish because the deed was done.
Look, I’m not insane enough to say they’ll beat Kentucky. But I do think it will be a great basketball game. Maybe Kentucky will be too athletic for Cornell over 40 minutes. But one thing I’m pretty sure of is this: Cornell won’t be intimidated. This is a team that’s already played at Kansas and at Syracuse—where this game will be played with a lot of the crowd pulling for the underdog. I just wish it wasn’t tipping off at some time after 10 o’clock—God sometimes I hate CBS—because it means I’ll be up way past my bedtime—but I can’t wait to see it.
Finally: A few words on different conferences. The Pac-10 proved me completely wrong this past weekend and I attribute it to me being silly enough to write the league off because it was lousy in pre-conference play. Teams DO get better—all credit to Washington for what it did and to Cal, which couldn’t handle Duke’s defense, but dominated Louisville.
As for The Big East and the ACC, well, as Ricky Ricardo used to say to Lucy: they’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do. The Big East advanced two of eight teams to the second week. That said, I think both Syracuse and West Virginia are capable of making Indy and if they do all will be well as far as the folks in Providence are concerned.
As for the ACC? ONE team still playing, meaning it matched the Ivy League, The Missouri Valley and the WCC—among others. In fact, here’s a stat worth considering: In the last five seasons, the Missouri Valley has placed four different schools in the sweet sixteen: Bradley, Wichita State, Southern Illinois and now Northern Iowa. During those same five years the ACC—with a LOT more bids—has played THREE of its schools in the sweet sixteen: North Carolina, Duke and Boston College.
Think about that for a minute. Then call the ACC offices in Greensboro, ask to speak to John Swofford and say this: So how’s that football expansion working out for you John?
Let’s dispense with Tiger first because it won’t take long. He said absolutely nothing new. This was nothing more than another staged step in the ‘Tiger Over America Image-Rehab Tour.’ Although Golf Channel reported Sunday night that Ari Fleischer was leaving ‘Team Tiger,’ (maybe because people are catching on to his act) this had his fingerprints all over it.
Hand-pick two interviewers: in this case Golf Channel’s Kelly Tilghman and ESPN’s Tom Rinaldi and tell them they have exactly SIX minutes on camera. That makes follow-up virtually impossible, allowing Woods to duck and weave whenever specific questions were asked. He’s always been good at talking in generalities and now he’s added, “that’s private,” to his arsenal.
So, he essentially said nothing. He repeated that his behavior was ‘disgusting,’; said it all happened because he quit meditating and got away from Buddhism (seriously) and said he loved his wife very much.
Specifics? Forget it. What are you in rehab for?—a legitimate question since he brings it up every 30 seconds—that’s private. What happened on the morning of November 27th?—legit again because he insists that Elin never did anything to him and those who said she did are lying—it’s all in the police report. No, not exactly. What’s your schedule like the rest of the year after Augusta?—don’t know. Of course he knows, he knows EXACTLY what he’s going to be doing on July 18th at 10:48 a.m. That’s who he is.
You know what—it’s fine. At this point I think 99 percent of us simply don’t care anymore. Just tee it up and go play Tiger. Except one thing: don’t tell us you’ve changed. You’re still an absolute control freak; you still got yourself logo’ed up for your 12 minutes on camera; you still are the king of dodge-ball on almost any subject and you’re still dictating terms to anyone and everyone who is willing to let you dictate.
Yes, you are still Tiger Woods. Go win The Masters and a bunch more majors; go sell yourself to a public that no doubt will be willing to be sold. But don’t tell us you’ve changed. Maybe—MAYBE—you can change your on-course behavior. That would be a step in the right direction. Maybe you can sign more than 12 autographs a year. That would be progress.
Okay, now for the important stuff that happened this weekend. Let’s start with the three teams I’d most like to see at The Final Four: Cornell, Northern Iowa and St. Mary’s. Each is a great story in a different way.
The Northern Iowa-Kansas game was one of the wildest and most entertaining games—not to mention stunning—I’ve seen in years. The Panthers were rock solid for about 36 minutes and then, when they had the upset in their sights, they woke up and realized where they were. Suddenly, they couldn’t get the ball inbounds. I actually found myself thinking, ‘this is going to be the game Kansas looks back on as the key moment of the year when it cuts down the nets in Indy.’
Wrong again. Ali Farokhmanesh hit one of the all-time gutsy shots with the lead down to 63-62 and Northern Iowa held on. As my friend Tom Brennnan, the former Vermont coach said later, “there are going to be an amazing number of kids named Ali in Iowa in the next couple of years.”
I had the chance to talk to Northern Iowa Coach Ben Jacobsen on the weekly radio show I’m doing during the tournament and I asked him what went through his mind when Farokemanesh launched the shot. His answer, I thought, was interesting: “I figured we had a better chance with Ali taking the shot than trying to dribble the clock for 20 seconds and probably getting trapped again.”
You have to feel for Bill Self and his players. They had a spectacular season but their year will be defined by the loss on Saturday. That’s the way college basketball works. For all the paeans being sung to Maryland’s Greivis Vasquez and his gutty teammates here in the DC area today, the bottom line is they didn’t make the Sweet 16. And, even though the Vasquezites are saying he’s one of the best five players in Maryland history the stat the matters most is this: wins. In four years, Vasquez played on Maryland teams that won three NCAA Tournament games and never got to the second weekend.
Juan Dixon and Lonny Baxter—comparable because they played in the same era as Vasquez, unlike guys like John Lucas, Len Elmore, Tom McMillen, Albert King, Buck Williams, Len Bias and Walt Williams to name a few—won 13 tournament games, played in two Final Fours and won a national title.
Don’t get me wrong. Vasquez had a fabulous year. He deserved ACC player-of-the-year and he hit a bunch of big shots, including the one that gave Maryland the lead on Sunday with six seconds left. And you can’t criticize him for shooting too soon because when you’re down one you need to get a shot up and hope for a rebound if you miss.
But let’s not overstate all this. The Terrapins got into a habit of falling too far behind and figuring their press would bail them out. Often, it did. In postseason—Georgia Tech and Michigan State—it almost did. But almost doesn’t count. On the other hand, they got a lot closer to the Sweet 16 than Georgetown did.
Back to the Cinderellas. If you think Cornell is a fluke, look again. If the Big Red did nothing else this weekend they proved without any doubt that the committee must have been watching another team when it evaluated them and thought they were a No. 12 seed. Their two wins over Temple and Wisconsin, both solid, very well-coached teams, were dominating. In 80 minutes of basketball they trailed for, I think, about one minute. Their margins were 13 and 18 and in both cases they backed off at the finish because the deed was done.
Look, I’m not insane enough to say they’ll beat Kentucky. But I do think it will be a great basketball game. Maybe Kentucky will be too athletic for Cornell over 40 minutes. But one thing I’m pretty sure of is this: Cornell won’t be intimidated. This is a team that’s already played at Kansas and at Syracuse—where this game will be played with a lot of the crowd pulling for the underdog. I just wish it wasn’t tipping off at some time after 10 o’clock—God sometimes I hate CBS—because it means I’ll be up way past my bedtime—but I can’t wait to see it.
Finally: A few words on different conferences. The Pac-10 proved me completely wrong this past weekend and I attribute it to me being silly enough to write the league off because it was lousy in pre-conference play. Teams DO get better—all credit to Washington for what it did and to Cal, which couldn’t handle Duke’s defense, but dominated Louisville.
As for The Big East and the ACC, well, as Ricky Ricardo used to say to Lucy: they’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do. The Big East advanced two of eight teams to the second week. That said, I think both Syracuse and West Virginia are capable of making Indy and if they do all will be well as far as the folks in Providence are concerned.
As for the ACC? ONE team still playing, meaning it matched the Ivy League, The Missouri Valley and the WCC—among others. In fact, here’s a stat worth considering: In the last five seasons, the Missouri Valley has placed four different schools in the sweet sixteen: Bradley, Wichita State, Southern Illinois and now Northern Iowa. During those same five years the ACC—with a LOT more bids—has played THREE of its schools in the sweet sixteen: North Carolina, Duke and Boston College.
Think about that for a minute. Then call the ACC offices in Greensboro, ask to speak to John Swofford and say this: So how’s that football expansion working out for you John?
Comments (19)
This week's radio segments
Thu, Mar 18 2010 10:28
| PGA Tour, NCAA Tournament, Tiger Woods
| Permalink
Yesterday I joined The Sports Reporters' Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin in the normal timeslot (5:25 ET on Wednesday's). Click the permalink, then the link below, to listen to the segment that focused on, of course, Tiger Woods and the NCAA Tournament.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters
Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters
Comments (1)
Tiger at The Masters will be fascinating, but one event will prove little
Wed, Mar 17 2010 09:22
| PGA Tour, The Masters, Tiger Woods
| Permalink
It was hardly a surprise yesterday when Tiger Woods announced he was going to return to competitive golf at The Masters. It also wasn’t a surprise that his announcement was greeted with only slightly more zeal than when man first landed on the moon a little more than 40 years ago.
In the end, the only thing different in this than what most of us expected is that he’s not going to play a warm-up tournament prior to The Masters. I had thought back in December that he would come back this month and play Doral and Bay Hill or, at the very least, Bay Hill, and then head to Augusta. Maybe he’s skipping a warm-up to show people how much he cares about Doing The Right Thing.
If truth be told I kind of doubt that’s the case. What I think is happening here is pretty simple: Tiger wants to come back in the most controlled environment possible (control is the most important word in his life) and there’s nothing that beats Augusta when it comes to control. You can bet there won’t be any paparazzi on the grounds or reporters from gossip magazines or web sites. If one does slip through, he or she will be escorted out very firmly and quickly.
Augusta is also the only golf tournament in the world that allows no media—or photographers—inside the ropes. That won’t stop the media or the shooters from following Tiger’s group, but they won’t be able to get very close and Tiger won’t have to look any of them in the eye even for a split second.
Plus, there’s this: Tiger came back from his first knee surgery of 2008 to play the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines without a warm-up event. We all know what happened there. This is a little different because back then he was still having trouble walking 18 holes right up until the first day of The Open. This time the option not to play is purely his. Still, what happened at the Open is no doubt fueling his belief that he can walk onto Augusta National without having hit a ball in competition in five months and win the tournament.
Are you prepared to bet against him? I’m not. The reason the whole world comes to a halt every time Tiger opens his mouth—or puts out a statement that seems to come from his mouth—is because he’s done superhuman things on golf courses for 14 years now. One of his great strengths as a golfer is his selfishness: he will be able to walk inside those ropes and be completely focused from the first tee forward. His life is about two things first and foremost: going down as the greatest golfer of all time and as the richest athlete of all time.
He became the first to cross the billion-dollar plateau last year although this episode has certainly set him back financially. The goal to pass Jack Nicklaus in major wins is still out there and he’ll likely go past Nicklaus at some point in the near future—two, three, four years whatever---he’ll get the record.
When he does a lot of the apologists will say he’s wiped what happened these past few years completely away. There are plenty already saying that: it is no one’s business; they don’t care what he does as long as he plays golf. I have no problem with those who feel that way. But to think this disappears under a barrage of birdies and Tiger fist-pumps is foolish.
I said this before, I’ll say it again: Monica Lewinsky is part of Bill Clinton’s biography no matter how many billions he raises for relief efforts around the world. (Slightly more important work than winning golf tournaments for those of you scoring at home). This will be part of Tiger’s biography if he wins 30 majors. Whether it is our business or not, he lied to and cheated on his wife repeatedly; he stonewalled (and is still stonewalling) about what happened that led to his outing and at least so far, hasn’t shown any signs of real remorse. If you bought into that staged Tiger and Pony show last month, fine, I have some stock in Bernie Madoff’s company I can sell you at a great price.
Honestly, at this point, I don’t care if he ever answers questions. I don’t think he will or, if he does in some form, he’ll never tell the whole truth. Fine. Frankly, I’m bored with it and I think most people are bored with it. But I WILL be interested to see how he behaves on the golf course.
Tom Watson said what a lot of people in golf have thought for years a couple of months ago when he called Tiger out for his on-course behavior. He noted that there is a difference between being a great player and a great champion. He’s right and I think Tiger knows he’s right. I think that’s why he mentioned that he needed to show more respect for the game during the T+P show.
If anything good can come of this it would be to see a new Tiger on the golf course. That’s not a reference to his game but to his personality. If he stops the club-slamming and the profanity and the club-tossing and the constant grimaces and tells his caddy to behave civilly to people, that will be huge progress. It will also be an indication that maybe he has given some thought to something other than trying to steer his way around the wreckage he has created so he can get back to playing golf.
One other thing: While the world will watch with rapt attention during Masters week—one can only imagine what the TV ratings will be—that week won’t prove anything at all. If he comes back and wins or seriously contends, well, he’s still Tiger Woods, most talented player of all time. If he misses the cut (unlikely) that doesn’t mean he’s not Tiger Woods. He missed the cut at the U.S. Open in 2006 seven weeks after his father died and then came back to win the British Open and The PGA Championship soon after that.
If he behaves impeccably between the ropes, that’s great—see if he can maintain it. And if he behaves poorly, well, he deserves some time to try to adapt to forming new habits. The Masters will be fascinating but, in the end, it will prove little.
After Augusta he’s going to have to make his way in something a little closer to the real world: tournaments that can’t and won’t control his environment the way the Lords of Augusta do. This is going to be a long and winding road. The apologists and the Tiger-worshippers will applaud everything he does. Others will never forgive him no matter what he does. The majority, I suspect, will just want to sit back and watch. It promises to be reality TV at its most real.
In the end, the only thing different in this than what most of us expected is that he’s not going to play a warm-up tournament prior to The Masters. I had thought back in December that he would come back this month and play Doral and Bay Hill or, at the very least, Bay Hill, and then head to Augusta. Maybe he’s skipping a warm-up to show people how much he cares about Doing The Right Thing.
If truth be told I kind of doubt that’s the case. What I think is happening here is pretty simple: Tiger wants to come back in the most controlled environment possible (control is the most important word in his life) and there’s nothing that beats Augusta when it comes to control. You can bet there won’t be any paparazzi on the grounds or reporters from gossip magazines or web sites. If one does slip through, he or she will be escorted out very firmly and quickly.
Augusta is also the only golf tournament in the world that allows no media—or photographers—inside the ropes. That won’t stop the media or the shooters from following Tiger’s group, but they won’t be able to get very close and Tiger won’t have to look any of them in the eye even for a split second.
Plus, there’s this: Tiger came back from his first knee surgery of 2008 to play the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines without a warm-up event. We all know what happened there. This is a little different because back then he was still having trouble walking 18 holes right up until the first day of The Open. This time the option not to play is purely his. Still, what happened at the Open is no doubt fueling his belief that he can walk onto Augusta National without having hit a ball in competition in five months and win the tournament.
Are you prepared to bet against him? I’m not. The reason the whole world comes to a halt every time Tiger opens his mouth—or puts out a statement that seems to come from his mouth—is because he’s done superhuman things on golf courses for 14 years now. One of his great strengths as a golfer is his selfishness: he will be able to walk inside those ropes and be completely focused from the first tee forward. His life is about two things first and foremost: going down as the greatest golfer of all time and as the richest athlete of all time.
He became the first to cross the billion-dollar plateau last year although this episode has certainly set him back financially. The goal to pass Jack Nicklaus in major wins is still out there and he’ll likely go past Nicklaus at some point in the near future—two, three, four years whatever---he’ll get the record.
When he does a lot of the apologists will say he’s wiped what happened these past few years completely away. There are plenty already saying that: it is no one’s business; they don’t care what he does as long as he plays golf. I have no problem with those who feel that way. But to think this disappears under a barrage of birdies and Tiger fist-pumps is foolish.
I said this before, I’ll say it again: Monica Lewinsky is part of Bill Clinton’s biography no matter how many billions he raises for relief efforts around the world. (Slightly more important work than winning golf tournaments for those of you scoring at home). This will be part of Tiger’s biography if he wins 30 majors. Whether it is our business or not, he lied to and cheated on his wife repeatedly; he stonewalled (and is still stonewalling) about what happened that led to his outing and at least so far, hasn’t shown any signs of real remorse. If you bought into that staged Tiger and Pony show last month, fine, I have some stock in Bernie Madoff’s company I can sell you at a great price.
Honestly, at this point, I don’t care if he ever answers questions. I don’t think he will or, if he does in some form, he’ll never tell the whole truth. Fine. Frankly, I’m bored with it and I think most people are bored with it. But I WILL be interested to see how he behaves on the golf course.
Tom Watson said what a lot of people in golf have thought for years a couple of months ago when he called Tiger out for his on-course behavior. He noted that there is a difference between being a great player and a great champion. He’s right and I think Tiger knows he’s right. I think that’s why he mentioned that he needed to show more respect for the game during the T+P show.
If anything good can come of this it would be to see a new Tiger on the golf course. That’s not a reference to his game but to his personality. If he stops the club-slamming and the profanity and the club-tossing and the constant grimaces and tells his caddy to behave civilly to people, that will be huge progress. It will also be an indication that maybe he has given some thought to something other than trying to steer his way around the wreckage he has created so he can get back to playing golf.
One other thing: While the world will watch with rapt attention during Masters week—one can only imagine what the TV ratings will be—that week won’t prove anything at all. If he comes back and wins or seriously contends, well, he’s still Tiger Woods, most talented player of all time. If he misses the cut (unlikely) that doesn’t mean he’s not Tiger Woods. He missed the cut at the U.S. Open in 2006 seven weeks after his father died and then came back to win the British Open and The PGA Championship soon after that.
If he behaves impeccably between the ropes, that’s great—see if he can maintain it. And if he behaves poorly, well, he deserves some time to try to adapt to forming new habits. The Masters will be fascinating but, in the end, it will prove little.
After Augusta he’s going to have to make his way in something a little closer to the real world: tournaments that can’t and won’t control his environment the way the Lords of Augusta do. This is going to be a long and winding road. The apologists and the Tiger-worshippers will applaud everything he does. Others will never forgive him no matter what he does. The majority, I suspect, will just want to sit back and watch. It promises to be reality TV at its most real.
Comments (14)
Tiger carefully charting a controlled return; Responding to question about journalists, TV guys, cheering at games
Tue, Mar 9 2010 09:57
| Scott Van Pelt, Tim Finchem, PGA Tour, Jay Bilas, The Masters, Tiger Woods, Maryland
| Permalink
Okay, so I was wrong about Tiger Woods.
Don’t get carried away Tiger-apologists. I didn’t wake up this morning and become George Stephanopoulos or Robin Roberts.
Back when he held his Tiger-and-pony show on February 19th I found one thing about the whole circus act encouraging: the fact that he said this was not the time for him to think about when he would return to The PGA Tour; that he needed to get his personal life in order before even giving any thought to his golf career.
I had been predicting all along that Tiger would come out of hiding in time to play at least once before The Masters, perhaps twice. My thinking was that his so-called hiatus was little more than a PR move, that in the end he would do what was best for his golf game and wouldn’t miss the chance to add a major championship trophy to his collection.
On that morning in February I thought I’d misjudged him a little, that maybe there was some sincerity when he said the most important thing in his life was to repair his marriage and his personal life. My new guess became that he would come back in time to play a warm-up tournament or two before the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach.
Well, I got it wrong.
I should have been alerted by the fact that someone told me on the day of the Tiger-and-pony performance that he’d been hitting balls on the driving range at Isleworth the day before. I wasn’t.
Now though, it seems to be pretty clear he’s going to play The Masters. He spent some time with fellow Isleworth member Charles Howell last Monday and Howell was more than willing to tell people at last week’s Honda Classic how good Tiger looked. Then, Hank Haney, his swing coach, was spotted working with him on the Isleworth range this past weekend. And Monday, Mark O’Meara, his closest friend in golf, told The Golf Channel that he “wouldn’t be surprised,” if Woods tees it up on March 22nd in the Tavistock Cup, an exhibition staged for rich people and TV between the pros who belong to Isleworth and the pros who belong to nearby Lake Nona.
This is a perfect place for Woods to make his first public appearance with a golf club in his hands. To begin with, the event is “invitation only,”—members and guests from the two clubs and The Golf Channel, which pays a rights fee to televise the “tournament.” You can bet there won’t be any media, except perhaps a hand-picked apologist or two, on that guest list. If The Golf Channel is granted an interview you can also bet it will be under the “golf-questions only,” rule.
In fact, here’s an advance text on Tiger’s answers: “I felt good. It felt good to be competing again, to be with the guys. My game is a long way away from where I know it needs to be but this is a nice way to start.”
Question: “How’s it look for Augusta?”
“We’ll see how it goes. But I love playing in The Masters.” Pause to smile. “You know it’s been a while (2005) since I’ve won there so if my game’s up to it and I feel up to it, I’d like to play.”
From The Tavistock Cup you can expect Tiger to go down the road to Bay Hill. The tournament is run by IMG and the golf club is owned by Arnold Palmer. Again, control. They won’t be able to keep all the media out but they can probably keep the gossip media out. It will be a little more of a step from the cocoon but nothing that major. Then, two weeks later, Augusta, where you can bet the green jackets will protect Tiger with the zeal of a college president chasing money.
So, unless I’m wrong AGAIN, we’re back where we started: Tiger carefully charting a controlled return, making sure he doesn’t miss a major along the way.
All of which is fine. He’ll certainly be welcomed back by the golf world with open arms and about 90 percent of golf fans just want to see him play again. I’m all for that. Just please—please—don’t try to tell me he’s a different person. The Tiger-and-pony show was a clear indication that he’s still a control freak who thinks (correctly) that he can pretty much do whatever he wants and most people will just nod their head and thank him for existing.
That’s certainly what PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem did, not only sitting in the room like one of the acolytes, but then coming up with some ridiculous statistic about how many press conferences Woods has held as a defense for his refusal to answer questions. This wasn’t about birdies-and-bogeys commish and you know that as well, if not better, than anyone.
It will actually be amusing to witness the breathlessness around Tiger when he returns. If you think people walked on eggshells around him in the past, wait until you see the ballet moves people make now. What do you think the over-under is on people talking about what Tiger has “overcome,” when he comes back.
For the record, I have no axe to grind with Tiger. He’s never done anything to me. He’s actually given me more access over the years than he’s given to most writers—which is still very little—and I’m fine with that. He’s been great for golf right up until the morning of November 27th and, to be honest, that’s been great for me as someone who covers golf.
I just don’t buy the act. I know others do. And they’re certainly entitled to do so.
*********
Someone raised a question in yesterday’s posts about something I said on a radio show last week. Apparently there was a comment on some Maryland message board about the fact that I had said that if Jay Bilas and I (both Duke graduates) sat behind the Duke bench at Cameron Indoor Stadium and screamed at the officials all night the way Scott Van Pelt often does at Maryland games, we’d both be (justifiably) crucified. The Maryland person referred to Van Pelt as, “SVP.” To be honest it took me a minute to figure out who he was talking about.
Did I say it? Yes. Have I said it before? Yes. Look, I know TV guys are different than real journalists. They do commercials for one thing, which we don’t. Often they’re nothing more than teleprompter readers although the ESPN guys like to point out that they write their own stuff. (Stuart Scott once said this to me and I suggested he stick with the story that he was just reading what someone else wrote for him).
All that said, they are allegedly covering sports. Van Pelt has a radio show in which he interviews people and expresses opinions. Everyone knows he’s a Maryland grad, which is fine, we all went somewhere. He’s out-of-the-closet that he’s a rabid fan and that he hates Duke. If he wants to sit in the stands and berate the officials, that’s fine. Just don’t EVER talk about college basketball. As discussed here before, we ALL have opinions and we all have biases. But there needs to be a line you don’t cross if you are a public figure who is paid to express opinions and dispense news on sports.
As I said, if Bilas and I behaved that way at a Duke game—not likely since we’ve both outgrown that sort of thing a while ago—we’d get nailed for it. Maybe the fact that people just laugh and say, “Hey, that’s just Scott,” means that people don’t take him that seriously.
By the way, I get along fine with him, I’ve known him for years. I just don’t talk Maryland basketball with him because he’s completely insane on the subject. Gary Williams is a more objective observer. Now if HE wants to rant at the officials, that’s okay.
Don’t get carried away Tiger-apologists. I didn’t wake up this morning and become George Stephanopoulos or Robin Roberts.
Back when he held his Tiger-and-pony show on February 19th I found one thing about the whole circus act encouraging: the fact that he said this was not the time for him to think about when he would return to The PGA Tour; that he needed to get his personal life in order before even giving any thought to his golf career.
I had been predicting all along that Tiger would come out of hiding in time to play at least once before The Masters, perhaps twice. My thinking was that his so-called hiatus was little more than a PR move, that in the end he would do what was best for his golf game and wouldn’t miss the chance to add a major championship trophy to his collection.
On that morning in February I thought I’d misjudged him a little, that maybe there was some sincerity when he said the most important thing in his life was to repair his marriage and his personal life. My new guess became that he would come back in time to play a warm-up tournament or two before the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach.
Well, I got it wrong.
I should have been alerted by the fact that someone told me on the day of the Tiger-and-pony performance that he’d been hitting balls on the driving range at Isleworth the day before. I wasn’t.
Now though, it seems to be pretty clear he’s going to play The Masters. He spent some time with fellow Isleworth member Charles Howell last Monday and Howell was more than willing to tell people at last week’s Honda Classic how good Tiger looked. Then, Hank Haney, his swing coach, was spotted working with him on the Isleworth range this past weekend. And Monday, Mark O’Meara, his closest friend in golf, told The Golf Channel that he “wouldn’t be surprised,” if Woods tees it up on March 22nd in the Tavistock Cup, an exhibition staged for rich people and TV between the pros who belong to Isleworth and the pros who belong to nearby Lake Nona.
This is a perfect place for Woods to make his first public appearance with a golf club in his hands. To begin with, the event is “invitation only,”—members and guests from the two clubs and The Golf Channel, which pays a rights fee to televise the “tournament.” You can bet there won’t be any media, except perhaps a hand-picked apologist or two, on that guest list. If The Golf Channel is granted an interview you can also bet it will be under the “golf-questions only,” rule.
In fact, here’s an advance text on Tiger’s answers: “I felt good. It felt good to be competing again, to be with the guys. My game is a long way away from where I know it needs to be but this is a nice way to start.”
Question: “How’s it look for Augusta?”
“We’ll see how it goes. But I love playing in The Masters.” Pause to smile. “You know it’s been a while (2005) since I’ve won there so if my game’s up to it and I feel up to it, I’d like to play.”
From The Tavistock Cup you can expect Tiger to go down the road to Bay Hill. The tournament is run by IMG and the golf club is owned by Arnold Palmer. Again, control. They won’t be able to keep all the media out but they can probably keep the gossip media out. It will be a little more of a step from the cocoon but nothing that major. Then, two weeks later, Augusta, where you can bet the green jackets will protect Tiger with the zeal of a college president chasing money.
So, unless I’m wrong AGAIN, we’re back where we started: Tiger carefully charting a controlled return, making sure he doesn’t miss a major along the way.
All of which is fine. He’ll certainly be welcomed back by the golf world with open arms and about 90 percent of golf fans just want to see him play again. I’m all for that. Just please—please—don’t try to tell me he’s a different person. The Tiger-and-pony show was a clear indication that he’s still a control freak who thinks (correctly) that he can pretty much do whatever he wants and most people will just nod their head and thank him for existing.
That’s certainly what PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem did, not only sitting in the room like one of the acolytes, but then coming up with some ridiculous statistic about how many press conferences Woods has held as a defense for his refusal to answer questions. This wasn’t about birdies-and-bogeys commish and you know that as well, if not better, than anyone.
It will actually be amusing to witness the breathlessness around Tiger when he returns. If you think people walked on eggshells around him in the past, wait until you see the ballet moves people make now. What do you think the over-under is on people talking about what Tiger has “overcome,” when he comes back.
For the record, I have no axe to grind with Tiger. He’s never done anything to me. He’s actually given me more access over the years than he’s given to most writers—which is still very little—and I’m fine with that. He’s been great for golf right up until the morning of November 27th and, to be honest, that’s been great for me as someone who covers golf.
I just don’t buy the act. I know others do. And they’re certainly entitled to do so.
*********
Someone raised a question in yesterday’s posts about something I said on a radio show last week. Apparently there was a comment on some Maryland message board about the fact that I had said that if Jay Bilas and I (both Duke graduates) sat behind the Duke bench at Cameron Indoor Stadium and screamed at the officials all night the way Scott Van Pelt often does at Maryland games, we’d both be (justifiably) crucified. The Maryland person referred to Van Pelt as, “SVP.” To be honest it took me a minute to figure out who he was talking about.
Did I say it? Yes. Have I said it before? Yes. Look, I know TV guys are different than real journalists. They do commercials for one thing, which we don’t. Often they’re nothing more than teleprompter readers although the ESPN guys like to point out that they write their own stuff. (Stuart Scott once said this to me and I suggested he stick with the story that he was just reading what someone else wrote for him).
All that said, they are allegedly covering sports. Van Pelt has a radio show in which he interviews people and expresses opinions. Everyone knows he’s a Maryland grad, which is fine, we all went somewhere. He’s out-of-the-closet that he’s a rabid fan and that he hates Duke. If he wants to sit in the stands and berate the officials, that’s fine. Just don’t EVER talk about college basketball. As discussed here before, we ALL have opinions and we all have biases. But there needs to be a line you don’t cross if you are a public figure who is paid to express opinions and dispense news on sports.
As I said, if Bilas and I behaved that way at a Duke game—not likely since we’ve both outgrown that sort of thing a while ago—we’d get nailed for it. Maybe the fact that people just laugh and say, “Hey, that’s just Scott,” means that people don’t take him that seriously.
By the way, I get along fine with him, I’ve known him for years. I just don’t talk Maryland basketball with him because he’s completely insane on the subject. Gary Williams is a more objective observer. Now if HE wants to rant at the officials, that’s okay.
Comments (19)
John Daly situation brings back the PGA Tour discipline policy; Comments on comments
Wed, Mar 3 2010 12:36
| Tim Finchem, Jay Haas, PGA Tour, John Daly, Tiger Woods, Michael Wilbon, Rocco Mediate
| Permalink
I have been saying and writing for years now that The PGA Tour’s policy on disciplining players is a joke. Unlike other sports which routinely announce player fines and suspensions, the tour keeps them a deep, dark secret. The theory, according to Commissioner Tim Finchem, is that the tour is built on the players being thought of as gentlemen and announcing fines for profanity or misbehavior of any kind undercuts that image.
My belief—as I’ve said to Finchem and others in authority at the tour—is that that’s a bunch of hooey. To begin with, by letting the public know that it doesn’t tolerate misbehavior, the tour actually strengthens the image that it wants. More important than that, by announcing fines or suspensions, the tour sends a message to the players that it isn’t messing around. The only way to make fines a deterrent is by making the players who misbehave deal with what they’ve done in public.
There’s no better example than Tiger Woods, who has often complained about the fact that he is the most fined player in the history of the tour. Woods has been fined innumerable times for on-course profanity; for throwing clubs and for the behavior of his vigilante caddie, Steve Williams.
But the tour has never once announced any of his fines. Woods, as we all know, isn’t just a golfer he’s a corporation. Until November 27th he was the most carefully marketed athlete in history, his image burnished at every turn by the corporations he was in business with.
It is impossible not to wonder how Woods, his corporate sponsors and his image-makers would have felt if every week a story had appeared on how much money he’d been fined for misbehavior. There’s no doubt such stories would have undercut his image long before his serial affairs destroyed that image.
Everyone knows when you punish a child you don’t just say, ‘don’t do it again.’ You attach a consequence in the hope that the child will think twice before repeating the offense. No one ever attached a consequence for misbehavior to Tiger—or to anyone else on the tour. The money doesn’t matter, certainly not to Tiger and not to 99 percent of the players out there.
Most players like to tell stories about how they got fined: Paul Goydos once got fined for yelling profanities at the tape in the PGA Tour travel office when it wasn’t open on a Saturday afternoon. He likes to tell people that several of his fellow pros took up a collection to pay the $500 when the travel office changed its hours after his call.
Jay Haas tells the story about his one and only fine on tour. On the 18th hole of a miserable third round in Milwaukee he skittered an awful chip all the way across the green. As he walked to his ball he heard someone yell, “Haas, you suck!”
Normally the most mild-mannered guy you’ll ever meet, Haas snapped for an instant and yelled, ‘f---- you.,’ back at the guy.
The next day when rules official Wade Cagle called him into ask about a report that had been filed on the incident, Cagle said, “I’m sure you were misheard Jay, you were probably saying, ‘thank-you.’”
“Nope,” Haas said. “I said ‘f----- you.’ How much do I owe you?”
Those stories are funny because they involved guys who generally behave well. For them, a fine is an aberration just like Brad Faxon’s fine years ago for criticizing Scott Hoch for not playing in The British Open (criticizing another player publicly—conduct unbecoming) was an aberration.
Woods’s lousy behavior was never an aberration. It was who he was and no one seriously called him on it until Tom Watson brought it up several weeks ago.
The same is true of John Daly. John’s problem hasn’t been cursing or club-throwing. In fact, John Daly is about as nice a guy as you’ll meet on the golf tour. But, as everyone knows, he’s had serious issues since he first burst onto the scene in 1991 that go way beyond the occasional profanity.
Two days ago, Garry Smits broke a story in the Florida Times-Union that shows definitely how the tour has enabled Daly for almost 20 years. Because Daly had filed a libel suit against The Times-Union that was thrown out of court, Smits was able to gain access to the tour’s 486-page file on Daly, which was part of the court record.
Daly, it turns out, has been suspended six times during his career, has been fined more than $100,000—a drop in the bucket for someone who has lost that in a couple hours playing blackjack during his life—and has been ordered to go to counseling or rehab by the tour on seven different occasions. He was fined 11 different times for ‘conduct unbecoming,’ and was reprimanded TWENTY-ONE times for failing to give full effort.
At least two of the suspensions have been in the public domain because Daly talked about them. That said, what the file makes clear is that Daly was a repeat offender in all these areas and the tour did very little to try to stop him—or help him. When Daly was last suspended (and didn’t keep it a secret) at the end of 2008 I wrote that Finchem should call his fellow commissioners around the world and ask them to extend the suspension so that Daly couldn’t play golf ANYWHERE until he got help. He didn’t and Daly kept on playing—usually for appearance fees, which are allowed overseas.
Now Daly is trying once again to rebuild his life. He’s had surgery on his stomach to keep his weight down—he’s lost about 100 pounds—and he says he wants to take one more serious shot at being competitive on the tour again. Of course a few weeks ago, after missing another cut, Daly announced his retirement. Then he played a week later.
We can all root for John Daly because there’s no malice in him. That said, the tour did him no favors by covering up all the discipline he has faced through the years. It doesn’t do ANY of the players a favor by covering up their misbehavior. Maybe Finchem needs to spend less time defending Woods and more time thinking about how poorly his tour’s policies on discipline have worked out for—arguably—its two best-known players.
*********
I really enjoyed a lot of the comments from yesterday on my dust-up with Michael Wilbon. If nothing else, they showed that people really do pay attention to what people in our business say and write.
Two quick things: For the record, so there is no confusion, my issues with Tiger Woods date to 1996—WAY before Rocco Mediate approached me about writing a book—when I compared his father to Stefano Capriati (which, in retrospect may have been unfair to Capriati) and criticized him for blowing off a dinner in his honor (college player of the year) because he was, ‘tired,’ and for turning down an invitation to join Rachel Robinson and President Clinton in New York after he won The Masters on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s Major League debut. (To Tiger’s credit, he wrote Mrs. Robinson a couple of years later to apologize for not being there).
Tiger and I had a lengthy dinner in 1998 during which we discussed a lot of this and agreed to disagree. If you were to check what I’ve written about him through the years, I’ve said a LOT of good things about him too—especially about his golf which is, clearly, unassailable. For Wilbon—or anyone—to imply that my criticism of him since November 27th has anything to do with the Rocco book is just silly and false. I TOLD Rocco when he approached me about the book that Tiger wasn’t going to talk, certainly not to me, probably not to anyone. It was ROCCO who was angry when he didn’t talk, not me.
I don’t have an axe to grind with Tiger. He’s been great for the game of golf. Watching him play is amazing. But I’m not going to find ways to defend him: “no one cares, it’s no one’s business…” just so he’ll call me by name when he returns to the tour.
Finally to Nathan: Thanks for the explanation of your question to Mike. For the record, my regular Sunday column has appeared in The Post the last two Sundays. As I’ve said, The Post isn’t ESPN. In fact, if you listen to Tony’s radio show he often says, “I love Sally (Jenkins) but her column today was ridiculous.” In fact, he often says it to Sally. Unlike some people, she LAUGHS about it…
Finally: One last time on the “Junior,” nickname. Tony put it on me 30 years ago after I first wrote a long piece on John McEnroe. Because we got along—and because I was the youngest guy on the sports staff at the time—he put “Junior,” on me because that was McEnroe’s nickname. I’ve pleaded with him since, I guess I turned 40, to drop it because at 23 it was fine, at my age now I find it silly. He can’t stop himself—so I deal with it. When strangers use it I find it not so much offensive as disrespectful. I don’t call anyone I don’t know by a nickname. To me, that’s between friends unless the person calls himself that as in Don Imus calling himself, “The I-Man.”
My belief—as I’ve said to Finchem and others in authority at the tour—is that that’s a bunch of hooey. To begin with, by letting the public know that it doesn’t tolerate misbehavior, the tour actually strengthens the image that it wants. More important than that, by announcing fines or suspensions, the tour sends a message to the players that it isn’t messing around. The only way to make fines a deterrent is by making the players who misbehave deal with what they’ve done in public.
There’s no better example than Tiger Woods, who has often complained about the fact that he is the most fined player in the history of the tour. Woods has been fined innumerable times for on-course profanity; for throwing clubs and for the behavior of his vigilante caddie, Steve Williams.
But the tour has never once announced any of his fines. Woods, as we all know, isn’t just a golfer he’s a corporation. Until November 27th he was the most carefully marketed athlete in history, his image burnished at every turn by the corporations he was in business with.
It is impossible not to wonder how Woods, his corporate sponsors and his image-makers would have felt if every week a story had appeared on how much money he’d been fined for misbehavior. There’s no doubt such stories would have undercut his image long before his serial affairs destroyed that image.
Everyone knows when you punish a child you don’t just say, ‘don’t do it again.’ You attach a consequence in the hope that the child will think twice before repeating the offense. No one ever attached a consequence for misbehavior to Tiger—or to anyone else on the tour. The money doesn’t matter, certainly not to Tiger and not to 99 percent of the players out there.
Most players like to tell stories about how they got fined: Paul Goydos once got fined for yelling profanities at the tape in the PGA Tour travel office when it wasn’t open on a Saturday afternoon. He likes to tell people that several of his fellow pros took up a collection to pay the $500 when the travel office changed its hours after his call.
Jay Haas tells the story about his one and only fine on tour. On the 18th hole of a miserable third round in Milwaukee he skittered an awful chip all the way across the green. As he walked to his ball he heard someone yell, “Haas, you suck!”
Normally the most mild-mannered guy you’ll ever meet, Haas snapped for an instant and yelled, ‘f---- you.,’ back at the guy.
The next day when rules official Wade Cagle called him into ask about a report that had been filed on the incident, Cagle said, “I’m sure you were misheard Jay, you were probably saying, ‘thank-you.’”
“Nope,” Haas said. “I said ‘f----- you.’ How much do I owe you?”
Those stories are funny because they involved guys who generally behave well. For them, a fine is an aberration just like Brad Faxon’s fine years ago for criticizing Scott Hoch for not playing in The British Open (criticizing another player publicly—conduct unbecoming) was an aberration.
Woods’s lousy behavior was never an aberration. It was who he was and no one seriously called him on it until Tom Watson brought it up several weeks ago.
The same is true of John Daly. John’s problem hasn’t been cursing or club-throwing. In fact, John Daly is about as nice a guy as you’ll meet on the golf tour. But, as everyone knows, he’s had serious issues since he first burst onto the scene in 1991 that go way beyond the occasional profanity.
Two days ago, Garry Smits broke a story in the Florida Times-Union that shows definitely how the tour has enabled Daly for almost 20 years. Because Daly had filed a libel suit against The Times-Union that was thrown out of court, Smits was able to gain access to the tour’s 486-page file on Daly, which was part of the court record.
Daly, it turns out, has been suspended six times during his career, has been fined more than $100,000—a drop in the bucket for someone who has lost that in a couple hours playing blackjack during his life—and has been ordered to go to counseling or rehab by the tour on seven different occasions. He was fined 11 different times for ‘conduct unbecoming,’ and was reprimanded TWENTY-ONE times for failing to give full effort.
At least two of the suspensions have been in the public domain because Daly talked about them. That said, what the file makes clear is that Daly was a repeat offender in all these areas and the tour did very little to try to stop him—or help him. When Daly was last suspended (and didn’t keep it a secret) at the end of 2008 I wrote that Finchem should call his fellow commissioners around the world and ask them to extend the suspension so that Daly couldn’t play golf ANYWHERE until he got help. He didn’t and Daly kept on playing—usually for appearance fees, which are allowed overseas.
Now Daly is trying once again to rebuild his life. He’s had surgery on his stomach to keep his weight down—he’s lost about 100 pounds—and he says he wants to take one more serious shot at being competitive on the tour again. Of course a few weeks ago, after missing another cut, Daly announced his retirement. Then he played a week later.
We can all root for John Daly because there’s no malice in him. That said, the tour did him no favors by covering up all the discipline he has faced through the years. It doesn’t do ANY of the players a favor by covering up their misbehavior. Maybe Finchem needs to spend less time defending Woods and more time thinking about how poorly his tour’s policies on discipline have worked out for—arguably—its two best-known players.
*********
I really enjoyed a lot of the comments from yesterday on my dust-up with Michael Wilbon. If nothing else, they showed that people really do pay attention to what people in our business say and write.
Two quick things: For the record, so there is no confusion, my issues with Tiger Woods date to 1996—WAY before Rocco Mediate approached me about writing a book—when I compared his father to Stefano Capriati (which, in retrospect may have been unfair to Capriati) and criticized him for blowing off a dinner in his honor (college player of the year) because he was, ‘tired,’ and for turning down an invitation to join Rachel Robinson and President Clinton in New York after he won The Masters on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s Major League debut. (To Tiger’s credit, he wrote Mrs. Robinson a couple of years later to apologize for not being there).
Tiger and I had a lengthy dinner in 1998 during which we discussed a lot of this and agreed to disagree. If you were to check what I’ve written about him through the years, I’ve said a LOT of good things about him too—especially about his golf which is, clearly, unassailable. For Wilbon—or anyone—to imply that my criticism of him since November 27th has anything to do with the Rocco book is just silly and false. I TOLD Rocco when he approached me about the book that Tiger wasn’t going to talk, certainly not to me, probably not to anyone. It was ROCCO who was angry when he didn’t talk, not me.
I don’t have an axe to grind with Tiger. He’s been great for the game of golf. Watching him play is amazing. But I’m not going to find ways to defend him: “no one cares, it’s no one’s business…” just so he’ll call me by name when he returns to the tour.
Finally to Nathan: Thanks for the explanation of your question to Mike. For the record, my regular Sunday column has appeared in The Post the last two Sundays. As I’ve said, The Post isn’t ESPN. In fact, if you listen to Tony’s radio show he often says, “I love Sally (Jenkins) but her column today was ridiculous.” In fact, he often says it to Sally. Unlike some people, she LAUGHS about it…
Finally: One last time on the “Junior,” nickname. Tony put it on me 30 years ago after I first wrote a long piece on John McEnroe. Because we got along—and because I was the youngest guy on the sports staff at the time—he put “Junior,” on me because that was McEnroe’s nickname. I’ve pleaded with him since, I guess I turned 40, to drop it because at 23 it was fine, at my age now I find it silly. He can’t stop himself—so I deal with it. When strangers use it I find it not so much offensive as disrespectful. I don’t call anyone I don’t know by a nickname. To me, that’s between friends unless the person calls himself that as in Don Imus calling himself, “The I-Man.”
Comments (16)
Weekend reaction - talking about the commentary on, and my experience of, Tiger Woods
Mon, Feb 22 2010 10:29
| PGA Tour, Rick Reilly, Tiger Woods
| Permalink
I feel torn this morning because there is a lot of cool stuff to write about: Bode Miller’s redemption and his remarkable slalom run yesterday—which I still haven’t seen because every single time I try to turn on NBC they are showing figure skating. I mean EVERY SINGLE TIME. There’s also the U.S.’s stunning hockey win over Canada—which you COULD watch on MSNBC while the dopey ice dancing was going on. Two months ago, George McPhee, the general manager of The Washington Capitals told me he thought the U.S. had a chance in Vancouver for one reason: Ryan Miller. So far he looks pretty smart.
(Note to anyone who is going to get offended because I think figure skating is ridiculous: I’m NOT saying the skaters aren’t remarkable athletes. But so are ballet dancers and I don’t think ballet dancing should be an Olympic sport either. Enough about that.)
There is also plenty of college hoops to talk about right now with Selection Sunday—perhaps the last one that will really matter if the NCAA goes Dialing for Dollars this summer as I suspect it will—less than three weeks away.
But I can’t seem to escape Tiger Woods. The more times I see a replay of the farce he staged on Friday and then hear people self-righteously defending him, I get a little bit angrier although perhaps not as angry as the poster who ripped me on Friday for being willing to write all about John Daly’s genitals in a book and then for criticizing Tiger. Thanks to whomever posted right below her and pointed out that RICK REILLY wrote that book. How do you confuse me with Rick Reilly? What are the chances I’d ever be caught dead wearing a white suit? Or any suit for that matter.
Here’s what I find most interesting about the various commentaries I’ve seen, heard and read since Friday. Most of those who have actually spent time around Tiger—notice I didn’t say KNOW Tiger because I agree with my friend Sally Jenkins who wrote that Tiger won’t let anyone really know him—saw what took place on Friday as a performance. I’m not just talking about the fact that the whole thing had clearly been rehearsed and the fact that he literally READ the words, “Good morning.”
I’m not even talking about the ridiculous scene we saw with Tiger’s “friends and colleagues,” (many of whom are his employees) sitting up straight in their chairs at rapt attention as if the President was addressing the nation in the midst of some kind of crisis. I’m surprised they didn’t all stand when Tiger entered and exited the room.
I’m not even talking about his refusal to answer questions and the comic attempt by his agent Mark Steinberg to handpick a group of reporters to be “allowed,” to sit in the room at the feet of The Great Man.
What made this so clearly a performance is something raised by the Tiger-defenders: “He doesn’t have to apologize to anyone except his family,” is a bleat I’ve heard repeated often—especially on ESPN where I wonder if the Bristol Boys are writing the same script for everyone in the desperate hope that Tiger will grant them (pant-pant) a sit-down with one of their softball questioners in the future. (Stephen A. Smith was the notable exception but he’s no longer a rising star at the network and they can just tell Team Tiger, ‘we didn’t know he was going to, you know, tell the truth. We apologize’).
Okay then folks, if he didn’t need to apologize to anyone but his family what was he doing out there apologizing to anyone and everyone including all the children in the world? Here’s the answer: This was step one, not of the 12 steps to recovery for addicts, but in the however-many-steps-it-takes to recovery for fallen icons. Tiger wants his sponsors back—or new sponsors to take their place. He wants to be beloved again. He wants people to think he’s “changed.” What he was doing Friday is no different than a beer company ad that urges you to “drink responsibly,” after pitching its product. Tiger wants people to think he CARES about them now.
Look, I know a lot of you will say I just don’t like Tiger. In truth, I don’t know him well enough to like or dislike him. I’m awed by his talent as a golfer and I’m always disappointed when I watch him blow off kids asking for autographs and I think he’s disdainful of most people. I think he’s smart as hell and I see his arrogance as one of the reasons he’s the golfer that he is. I agree with people who say that if he’d ever let his guard down he’d probably be a good guy to have a beer with. I also think—as I have always thought—that he’s been a victim of his father, not a product of his father, for a long, long time. The fact that I’ve written that and said that since he first came on tour is a major reason why Tiger doesn’t like ME. Which is fine. Lots of people don’t like me. It comes with the job.
But the notion that I sit back and lob bombs at Tiger or anyone based on personal biases is silly. We all have biases and the key as reporters is being aware of them. I don’t know, for example, Nick Saban but everything I’ve ever seen of him or read about him or been told about him by those who do know him, indicates to me I wouldn’t like him at all. But the guy is a GREAT college football coach. Period. I don’t really know Joe Paterno very well but everything I’ve seen of him, read about him and been told about him indicates to me that I WOULD like him. He is also a GREAT college football coach.
So my reaction to Tiger on Friday isn’t personal. It’s based on what I know from watching him in action on and off golf courses for 14 years. If he comes back to the game and learns to behave on the golf course—and makes his vigilante caddy behave—terrific. I will applaud him for that. If he repairs his marriage, that’s his business just as if he doesn’t, that’s his business too. I’d like to see him sign more autographs; play in some of the tournaments that gave him sponsor exemptions when he first turned pro (and in the Bob Hope Classic which could use the boost) and just be a little nicer to people who aren’t paying him to be nice. I hold out little if no hope that he’ll be kinder and gentler with the media and, honestly, I don’t care.
That said, I found his lecturing of the media Friday amazing. He screams and yells about his wife and kids being followed to school. He knows full well that none of the media who have covered him regularly (and most treated him as a God-life figure) followed anyone to school. He also knows that it was HIS behavior that brought the tabloids into the life of his family.
As for his rant about how unfair it was for people to say Elin attacked him on Thanksgiving night, fine, I’ll take him at his word. Except for one thing: If Elin didn’t attack or threaten you in some way, how the hell did you end up in your car at 2:30 in the morning in a T-shirt, shorts and bare feet, clearly in no condition to drive but driving anyway—right into a fire hydrant outside your house? None of us needs to hear about conversations inside the house—Tiger is very good at saying he won’t answer questions few of us want to ask—but as a public figure who set in motion a series of extraordinarily public events by getting into the car, he DOES need to explain how he got there. Don’t call people liars if you aren’t prepared to provide them with the truth.
Here’s the worst part of the whole thing: Tiger Woods has now become one of the most polarizing public figures on the planet. Other than what HE did—not the tabloid media—to his family, that’s the saddest part of this whole thing.
(Note to anyone who is going to get offended because I think figure skating is ridiculous: I’m NOT saying the skaters aren’t remarkable athletes. But so are ballet dancers and I don’t think ballet dancing should be an Olympic sport either. Enough about that.)
There is also plenty of college hoops to talk about right now with Selection Sunday—perhaps the last one that will really matter if the NCAA goes Dialing for Dollars this summer as I suspect it will—less than three weeks away.
But I can’t seem to escape Tiger Woods. The more times I see a replay of the farce he staged on Friday and then hear people self-righteously defending him, I get a little bit angrier although perhaps not as angry as the poster who ripped me on Friday for being willing to write all about John Daly’s genitals in a book and then for criticizing Tiger. Thanks to whomever posted right below her and pointed out that RICK REILLY wrote that book. How do you confuse me with Rick Reilly? What are the chances I’d ever be caught dead wearing a white suit? Or any suit for that matter.
Here’s what I find most interesting about the various commentaries I’ve seen, heard and read since Friday. Most of those who have actually spent time around Tiger—notice I didn’t say KNOW Tiger because I agree with my friend Sally Jenkins who wrote that Tiger won’t let anyone really know him—saw what took place on Friday as a performance. I’m not just talking about the fact that the whole thing had clearly been rehearsed and the fact that he literally READ the words, “Good morning.”
I’m not even talking about the ridiculous scene we saw with Tiger’s “friends and colleagues,” (many of whom are his employees) sitting up straight in their chairs at rapt attention as if the President was addressing the nation in the midst of some kind of crisis. I’m surprised they didn’t all stand when Tiger entered and exited the room.
I’m not even talking about his refusal to answer questions and the comic attempt by his agent Mark Steinberg to handpick a group of reporters to be “allowed,” to sit in the room at the feet of The Great Man.
What made this so clearly a performance is something raised by the Tiger-defenders: “He doesn’t have to apologize to anyone except his family,” is a bleat I’ve heard repeated often—especially on ESPN where I wonder if the Bristol Boys are writing the same script for everyone in the desperate hope that Tiger will grant them (pant-pant) a sit-down with one of their softball questioners in the future. (Stephen A. Smith was the notable exception but he’s no longer a rising star at the network and they can just tell Team Tiger, ‘we didn’t know he was going to, you know, tell the truth. We apologize’).
Okay then folks, if he didn’t need to apologize to anyone but his family what was he doing out there apologizing to anyone and everyone including all the children in the world? Here’s the answer: This was step one, not of the 12 steps to recovery for addicts, but in the however-many-steps-it-takes to recovery for fallen icons. Tiger wants his sponsors back—or new sponsors to take their place. He wants to be beloved again. He wants people to think he’s “changed.” What he was doing Friday is no different than a beer company ad that urges you to “drink responsibly,” after pitching its product. Tiger wants people to think he CARES about them now.
Look, I know a lot of you will say I just don’t like Tiger. In truth, I don’t know him well enough to like or dislike him. I’m awed by his talent as a golfer and I’m always disappointed when I watch him blow off kids asking for autographs and I think he’s disdainful of most people. I think he’s smart as hell and I see his arrogance as one of the reasons he’s the golfer that he is. I agree with people who say that if he’d ever let his guard down he’d probably be a good guy to have a beer with. I also think—as I have always thought—that he’s been a victim of his father, not a product of his father, for a long, long time. The fact that I’ve written that and said that since he first came on tour is a major reason why Tiger doesn’t like ME. Which is fine. Lots of people don’t like me. It comes with the job.
But the notion that I sit back and lob bombs at Tiger or anyone based on personal biases is silly. We all have biases and the key as reporters is being aware of them. I don’t know, for example, Nick Saban but everything I’ve ever seen of him or read about him or been told about him by those who do know him, indicates to me I wouldn’t like him at all. But the guy is a GREAT college football coach. Period. I don’t really know Joe Paterno very well but everything I’ve seen of him, read about him and been told about him indicates to me that I WOULD like him. He is also a GREAT college football coach.
So my reaction to Tiger on Friday isn’t personal. It’s based on what I know from watching him in action on and off golf courses for 14 years. If he comes back to the game and learns to behave on the golf course—and makes his vigilante caddy behave—terrific. I will applaud him for that. If he repairs his marriage, that’s his business just as if he doesn’t, that’s his business too. I’d like to see him sign more autographs; play in some of the tournaments that gave him sponsor exemptions when he first turned pro (and in the Bob Hope Classic which could use the boost) and just be a little nicer to people who aren’t paying him to be nice. I hold out little if no hope that he’ll be kinder and gentler with the media and, honestly, I don’t care.
That said, I found his lecturing of the media Friday amazing. He screams and yells about his wife and kids being followed to school. He knows full well that none of the media who have covered him regularly (and most treated him as a God-life figure) followed anyone to school. He also knows that it was HIS behavior that brought the tabloids into the life of his family.
As for his rant about how unfair it was for people to say Elin attacked him on Thanksgiving night, fine, I’ll take him at his word. Except for one thing: If Elin didn’t attack or threaten you in some way, how the hell did you end up in your car at 2:30 in the morning in a T-shirt, shorts and bare feet, clearly in no condition to drive but driving anyway—right into a fire hydrant outside your house? None of us needs to hear about conversations inside the house—Tiger is very good at saying he won’t answer questions few of us want to ask—but as a public figure who set in motion a series of extraordinarily public events by getting into the car, he DOES need to explain how he got there. Don’t call people liars if you aren’t prepared to provide them with the truth.
Here’s the worst part of the whole thing: Tiger Woods has now become one of the most polarizing public figures on the planet. Other than what HE did—not the tabloid media—to his family, that’s the saddest part of this whole thing.
Comments (15)
Saturday's Washington Post column - 'Tiger Woods's half-apology'
Fri, Feb 19 2010 05:30
| PGA Tour, Washington Post, Tiger Woods
| Permalink
One of the things that make an athlete great is extraordinary arrogance. The best of the best always believe they will find a way to overcome adversity, to pull off the shot that can't be pulled off, to find a way to win when losing appears inevitable. No one has defined that arrogance more clearly over the past 14 years than Tiger Woods, who has dominated golf since he turned pro in 1996.
On Friday morning, Woods came out of hiding. Exactly 12 weeks after the early-morning accident that led to revelations that he had repeatedly been involved in extramarital affairs, Woods appeared in public for the first time to say he was sorry.
He apologized to almost everyone he had ever crossed paths with. He looked sad and choked up at times. He said that he had learned from his mistakes and is still learning after spending 45 days in a rehabilitation center -- though he never specifically mentioned where he had gone seeking help. He tried very hard to sound humbled.
He didn't pull it off.
Click here for the rest of the story: Tiger Woods's half-apology
On Friday morning, Woods came out of hiding. Exactly 12 weeks after the early-morning accident that led to revelations that he had repeatedly been involved in extramarital affairs, Woods appeared in public for the first time to say he was sorry.
He apologized to almost everyone he had ever crossed paths with. He looked sad and choked up at times. He said that he had learned from his mistakes and is still learning after spending 45 days in a rehabilitation center -- though he never specifically mentioned where he had gone seeking help. He tried very hard to sound humbled.
He didn't pull it off.
Click here for the rest of the story: Tiger Woods's half-apology
Comments (18)
Tiger Woods and his televised press release
Thu, Feb 18 2010 05:02
| Tim Finchem, PGA Tour, GWAA, Tiger Woods
| Permalink
So Tiger Woods is coming down from the mountain to speak to us.
Sort of.
Unless he changes his mind at the last minute, Woods isn’t going to take any questions when he shows up inside the clubhouse of The TPC Sawgrass on Friday morning. He will deliver a statement and that will be it. He and his agent Mark Steinberg and the rest of ‘Team Tiger,’ have invited some, “friends and colleagues,” and, for reasons I don’t completely understand, six members of the print media.
What I don’t understand is why any of us would need to be there. This isn’t a press conference, it is a televised press release. The invited writers shouldn’t even go. They should tell Steinberg and Woods that if the guy isn’t going to answer questions, there’s no reason to attend. In fact, everyone associated with this sham should be ashamed for taking part in it.
The PGA Tour, by giving Woods and company access to the TPC clubhouse (and thus use of a gated facility complete with security) is throwing one of its sponsors, Accenture, right under the bus. You remember Accenture? It was the first corporation to drop Woods after the November 27th car accident that led to all the revelations about his personal life.
If you think for ONE second that the timing of this appearance isn’t connected to the fact that The Accenture World Match Play Championship is going on this week I have some ocean front land in Nebraska I’d like to sell you. Tiger is one of the world’s most vindictive people, someone who can hold a grudge with the best of them. (I say this as someone who holds grudges and can be pretty vindictive myself. I’m trying to get better is about my only defense).
So when Woods, Steinberg and company go to the tour and say, ‘we’re doing this on Friday,' the tour’s answer should be, ‘we can’t stop you but we’re sure as hell not helping you.”
Now, what you’ll say in answer to that is that Tim Finchem can’t afford to have Tiger mad at him because he’s bigger than the game. You’d be right. Except at some point as commissioner of ALL the players in the game you have to draw a line. You have to say, ‘look Tiger, sorry if this upsets you but Accenture is still one of OUR sponsors and we have 64 of the world’s best players in the event this week. We wish you’d wait till next week to do this but if you won’t, you’re on your own.’
If Tiger stalks off to play The European Tour over that, then fine. First of all, he doesn’t want to play in Europe on a regular basis. Second, he looks like a petulant little baby if he does and everyone would know why he was doing it. Finchem should have stood up and said no.
So should The Golf Writers Association of America—of which I am a member. It should have said to Steinberg, “hang on here pal. If you’re holding an alleged press conference, any legitimate member of the golf media (let’s not get into the tabloid question here) should be able to attend. We don’t accept you not only limiting how many people can come but WHO can come.’ Steinberg informed the GWAA that three wire services—AP, Reuters and Bloomberg—were invited and that GWAA President Vartan Kupelian could ‘designate,’ three writers but of course Steinberg could veto his choices.
As in, if Vartan had named, say, ME (God Forbid I wouldn’t be caught dead there) he would have said, ‘no way.’ So, Vartan named himself (fine if he wants to go); Bob Harig from ESPN.com (same thing, fine if poor Bob wants to do it) and Mark Soltau. Look, I like Mark and he’s a good writer. But he WORKS for Tiger—writes for his website. Are you kidding me?
[Update: I'm happy to say the golf writers voted Thursday afternoon to boycott the Tiger-fraud, but that doesn't mean those designated to go might not still go. I hope they don't.]
The problem is this: People are STILL intimidated by Tiger—the commissioner of the tour; a lot of golf writers; a lot of players too. One reason I’d never get in the room is that they know I’d stand up and say, ‘Hang on Tiger, I know there are some people who simply want to see you play golf again and don’t give a damn what you’ve done. That’s fine. That’s their right. They can tune in whenever you’re playing (I still believe it’ll be Doral or Bay Hill although some are theorizing he wants to go play Phoenix next week to have 60,000 drunks screaming his name to remind people that he's still adored). But there are a LOT of people who feel very letdown by you. They feel you lied to them, by talking about how important family was to you while you were doing what you were doing. You made millions because they bought products you endorsed and they gave a lot of money to your foundation. Don’t you owe them the answers to some questions?’
Of course I’d be dragged out by security and accused of grandstanding so it’s better I’m not there.
The sad irony in this is that Tiger is once again being badly advised and is making the wrong decision. If he walked into the room, read his statement and then said, ‘okay fellas (to ANY legitimate media who wanted to show up, not just invited cheerleaders) I’m going to sit here and answer every question you’ve got. Once I’m done and I walk out of this room, I’m done. I’m going to do this once to get it over with so I can move on with my life. Fire away.”
And then, an hour later or whenever it was over, he’d be done. If someone raised the issue again he could legitimately say, “I answered every question I was asked back in February.”
Now, it’s just more of the same stonewalling. Maybe the next step is Oprah and some crocodile tears but I’m not sure that many people will buy that at this point.
On Wednesday afternoon, shortly before the announcement that Tiger was going to speak, I was on Jim Rome’s radio show. Jim asked me if I thought Tiger might come back to the tour a different guy than when he left. I said I didn’t think he’d be even a little bit different, that (if possible) he’d be more closed and more defensive with the media.
So far, unfortunately, I’m right. Maybe he’ll reconsider this morning when he gets in front of the (one) camera allowed in the room. I doubt it. I know his defenders will say he doesn’t owe people anything except spectacular golf. I don’t happen to think that’s true. I’ll watch this thing because my job requires me to watch it but honestly, if that weren’t the case, I wouldn’t go anywhere near it.
I’m pretty damn sure I know exactly what he’s going to say. And I’m just as sure all of you do too.
Sort of.
Unless he changes his mind at the last minute, Woods isn’t going to take any questions when he shows up inside the clubhouse of The TPC Sawgrass on Friday morning. He will deliver a statement and that will be it. He and his agent Mark Steinberg and the rest of ‘Team Tiger,’ have invited some, “friends and colleagues,” and, for reasons I don’t completely understand, six members of the print media.
What I don’t understand is why any of us would need to be there. This isn’t a press conference, it is a televised press release. The invited writers shouldn’t even go. They should tell Steinberg and Woods that if the guy isn’t going to answer questions, there’s no reason to attend. In fact, everyone associated with this sham should be ashamed for taking part in it.
The PGA Tour, by giving Woods and company access to the TPC clubhouse (and thus use of a gated facility complete with security) is throwing one of its sponsors, Accenture, right under the bus. You remember Accenture? It was the first corporation to drop Woods after the November 27th car accident that led to all the revelations about his personal life.
If you think for ONE second that the timing of this appearance isn’t connected to the fact that The Accenture World Match Play Championship is going on this week I have some ocean front land in Nebraska I’d like to sell you. Tiger is one of the world’s most vindictive people, someone who can hold a grudge with the best of them. (I say this as someone who holds grudges and can be pretty vindictive myself. I’m trying to get better is about my only defense).
So when Woods, Steinberg and company go to the tour and say, ‘we’re doing this on Friday,' the tour’s answer should be, ‘we can’t stop you but we’re sure as hell not helping you.”
Now, what you’ll say in answer to that is that Tim Finchem can’t afford to have Tiger mad at him because he’s bigger than the game. You’d be right. Except at some point as commissioner of ALL the players in the game you have to draw a line. You have to say, ‘look Tiger, sorry if this upsets you but Accenture is still one of OUR sponsors and we have 64 of the world’s best players in the event this week. We wish you’d wait till next week to do this but if you won’t, you’re on your own.’
If Tiger stalks off to play The European Tour over that, then fine. First of all, he doesn’t want to play in Europe on a regular basis. Second, he looks like a petulant little baby if he does and everyone would know why he was doing it. Finchem should have stood up and said no.
So should The Golf Writers Association of America—of which I am a member. It should have said to Steinberg, “hang on here pal. If you’re holding an alleged press conference, any legitimate member of the golf media (let’s not get into the tabloid question here) should be able to attend. We don’t accept you not only limiting how many people can come but WHO can come.’ Steinberg informed the GWAA that three wire services—AP, Reuters and Bloomberg—were invited and that GWAA President Vartan Kupelian could ‘designate,’ three writers but of course Steinberg could veto his choices.
As in, if Vartan had named, say, ME (God Forbid I wouldn’t be caught dead there) he would have said, ‘no way.’ So, Vartan named himself (fine if he wants to go); Bob Harig from ESPN.com (same thing, fine if poor Bob wants to do it) and Mark Soltau. Look, I like Mark and he’s a good writer. But he WORKS for Tiger—writes for his website. Are you kidding me?
[Update: I'm happy to say the golf writers voted Thursday afternoon to boycott the Tiger-fraud, but that doesn't mean those designated to go might not still go. I hope they don't.]
The problem is this: People are STILL intimidated by Tiger—the commissioner of the tour; a lot of golf writers; a lot of players too. One reason I’d never get in the room is that they know I’d stand up and say, ‘Hang on Tiger, I know there are some people who simply want to see you play golf again and don’t give a damn what you’ve done. That’s fine. That’s their right. They can tune in whenever you’re playing (I still believe it’ll be Doral or Bay Hill although some are theorizing he wants to go play Phoenix next week to have 60,000 drunks screaming his name to remind people that he's still adored). But there are a LOT of people who feel very letdown by you. They feel you lied to them, by talking about how important family was to you while you were doing what you were doing. You made millions because they bought products you endorsed and they gave a lot of money to your foundation. Don’t you owe them the answers to some questions?’
Of course I’d be dragged out by security and accused of grandstanding so it’s better I’m not there.
The sad irony in this is that Tiger is once again being badly advised and is making the wrong decision. If he walked into the room, read his statement and then said, ‘okay fellas (to ANY legitimate media who wanted to show up, not just invited cheerleaders) I’m going to sit here and answer every question you’ve got. Once I’m done and I walk out of this room, I’m done. I’m going to do this once to get it over with so I can move on with my life. Fire away.”
And then, an hour later or whenever it was over, he’d be done. If someone raised the issue again he could legitimately say, “I answered every question I was asked back in February.”
Now, it’s just more of the same stonewalling. Maybe the next step is Oprah and some crocodile tears but I’m not sure that many people will buy that at this point.
On Wednesday afternoon, shortly before the announcement that Tiger was going to speak, I was on Jim Rome’s radio show. Jim asked me if I thought Tiger might come back to the tour a different guy than when he left. I said I didn’t think he’d be even a little bit different, that (if possible) he’d be more closed and more defensive with the media.
So far, unfortunately, I’m right. Maybe he’ll reconsider this morning when he gets in front of the (one) camera allowed in the room. I doubt it. I know his defenders will say he doesn’t owe people anything except spectacular golf. I don’t happen to think that’s true. I’ll watch this thing because my job requires me to watch it but honestly, if that weren’t the case, I wouldn’t go anywhere near it.
I’m pretty damn sure I know exactly what he’s going to say. And I’m just as sure all of you do too.
Comments (13)
This week's radio segments
Thu, Feb 18 2010 12:09
| CBS Sports, PGA Tour, Tiger Woods, Tony Kornheiser
| Permalink
Yesterday I joined The Sports Reporters' Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin in the normal timeslot (5:25 ET on Wednesday's). Click the permalink, then the link below, to listen to the segment. With the Tiger Woods announcement of the orchestrated event that is happening Friday morning, that was the topic of the day.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters
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I also made my regular appearance on The Gas Man at 5:25 PT on Wednesday. In this segment, we spent the majority of the time discussing the Tiger event coming up on Friday.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Gas Man
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This week on the newest The Tony Kornheiser Show I was on during the ten o'clock hour, and as expected we spent the majority of the time discussing our opinions on the upcoming televised Tiger press statement. This week, we had differing opinions on much of the matter.
Click here to listen to the segment (starts at approximately the 28:50 mark): The Tony Kornheiser Show
Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters
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I also made my regular appearance on The Gas Man at 5:25 PT on Wednesday. In this segment, we spent the majority of the time discussing the Tiger event coming up on Friday.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Gas Man
---------------------
This week on the newest The Tony Kornheiser Show I was on during the ten o'clock hour, and as expected we spent the majority of the time discussing our opinions on the upcoming televised Tiger press statement. This week, we had differing opinions on much of the matter.
Click here to listen to the segment (starts at approximately the 28:50 mark): The Tony Kornheiser Show
Comments (3)
Taking a look at Tom Watson’s comments on Woods
Tue, Feb 9 2010 10:04
| Tim Finchem, Tom Watson, PGA Tour, Tiger Woods
| Permalink
Tom Watson raised some eyebrows last week while playing in Dubai—ironically he was invited because the tournament had a large chunk of extra cash to spend on appearance fees since it wasn’t paying Tiger Woods his annual fee of $3 million—when he talked about Woods’ behavior on the golf course.
Let’s put aside the off-course issues for today because there is going to be MORE than enough written and said about them as Woods moves closer to his return to the PGA Tour, which I still think will come next month either at Doral or Bay Hill.
Watson’s point was this: In golf, part of being a CHAMPION is the way you conduct yourself in public, especially on the golf course. It is worth remembering that Watson was one of the first players to say straight out that he had never seen a talent like Woods and that his presence in the game was nothing but a good thing.
I still remember back in 1998, I drove to the airport in Jacksonville during the week of The Players Championship to meet my family, which was coming to town since Danny was on spring break and Brigid wasn’t in school yet. Watson was there, waiting for the same flight from Atlanta because his son Michael was flying in to meet him for the week.
When the plane landed, Danny—who was four at the time—was the first person to come running into the terminal. He spotted me right away and raced over. When I introduced him to Watson I said, “Mr. Watson is a very famous golfer.”
Danny looked at Watson and said, “are you as good as Tiger Woods?”
“Not in my wildest dreams,” Watson answered.
It was also Watson who said during Woods’ 12-shot runaway at the 1997 Masters that, “he’s a boy among men and he’s showing the men how it’s done.”
But it has always bothered Watson—and many other players—that Woods has absolutely refused to clean up his act on the golf course. Most kids learn early that throwing clubs and using profanity on the golf course is unacceptable. Arnold Palmer often tells a story about playing in a tournament when he was about 13 and tossing a couple of clubs in frustration. His father was there and never said a word throughout the round.
“As soon as we got in the car he said to me very quietly, ‘if you ever throw a club again, that’s the last time you’ll play golf,” Palmer said. “You can believe I never threw a club again.”
Can you possibly imagine Palmer, Watson or Jack Nicklaus throwing a club? You might—MIGHT—hear a “dammit,” from them on occasion but that’s about it. Woods AND his thug caddy are famous on tour for their language. In fact, back in 2000, during his historic performance at the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, Woods rinsed his ball in the water left off the 18th tee at the end of the second round and dropped a clearly heard on national TV f-bomb for which he was given a hefty fine since it was far from being his first offense.
His response was to have his agent call The PGA Tour and complain that there was a double-standard when it came to fines for Woods because he always had a microphone following him. All the double standards that BENEFIT Woods because of his stardom never get complained about.
Part of the problem, as I’ve written before, lies with the tour. Commissioner Tim Finchem still adheres to the ridiculous notion that covering up fines somehow helps the tour’s image as a genteel place filled only with fine gentlemen. (I think that image may have taken a hit these past 10 weeks). Finchem and his board believe that fines and even suspensions should be covered up to protect the tour’s image.
About the only reason to fine athletes who make the kind of money the stars on the tour make is deterrence. Does anyone think it hurts Woods to reach into his pocket for fine money—even if he is the most fined player in golf history? Of course not. But, prior to the morning of November 27th, the second-most important thing in Woods’ life (his golf swing being THE most important) was his public image. The more he came across as the boy next door, the more valuable he was to his various sponsors.
If the tour made public ALL its fines, you can bet all players, would behave better on the golf course. Instead, the tour is so secretive that several years ago one player who was suspended told his wife he had decided to, “take a break,” from playing and she believed him.
Woods has been un-apologetic about his behavior or his caddy’s behavior. On occasion when the issue has come up he has talked about people not understanding the pressure he and poor Stevie are under. What set Watson off was the sight of Woods bouncing his driver into the gallery during a tournament in Australia and recovering it without so much as a word of apology. His feeling, as with many others, is that if you come on tour at 21 with a temper, fine. By the time you’re 34 you should make some attempt to correct it.
Long time tour players Steve Pate and Dudley Hart were known on tour for years as, “volcano,” and “mini-volcano,” because of their on-course eruptions. Both laughed at the nicknames but didn’t like the reputations that came with it. Both worked—successfully—to clean up their act. The nicknames remain but they are no longer accurate.
Right now, while he’s allegedly taking a long hard look at his life and who he is, would be a good time for Woods to reconsider the way he behaves at the golf course and to think about Watson’s point about the difference between being a great player and being a great champion.
The club throwing needs to stop and the profanity needs to be controlled. (I am not going to be a hypocrite and suggest he STOP all profanity because I’ve never been able to do it although I do try to be conscious of it around my kids and radio microphones). He needs to MAKE his caddy behave and not always be screaming at photographers or anyone in the gallery who breathes incorrectly. He should sign more autographs, perhaps take a page out of new best friend Phil Mickelson’s (ha!) playbook and plan time into each day to just sign autographs. The weak excuse put out by his PR people, “if he signs 100, the 101st person will be upset,” should be put away since those first 100 would be thrilled and that’s at least 99 more than Woods signs most days.
He might even want to quit blaming the media every time it does something awful like report that he failed to win a major in 2009. When I think about Woods telling Golf Digest’s Jaime Diaz this past fall (before November 27th) that he was tired of the way the media treated him, I want to burst out laughing. Woods gives the media less time than any great athlete in the history of sports. He almost never does a one-on-one with anyone except for paid deals (Diaz’s interview for example was part of Woods’ contract with Golf Digest and he refused this year to do it in person) and softball TV interviews that usually last three questions or occur when he’s pitching something. He’s treated with kid gloves because people in golf are afraid of him and because he sends his agent, Mark Steinberg, to bully almost anyone who steps out of line.
Example: Last August when Woods refused to speak to the media for two days during The Barclays event held at Liberty Island (he was pouting because he’d been accurately quoted by one of his pro-am partners making fun of the golf course) I said in my weekly Golf Channel essay that he’d acted like a petulant child. The next week in Boston, Steinberg told several people from Golf Channel that they might, “have trouble,” getting Woods to talk to them that week (these guys had NOTHING to do with what I’d said) because Woods was angry about my essay. The old guilt-by-association trick.
This would be a GREAT time for Woods to stop trying to pass blame for his behavior—on or off the golf course—onto others and look himself in the mirror. There’s a reason why Tom Watson is universally respected. Woods should think about what he’s saying and understand that he is NOT out to get him. (No one is if you think about it). If he cleans up his act on the golf course people will love him even more than in the past. He’s a smart guy. This should be easy for him.
I suspect it won’t happen.
Let’s put aside the off-course issues for today because there is going to be MORE than enough written and said about them as Woods moves closer to his return to the PGA Tour, which I still think will come next month either at Doral or Bay Hill.
Watson’s point was this: In golf, part of being a CHAMPION is the way you conduct yourself in public, especially on the golf course. It is worth remembering that Watson was one of the first players to say straight out that he had never seen a talent like Woods and that his presence in the game was nothing but a good thing.
I still remember back in 1998, I drove to the airport in Jacksonville during the week of The Players Championship to meet my family, which was coming to town since Danny was on spring break and Brigid wasn’t in school yet. Watson was there, waiting for the same flight from Atlanta because his son Michael was flying in to meet him for the week.
When the plane landed, Danny—who was four at the time—was the first person to come running into the terminal. He spotted me right away and raced over. When I introduced him to Watson I said, “Mr. Watson is a very famous golfer.”
Danny looked at Watson and said, “are you as good as Tiger Woods?”
“Not in my wildest dreams,” Watson answered.
It was also Watson who said during Woods’ 12-shot runaway at the 1997 Masters that, “he’s a boy among men and he’s showing the men how it’s done.”
But it has always bothered Watson—and many other players—that Woods has absolutely refused to clean up his act on the golf course. Most kids learn early that throwing clubs and using profanity on the golf course is unacceptable. Arnold Palmer often tells a story about playing in a tournament when he was about 13 and tossing a couple of clubs in frustration. His father was there and never said a word throughout the round.
“As soon as we got in the car he said to me very quietly, ‘if you ever throw a club again, that’s the last time you’ll play golf,” Palmer said. “You can believe I never threw a club again.”
Can you possibly imagine Palmer, Watson or Jack Nicklaus throwing a club? You might—MIGHT—hear a “dammit,” from them on occasion but that’s about it. Woods AND his thug caddy are famous on tour for their language. In fact, back in 2000, during his historic performance at the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, Woods rinsed his ball in the water left off the 18th tee at the end of the second round and dropped a clearly heard on national TV f-bomb for which he was given a hefty fine since it was far from being his first offense.
His response was to have his agent call The PGA Tour and complain that there was a double-standard when it came to fines for Woods because he always had a microphone following him. All the double standards that BENEFIT Woods because of his stardom never get complained about.
Part of the problem, as I’ve written before, lies with the tour. Commissioner Tim Finchem still adheres to the ridiculous notion that covering up fines somehow helps the tour’s image as a genteel place filled only with fine gentlemen. (I think that image may have taken a hit these past 10 weeks). Finchem and his board believe that fines and even suspensions should be covered up to protect the tour’s image.
About the only reason to fine athletes who make the kind of money the stars on the tour make is deterrence. Does anyone think it hurts Woods to reach into his pocket for fine money—even if he is the most fined player in golf history? Of course not. But, prior to the morning of November 27th, the second-most important thing in Woods’ life (his golf swing being THE most important) was his public image. The more he came across as the boy next door, the more valuable he was to his various sponsors.
If the tour made public ALL its fines, you can bet all players, would behave better on the golf course. Instead, the tour is so secretive that several years ago one player who was suspended told his wife he had decided to, “take a break,” from playing and she believed him.
Woods has been un-apologetic about his behavior or his caddy’s behavior. On occasion when the issue has come up he has talked about people not understanding the pressure he and poor Stevie are under. What set Watson off was the sight of Woods bouncing his driver into the gallery during a tournament in Australia and recovering it without so much as a word of apology. His feeling, as with many others, is that if you come on tour at 21 with a temper, fine. By the time you’re 34 you should make some attempt to correct it.
Long time tour players Steve Pate and Dudley Hart were known on tour for years as, “volcano,” and “mini-volcano,” because of their on-course eruptions. Both laughed at the nicknames but didn’t like the reputations that came with it. Both worked—successfully—to clean up their act. The nicknames remain but they are no longer accurate.
Right now, while he’s allegedly taking a long hard look at his life and who he is, would be a good time for Woods to reconsider the way he behaves at the golf course and to think about Watson’s point about the difference between being a great player and being a great champion.
The club throwing needs to stop and the profanity needs to be controlled. (I am not going to be a hypocrite and suggest he STOP all profanity because I’ve never been able to do it although I do try to be conscious of it around my kids and radio microphones). He needs to MAKE his caddy behave and not always be screaming at photographers or anyone in the gallery who breathes incorrectly. He should sign more autographs, perhaps take a page out of new best friend Phil Mickelson’s (ha!) playbook and plan time into each day to just sign autographs. The weak excuse put out by his PR people, “if he signs 100, the 101st person will be upset,” should be put away since those first 100 would be thrilled and that’s at least 99 more than Woods signs most days.
He might even want to quit blaming the media every time it does something awful like report that he failed to win a major in 2009. When I think about Woods telling Golf Digest’s Jaime Diaz this past fall (before November 27th) that he was tired of the way the media treated him, I want to burst out laughing. Woods gives the media less time than any great athlete in the history of sports. He almost never does a one-on-one with anyone except for paid deals (Diaz’s interview for example was part of Woods’ contract with Golf Digest and he refused this year to do it in person) and softball TV interviews that usually last three questions or occur when he’s pitching something. He’s treated with kid gloves because people in golf are afraid of him and because he sends his agent, Mark Steinberg, to bully almost anyone who steps out of line.
Example: Last August when Woods refused to speak to the media for two days during The Barclays event held at Liberty Island (he was pouting because he’d been accurately quoted by one of his pro-am partners making fun of the golf course) I said in my weekly Golf Channel essay that he’d acted like a petulant child. The next week in Boston, Steinberg told several people from Golf Channel that they might, “have trouble,” getting Woods to talk to them that week (these guys had NOTHING to do with what I’d said) because Woods was angry about my essay. The old guilt-by-association trick.
This would be a GREAT time for Woods to stop trying to pass blame for his behavior—on or off the golf course—onto others and look himself in the mirror. There’s a reason why Tom Watson is universally respected. Woods should think about what he’s saying and understand that he is NOT out to get him. (No one is if you think about it). If he cleans up his act on the golf course people will love him even more than in the past. He’s a smart guy. This should be easy for him.
I suspect it won’t happen.
Comments (11)
Gilbert Arenas’s Op-Ed; Quick note on the Mickelson-McCarron controversy
Tue, Feb 2 2010 09:48
| Scott McCarron, Phil Mickelson, PGA Tour, NBA, Tiger Woods, Gilbert Arenas
| Permalink
Gilbert Arenas just doesn’t get it—which hardly makes him unusual in jock-world.
This morning, on the op-ed page of The Washington Post, there’s a column with his name on it (I say that because it was so clearly written by a lawyer) in which he expresses his sorrow about all that he’s done wrong in the last couple of months. He knows now—or so he says—that it was wrong to illegally bring guns into The District of Columbia and into The Verizon Center and that his response to the incident was also wrong.
Right there though, in the second paragraph of his “apology,” is this sentence: “I reacted badly to the aftermath and made fun of inaccurate media reports, which looked as though I was making light of a serious situation.”
Inaccurate media reports? This is still the media’s fault? The guy has pleaded guilty to a felony in a desperate attempt to stay out of jail and this is about inaccurate media reports?
Let’s see, the media reported that he brought guns into the locker room because of a gambling dispute with teammate Javaris Crittenton.
Is that true? Yes.
The media reported that he was twittering about the incident after it became public and joking about it.
True? Yes.
Arenas said ON CAMERA that he was going to be “myself,” and continue to joke about what had happened and not taking it seriously. Was that an imposter, ala Tiger Woods at the sex clinic, saying those things?
And then there was the now infamous photo of Arenas making shooting gestures with his fingers during pre-game introductions that forced NBA Commissioner David Stern to finally say, “enough,” and suspend Arenas. Another inaccurate media report?
Arenas can go on and on—as he does in the piece—about how sorry he is for letting people down, especially the kids who have been fans of his in the past. I don’t think anyone questions Arenas’s desire to help kids; he’s gone out of his way to do so in the past. In fact, almost no one who knows Arenas or has been around him even a little bit thinks he’s a bad guy or a mean guy or a malicious guy.
He simply doesn’t get it. Apparently, neither do his lawyers. If they did, that sentence would never have appeared in the piece. If you say, “I’m sorry,” to someone you do NOT say, “I’m sorry BUT…” You just say you’re sorry.
Regardless of what Arenas said today, many people, if not most people, would see the op-ed as an attempt to mollify the judge who will sentence him on March 26th and, perhaps, a last ditch attempt to convince the Wizards that they shouldn’t terminate the remaining $80 million they will owe on his contract once his suspension is over at the end of the season.
But that one sentence is SO revealing about his true feelings. You see, deep down, it’s still not his fault. That’s the way it is with most athletes and coaches in jock-world. They’re never wrong. The media’s wrong or out to get them. Or people don’t really understand them. I’ve said this before: To this day Bob Knight doesn’t think he did a thing wrong the day he threw that chair at Indiana. I’ve heard him go on about how lousy the refereeing was that day and how “no one was hurt,” when he threw the chair. Remember, he threatened to quit when Indiana President John Ryan had the nerve to bring up the idea that the school should suspend him. When Knight said he might quit, Ryan backed down so quickly I think he may still be back-pedaling.
Right now, as we speak, I guarantee you Tiger Woods thinks he’s been hammered unfairly by the media. If you read Jaime Diaz’s recent piece in Golf Digest on Woods, there’s a quote from Woods in which he tells Diaz that he’s really sick and tired of the media hounding him and treating him unfairly.
The conversation took place WEEKS before his post-Thanksgiving dinner car crash. I’ve been around Tiger and the golf media. The way he’s treated is so reverential I once asked a PR guy who was reciting the “rules,” of a Tiger press conference if we were all supposed to stand when he entered the room. And yet, Tiger has always thought most of the media has been unfair to him. When he was talking to Diaz, he must have been referring to those “inaccurate,” reports that he didn’t win a major in 2009.
What’s also remarkable is how much sports fans want to defend their heroes. Right now there are people out there who think Woods has somehow been wronged in all this. This morning on sports-talk radio shows in Washington there are callers saying today’s Op-ed is proof that Arenas is genuinely remorseful, truly sorry for what he did. He’s sorry—that he got caught.
One caller to a radio show opened with this comment: “I don’t think people should be judged by what they say or by what they do. Gilbert’s no different than the rest of us.”
First: What else should we judge people by if not their actions or their words? Second: Gilbert IS different than the rest of us. Putting aside how much money he makes, most of us don’t illegally carry four guns across a state line and then act as if the whole thing was a joke.
That said, the biggest idiot in all of this may have been Crittenton’s lawyer, who claimed after his client’s plea bargain that Crittenton carried his gun into the locker room because he “feared for his life.” Please. Maybe there was an inaccurate media report that made him fear for his life. Some of the things these guys say would be laugh out loud funny if they weren’t so sad.
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One note on the Phil Mickelson-Scott McCarron square grooves controversy over the weekend. For those not into golf minutia, the U.S. Golf Association banned square grooved clubs this year (because they allow pros to spin the ball too easily from the rough) with the exception of one old wedge—the PingEye2. The reason for that was a lawsuit 20 years ago in which the USGA agreed as part of a settlement to never ban that one club.
Mickelson—and a few other players including John Daly—dug out old PingEye2’s they had and brought them to their first tournament, in Mickelson’s case San Diego. McCarron, a 16-year tour veteran who is a smart guy said that using the PingEye2 “cheated,” the spirit of the new rule—which it does. Technically, it isn’t cheating because the club isn’t banned, but clearly it violates the spirit of the rule.
Mickelson isn’t used to being publicly criticized by another player. He reacted angrily saying that McCarron had “publicly slandered,” him. For the record, you can’t privately slander someone but that’s another story.
The tour needs to make this go away and it appears likely that it will, perhaps as early as today. It was not part of the Ping law suit and can pass a rule banning the club. It isn’t likely that Ping will turn around and take the tour to court over a golf club it doesn’t make anymore. Even if it does, the tour needs to get this one in its rear view mirror so everyone can focus on when Tiger is going to come back to the tour and tell us everything that happened was caused by inaccurate media reports.
This morning, on the op-ed page of The Washington Post, there’s a column with his name on it (I say that because it was so clearly written by a lawyer) in which he expresses his sorrow about all that he’s done wrong in the last couple of months. He knows now—or so he says—that it was wrong to illegally bring guns into The District of Columbia and into The Verizon Center and that his response to the incident was also wrong.
Right there though, in the second paragraph of his “apology,” is this sentence: “I reacted badly to the aftermath and made fun of inaccurate media reports, which looked as though I was making light of a serious situation.”
Inaccurate media reports? This is still the media’s fault? The guy has pleaded guilty to a felony in a desperate attempt to stay out of jail and this is about inaccurate media reports?
Let’s see, the media reported that he brought guns into the locker room because of a gambling dispute with teammate Javaris Crittenton.
Is that true? Yes.
The media reported that he was twittering about the incident after it became public and joking about it.
True? Yes.
Arenas said ON CAMERA that he was going to be “myself,” and continue to joke about what had happened and not taking it seriously. Was that an imposter, ala Tiger Woods at the sex clinic, saying those things?
And then there was the now infamous photo of Arenas making shooting gestures with his fingers during pre-game introductions that forced NBA Commissioner David Stern to finally say, “enough,” and suspend Arenas. Another inaccurate media report?
Arenas can go on and on—as he does in the piece—about how sorry he is for letting people down, especially the kids who have been fans of his in the past. I don’t think anyone questions Arenas’s desire to help kids; he’s gone out of his way to do so in the past. In fact, almost no one who knows Arenas or has been around him even a little bit thinks he’s a bad guy or a mean guy or a malicious guy.
He simply doesn’t get it. Apparently, neither do his lawyers. If they did, that sentence would never have appeared in the piece. If you say, “I’m sorry,” to someone you do NOT say, “I’m sorry BUT…” You just say you’re sorry.
Regardless of what Arenas said today, many people, if not most people, would see the op-ed as an attempt to mollify the judge who will sentence him on March 26th and, perhaps, a last ditch attempt to convince the Wizards that they shouldn’t terminate the remaining $80 million they will owe on his contract once his suspension is over at the end of the season.
But that one sentence is SO revealing about his true feelings. You see, deep down, it’s still not his fault. That’s the way it is with most athletes and coaches in jock-world. They’re never wrong. The media’s wrong or out to get them. Or people don’t really understand them. I’ve said this before: To this day Bob Knight doesn’t think he did a thing wrong the day he threw that chair at Indiana. I’ve heard him go on about how lousy the refereeing was that day and how “no one was hurt,” when he threw the chair. Remember, he threatened to quit when Indiana President John Ryan had the nerve to bring up the idea that the school should suspend him. When Knight said he might quit, Ryan backed down so quickly I think he may still be back-pedaling.
Right now, as we speak, I guarantee you Tiger Woods thinks he’s been hammered unfairly by the media. If you read Jaime Diaz’s recent piece in Golf Digest on Woods, there’s a quote from Woods in which he tells Diaz that he’s really sick and tired of the media hounding him and treating him unfairly.
The conversation took place WEEKS before his post-Thanksgiving dinner car crash. I’ve been around Tiger and the golf media. The way he’s treated is so reverential I once asked a PR guy who was reciting the “rules,” of a Tiger press conference if we were all supposed to stand when he entered the room. And yet, Tiger has always thought most of the media has been unfair to him. When he was talking to Diaz, he must have been referring to those “inaccurate,” reports that he didn’t win a major in 2009.
What’s also remarkable is how much sports fans want to defend their heroes. Right now there are people out there who think Woods has somehow been wronged in all this. This morning on sports-talk radio shows in Washington there are callers saying today’s Op-ed is proof that Arenas is genuinely remorseful, truly sorry for what he did. He’s sorry—that he got caught.
One caller to a radio show opened with this comment: “I don’t think people should be judged by what they say or by what they do. Gilbert’s no different than the rest of us.”
First: What else should we judge people by if not their actions or their words? Second: Gilbert IS different than the rest of us. Putting aside how much money he makes, most of us don’t illegally carry four guns across a state line and then act as if the whole thing was a joke.
That said, the biggest idiot in all of this may have been Crittenton’s lawyer, who claimed after his client’s plea bargain that Crittenton carried his gun into the locker room because he “feared for his life.” Please. Maybe there was an inaccurate media report that made him fear for his life. Some of the things these guys say would be laugh out loud funny if they weren’t so sad.
-------------------------------------
One note on the Phil Mickelson-Scott McCarron square grooves controversy over the weekend. For those not into golf minutia, the U.S. Golf Association banned square grooved clubs this year (because they allow pros to spin the ball too easily from the rough) with the exception of one old wedge—the PingEye2. The reason for that was a lawsuit 20 years ago in which the USGA agreed as part of a settlement to never ban that one club.
Mickelson—and a few other players including John Daly—dug out old PingEye2’s they had and brought them to their first tournament, in Mickelson’s case San Diego. McCarron, a 16-year tour veteran who is a smart guy said that using the PingEye2 “cheated,” the spirit of the new rule—which it does. Technically, it isn’t cheating because the club isn’t banned, but clearly it violates the spirit of the rule.
Mickelson isn’t used to being publicly criticized by another player. He reacted angrily saying that McCarron had “publicly slandered,” him. For the record, you can’t privately slander someone but that’s another story.
The tour needs to make this go away and it appears likely that it will, perhaps as early as today. It was not part of the Ping law suit and can pass a rule banning the club. It isn’t likely that Ping will turn around and take the tour to court over a golf club it doesn’t make anymore. Even if it does, the tour needs to get this one in its rear view mirror so everyone can focus on when Tiger is going to come back to the tour and tell us everything that happened was caused by inaccurate media reports.
Comments (10)
Still in Florida for interviews....
Fri, Jan 29 2010 10:11
| Roger Federer, PGA Tour, Tiger Woods, Tennis, Surgery, Andy Roddick
| Permalink
STILL SOMEWHERE IN FLORIDA – This is another one of those days on the road, and for a technologically challenged writer who leaves his house two days earlier without a power chord, it’s even tougher. After a long day of draining interviews, and prior to a scheduled early start this morning, he phoned lamenting the fact that he has no idea how he could get a typical days writing up on the site as his computer ran out of juice Thursday morning.
Immediately we threatened to write as a ghost writer for John, but decided that if an entire college’s fan base was going to be up in arms about John’s words, it’s probably best that they really are his words. Then we threatened to dock his salary, but remembered there is no salary. Therefore, for those of you who did visit on this Friday, we decided to give you a few links to previews we like for the upcoming sports weekend along with one of our favorite posts John has written.
A few articles previewing the sports weekend:
Australian Open - Andy Murray vs. Roger Federer
PGA Tour Farmers Insurance Open - Piercy resting easy with lead, fewer distractions
SI.com's college basketball - Seth Davis' weekend picks
The post below is John’s first post-surgery on the reminder of why sports is important. His health scare aside, it also shows how very quickly some things change (Tiger) and some stay the same (Federer in another grand-slam final this weekend).
One thing John wanted to relay is that this isn’t him ‘punking out,’ and he’ll find some way to make it up. Enjoy.
FOTB Staff
-----------------------------
From 7/5/09
Well, I’m back.
I don’t know if I’m any wiser but I sure am grateful—grateful the blockages in my heart were discovered during a routine stress test and not after a heart attack; grateful to my friends and family who rallied to my side during the past week and to everyone who posted here or sent good wishes in one form or another. I know when people get sick they talk later about how overwhelmed they were by the kindness of people but it really is true. I am overwhelmed by it all.
I am very lucky to have the family I have and the friends from so many walks of life that I have. I sit here feeling lucky to be alive, to be able to hug my kids and to be able to write a week after septuple bypass surgery. (Friends have kidded me that I’m so competitive I had to have seven, not just three or four).
One thing I was reminded of during my hospital stay was one of the reasons sports IS important. It isn’t that crisis puts sports in perspective it’s that sports gives us a much needed diversion during crisis. On Monday night, while I was still in the ICU I was able to watch some television. Even hearing the stale sportscenter one-liners was a relief. Hearing Tiger Woods claim that his learning center in California has helped TEN MILLION people made me laugh out loud and made me think the drugs must seriously affecting my brain. Did he say ten million? Yes, I learned later, he did say ten million. Even watching the Mets do their Keystone Kops act was better than staring at the clock.
So, Thank God for sports—the good, the bad, the ridiculous.
On Sunday, we saw something that was better than good. I almost never regret my decision 15 years ago to focus on covering golf rather than tennis. Not only have I greatly enjoyed reporting and writing about golf but tennis is by far the most frustrating sport there is to cover because of our lack of access to the athletes and the mind-numbing lack of organization in the sport.
One day a year I miss covering tennis. It’s always the day of the men’s final at Wimbledon. With all due respect to the greatness of The Williams sisters a best-of-three match that often last less than 90 minutes simply can’t have the drama of a five set marathon in which both players are still hitting winners four hours after the match has started.
There is also the uniqueness of Wimbledon. There’s no tennis venue anything like it—even with the new sliding roof—and very few sports venues that are comparably dramatic. Plus, there are no thanks to corporate sponsors during the awards ceremonies. Can you imagine with the score 14-all in the fifth set, Ted Robinson saying, “let’s go courtside to Jimmy Roberts who is with the CEO of AT+T.”
Jimmy: “Mr. CEO, another great Wimbledon, you must be so proud.”
CEO: “Jimmy, on behalf of all of us at AT+T we’re proud to be associated with Tiger and this great event.”
Whoops, wrong sport.
Wimbledon finals produce unique drama. Once a fifth set begins, you never know when it will end. Unlike the U.S. Open, where the fifth set can be decided in a tiebreak, someone has to break serve to win. Tiebreaks can be dramatic but, as difficult as it was for Andy Roddick to lose, he did not lose the match without losing serve. He lost it once—the 38th time he served.
Roger Federer is one of those athletes you just don’t root against. He’s brilliant, he’s a superb competitor, he has class and dignity and he now has 15 major championships—more than any man in history.
But if your heart didn’t go out to Roddick on Sunday, you have no heart. (Mine is working just fine, thank-you). Here’s why it’s truly sad that Roddick may never win Wimbledon: he could easily be mailing it in by now. He won the U.S. Open in 2003, he’s made millions, his wife is a gorgeous model and he could put his career on cruise control at 27, say that Federer and Rafael Nadal are just a little too good and be a top ten player for another five years.
But he hasn’t taken that route. He’s changed coaches and training regimens. He’s lost weight and worked on his ground strokes. He’s gotten tougher mentally as he proved in the semis when he outlasted Scotland’s Andy Murray in front of a crowd that would have made Cameron Indoor Stadium feel like a walk in the park for a road team.
He was SO close against Federer. He had four set points for a two set lead in the second and blew them all. He had two break points in the fifth and couldn’t convert. Federer kept hitting winners; Roddick kept answering. The number of times Roddick HAD to come up with a first serve and did was almost uncountable. It was great, great tennis.
And, in the end, Federer was a little better, a little tougher.
Roddick couldn’t have handled it with more grace. He apologized to Pete Sampras for not preventing Federer from breaking his all-time record for major wins. He thanked the crowd—which had pulled so vehemently against him two days earlier. And, when Federer said something about knowing how Roddick felt after his five set loss to Nadal a year ago he smiled and said, “no you don’t, you already had five (titles).”
It was all special stuff and when you saw the tears in Roddick’s eyes you really couldn’t help but hope there’s somehow a Wimbledon title out there for him in the future. He deserves it.
I was glad to have the chance to see it. REALLY glad.
Immediately we threatened to write as a ghost writer for John, but decided that if an entire college’s fan base was going to be up in arms about John’s words, it’s probably best that they really are his words. Then we threatened to dock his salary, but remembered there is no salary. Therefore, for those of you who did visit on this Friday, we decided to give you a few links to previews we like for the upcoming sports weekend along with one of our favorite posts John has written.
A few articles previewing the sports weekend:
Australian Open - Andy Murray vs. Roger Federer
PGA Tour Farmers Insurance Open - Piercy resting easy with lead, fewer distractions
SI.com's college basketball - Seth Davis' weekend picks
The post below is John’s first post-surgery on the reminder of why sports is important. His health scare aside, it also shows how very quickly some things change (Tiger) and some stay the same (Federer in another grand-slam final this weekend).
One thing John wanted to relay is that this isn’t him ‘punking out,’ and he’ll find some way to make it up. Enjoy.
FOTB Staff
-----------------------------
From 7/5/09
Well, I’m back.
I don’t know if I’m any wiser but I sure am grateful—grateful the blockages in my heart were discovered during a routine stress test and not after a heart attack; grateful to my friends and family who rallied to my side during the past week and to everyone who posted here or sent good wishes in one form or another. I know when people get sick they talk later about how overwhelmed they were by the kindness of people but it really is true. I am overwhelmed by it all.
I am very lucky to have the family I have and the friends from so many walks of life that I have. I sit here feeling lucky to be alive, to be able to hug my kids and to be able to write a week after septuple bypass surgery. (Friends have kidded me that I’m so competitive I had to have seven, not just three or four).
One thing I was reminded of during my hospital stay was one of the reasons sports IS important. It isn’t that crisis puts sports in perspective it’s that sports gives us a much needed diversion during crisis. On Monday night, while I was still in the ICU I was able to watch some television. Even hearing the stale sportscenter one-liners was a relief. Hearing Tiger Woods claim that his learning center in California has helped TEN MILLION people made me laugh out loud and made me think the drugs must seriously affecting my brain. Did he say ten million? Yes, I learned later, he did say ten million. Even watching the Mets do their Keystone Kops act was better than staring at the clock.
So, Thank God for sports—the good, the bad, the ridiculous.
On Sunday, we saw something that was better than good. I almost never regret my decision 15 years ago to focus on covering golf rather than tennis. Not only have I greatly enjoyed reporting and writing about golf but tennis is by far the most frustrating sport there is to cover because of our lack of access to the athletes and the mind-numbing lack of organization in the sport.
One day a year I miss covering tennis. It’s always the day of the men’s final at Wimbledon. With all due respect to the greatness of The Williams sisters a best-of-three match that often last less than 90 minutes simply can’t have the drama of a five set marathon in which both players are still hitting winners four hours after the match has started.
There is also the uniqueness of Wimbledon. There’s no tennis venue anything like it—even with the new sliding roof—and very few sports venues that are comparably dramatic. Plus, there are no thanks to corporate sponsors during the awards ceremonies. Can you imagine with the score 14-all in the fifth set, Ted Robinson saying, “let’s go courtside to Jimmy Roberts who is with the CEO of AT+T.”
Jimmy: “Mr. CEO, another great Wimbledon, you must be so proud.”
CEO: “Jimmy, on behalf of all of us at AT+T we’re proud to be associated with Tiger and this great event.”
Whoops, wrong sport.
Wimbledon finals produce unique drama. Once a fifth set begins, you never know when it will end. Unlike the U.S. Open, where the fifth set can be decided in a tiebreak, someone has to break serve to win. Tiebreaks can be dramatic but, as difficult as it was for Andy Roddick to lose, he did not lose the match without losing serve. He lost it once—the 38th time he served.
Roger Federer is one of those athletes you just don’t root against. He’s brilliant, he’s a superb competitor, he has class and dignity and he now has 15 major championships—more than any man in history.
But if your heart didn’t go out to Roddick on Sunday, you have no heart. (Mine is working just fine, thank-you). Here’s why it’s truly sad that Roddick may never win Wimbledon: he could easily be mailing it in by now. He won the U.S. Open in 2003, he’s made millions, his wife is a gorgeous model and he could put his career on cruise control at 27, say that Federer and Rafael Nadal are just a little too good and be a top ten player for another five years.
But he hasn’t taken that route. He’s changed coaches and training regimens. He’s lost weight and worked on his ground strokes. He’s gotten tougher mentally as he proved in the semis when he outlasted Scotland’s Andy Murray in front of a crowd that would have made Cameron Indoor Stadium feel like a walk in the park for a road team.
He was SO close against Federer. He had four set points for a two set lead in the second and blew them all. He had two break points in the fifth and couldn’t convert. Federer kept hitting winners; Roddick kept answering. The number of times Roddick HAD to come up with a first serve and did was almost uncountable. It was great, great tennis.
And, in the end, Federer was a little better, a little tougher.
Roddick couldn’t have handled it with more grace. He apologized to Pete Sampras for not preventing Federer from breaking his all-time record for major wins. He thanked the crowd—which had pulled so vehemently against him two days earlier. And, when Federer said something about knowing how Roddick felt after his five set loss to Nadal a year ago he smiled and said, “no you don’t, you already had five (titles).”
It was all special stuff and when you saw the tears in Roddick’s eyes you really couldn’t help but hope there’s somehow a Wimbledon title out there for him in the future. He deserves it.
I was glad to have the chance to see it. REALLY glad.
Comments (4)
Piecing together the documentary; Under normal circumstances, today would be start Woods’ PGA Tour season
Thu, Jan 28 2010 09:51
| Tom Watson, PGA Tour, Tiger Woods, Bruce Edwards
| Permalink
SOMEWHERE IN FLORIDA—I’m a little bit dizzy this morning since this is a four-stop trip to try to start piecing together the documentary based on ‘Caddy For Life.’ Yesterday was spent with Bruce’s parents, Jay and Natalie and his aunt, Joan Walsh. To say it was an emotional and draining afternoon (especially for them) is an understatement. This afternoon will be spent with Tom Watson and I expect that experience to be similar. Tomorrow morning is Marsha, Bruce’s wife.
Wow.
After I got finished reading the stories this morning about President Obama’s state-of-the-union (I heard it in the car and was impressed but then everyone knows where my political leanings are) I picked up the sports page of USA Today and there was a cover story on all the financial issues facing The PGA Tour in what is now being called the, “Tiger Recession.”
Under normal circumstances today would have been Woods’ first official round of the year since he usually launched his season at Torrey Pines in San Diego, a place where he’s won seven times on tour—this tournament, which has a new corporate name with Buick gone (I like to think of it as The Andy Williams Invitational. I liked it when the celebs had their names on tournaments rather than corporations. Of course if the tour did that today there would probably be an ESPN talking head invitational) and that classic U.S. Open back in 2008.
If you think about it, that Open was Woods’ last truly great moment in golf. Yes, he came back and won six times last year and was voted player-of-the-year on the grounds that he was clearly the best player. I would have voted for Y.E. Yang only because if you gave Tiger a choice between his six wins and Yang’s two—one being The PGA Championship in which he caught Tiger to win on Sunday—there’s no doubt he’d have taken Yang’s year in a heartbeat.
Those six wins are all overshadowed now by the ongoing Tiger soap opera, “As The Eldrick Turns.” If you think ‘Lost,’ is keeping its outcome a secret, you’ve never met Woods or his band of not-so-merry-men. It is remarkable, if you think about it, that Woods has been able to basically drop out of sight for two months when every paparazzi on earth has been stalking him. Clearly his talents go well beyond golf. He can become The Invisible Man whenever he chooses to do so.
Until he comes back— like most people, I’m still guessing Doral or Bay Hill—there are going to be lots of stories like the one in USA Today this morning. Sales are down in San Diego without Tiger; TV ratings are down for tournaments he never played in anyway, apparently because people are depressed about Tiger’s absence. The Tour is worried about its future because there are currently 10 tournaments that do not have title sponsors for next year.
I have a message for all those people: lighten up.
Does the tour miss Woods? Of course it does. Has the NBA missed Michael Jordan, who last played a meaningful game in 1998? Does football miss Brett Favre? Oh wait, he hasn’t retired yet—although he may sometime in the next 15 minutes in an exclusive ESPN report that will be replaced an hour later by another exclusive report that he’s might play next season and, the network has learned from his agent, WILL watch The Pro Bowl on TV on Sunday.
Woods is, without question, the most transcendent star golf has ever had. Arnold Palmer is still the most important player in the history of the game because he brought TV and corporate America to the table in the 1950s and 1960s when calling golf a niche sport was being kind. Jack Nicklaus is still the greatest player until the day Woods goes past his 18 professional major titles.
But because of the era in which he has played and because of his ability to absolutely dominate at a time when people were claiming golf had too much depth for anyone to dominate, Woods is that rarest of athletes in that he brings people who are not fans of his sport to the table. They know who he is and care about how he’s doing even if they can’t name a single person he’s competing against. The only other athlete on earth who currently fits that description is Michael Phelps.
So, when Woods isn’t playing golf, the audience for golf drops precipitously. We’ve known that for years. The “Tiger Effect,” usually causes everything to double: corporate sales, TV ratings, media coverage. I’m one of the few guys in the business who—the majors aside—is just as happy, if not happier, to cover a tournament without Tiger. It isn’t as if we’re going to have a long sitdown in the locker room. Following him on the golf course, which I do at times during the majors, is always a headache: So many people, so much security, so much scrambling for position to actually see a shot hit. My job’s easier when Tiger’s not playing at the weekly tournaments. My job’s more fun when he’s playing in the majors.
But I’m the exception. Everyone else wants Tiger out there. He moves the interest needle like no one else. That said, there WAS a golf tour before Tiger came along and my guess is there will be one after he’s gone.
If, for some reason, Tiger is out for a long time (unlikely) there will be all sorts of doom-saying surrounding the sport. Let’s say for a minute that the tour was forced to make corporate deals for next year that brought about a 20 percent drop in purses. That’s highly unlikely, but if it did, the players would still be playing for $4 to $5 million a week. The winner this week in San Diego would have to settle for an $800,000 first prize. The 125th ranked player on the money list might make only $600,000 for the year.
That’s still triple what golfers were making on tour when Tiger arrived in 1996 and it is a lot more money than most Americans are making today. No business wants to go through a recession but golf can survive one. What’s more, there finally does appear to be some seriously talented young players coming along to challenge Tiger. Note the word challenge. I’m not saying any of them is the next Tiger because in all likelihood there is no next Tiger. But the sport will survive without him whenever the day comes that he walks away.
What will be interesting to see is, once the initial surge of interest that will come with his re-entry (which will be huge) has passed, if he remains as popular as he once was. My guess is he’ll still get screaming galleries but his days as a truly iconic figure OFF the golf course have passed. Once he’s back and winning again, there will be those—starting with Tiger and his team—who will talk about all he has “overcome,” to win again.
That’s when I’ll switch over to watch The Nationwide Tour. I will be perfectly happy to watch Tiger Woods the golfer perform his magic again. But I don’t want to hear one word ever again about how tough a life Tiger Woods the person has had.
I spent yesterday with a family that dealt with real tragedy, whose son dealt with the greatest adversity of all without every complaining. I don’t ever want to hear from Tiger Woods how tough it is to be Tiger Woods. I also don’t want to hear how golf is going to die because he’s gone for a while. It won’t. If fewer people want to watch, so be it. Those who really care about the sport and not just a celebrity will be tuned in this weekend. I’ll be one of them.
Wow.
After I got finished reading the stories this morning about President Obama’s state-of-the-union (I heard it in the car and was impressed but then everyone knows where my political leanings are) I picked up the sports page of USA Today and there was a cover story on all the financial issues facing The PGA Tour in what is now being called the, “Tiger Recession.”
Under normal circumstances today would have been Woods’ first official round of the year since he usually launched his season at Torrey Pines in San Diego, a place where he’s won seven times on tour—this tournament, which has a new corporate name with Buick gone (I like to think of it as The Andy Williams Invitational. I liked it when the celebs had their names on tournaments rather than corporations. Of course if the tour did that today there would probably be an ESPN talking head invitational) and that classic U.S. Open back in 2008.
If you think about it, that Open was Woods’ last truly great moment in golf. Yes, he came back and won six times last year and was voted player-of-the-year on the grounds that he was clearly the best player. I would have voted for Y.E. Yang only because if you gave Tiger a choice between his six wins and Yang’s two—one being The PGA Championship in which he caught Tiger to win on Sunday—there’s no doubt he’d have taken Yang’s year in a heartbeat.
Those six wins are all overshadowed now by the ongoing Tiger soap opera, “As The Eldrick Turns.” If you think ‘Lost,’ is keeping its outcome a secret, you’ve never met Woods or his band of not-so-merry-men. It is remarkable, if you think about it, that Woods has been able to basically drop out of sight for two months when every paparazzi on earth has been stalking him. Clearly his talents go well beyond golf. He can become The Invisible Man whenever he chooses to do so.
Until he comes back— like most people, I’m still guessing Doral or Bay Hill—there are going to be lots of stories like the one in USA Today this morning. Sales are down in San Diego without Tiger; TV ratings are down for tournaments he never played in anyway, apparently because people are depressed about Tiger’s absence. The Tour is worried about its future because there are currently 10 tournaments that do not have title sponsors for next year.
I have a message for all those people: lighten up.
Does the tour miss Woods? Of course it does. Has the NBA missed Michael Jordan, who last played a meaningful game in 1998? Does football miss Brett Favre? Oh wait, he hasn’t retired yet—although he may sometime in the next 15 minutes in an exclusive ESPN report that will be replaced an hour later by another exclusive report that he’s might play next season and, the network has learned from his agent, WILL watch The Pro Bowl on TV on Sunday.
Woods is, without question, the most transcendent star golf has ever had. Arnold Palmer is still the most important player in the history of the game because he brought TV and corporate America to the table in the 1950s and 1960s when calling golf a niche sport was being kind. Jack Nicklaus is still the greatest player until the day Woods goes past his 18 professional major titles.
But because of the era in which he has played and because of his ability to absolutely dominate at a time when people were claiming golf had too much depth for anyone to dominate, Woods is that rarest of athletes in that he brings people who are not fans of his sport to the table. They know who he is and care about how he’s doing even if they can’t name a single person he’s competing against. The only other athlete on earth who currently fits that description is Michael Phelps.
So, when Woods isn’t playing golf, the audience for golf drops precipitously. We’ve known that for years. The “Tiger Effect,” usually causes everything to double: corporate sales, TV ratings, media coverage. I’m one of the few guys in the business who—the majors aside—is just as happy, if not happier, to cover a tournament without Tiger. It isn’t as if we’re going to have a long sitdown in the locker room. Following him on the golf course, which I do at times during the majors, is always a headache: So many people, so much security, so much scrambling for position to actually see a shot hit. My job’s easier when Tiger’s not playing at the weekly tournaments. My job’s more fun when he’s playing in the majors.
But I’m the exception. Everyone else wants Tiger out there. He moves the interest needle like no one else. That said, there WAS a golf tour before Tiger came along and my guess is there will be one after he’s gone.
If, for some reason, Tiger is out for a long time (unlikely) there will be all sorts of doom-saying surrounding the sport. Let’s say for a minute that the tour was forced to make corporate deals for next year that brought about a 20 percent drop in purses. That’s highly unlikely, but if it did, the players would still be playing for $4 to $5 million a week. The winner this week in San Diego would have to settle for an $800,000 first prize. The 125th ranked player on the money list might make only $600,000 for the year.
That’s still triple what golfers were making on tour when Tiger arrived in 1996 and it is a lot more money than most Americans are making today. No business wants to go through a recession but golf can survive one. What’s more, there finally does appear to be some seriously talented young players coming along to challenge Tiger. Note the word challenge. I’m not saying any of them is the next Tiger because in all likelihood there is no next Tiger. But the sport will survive without him whenever the day comes that he walks away.
What will be interesting to see is, once the initial surge of interest that will come with his re-entry (which will be huge) has passed, if he remains as popular as he once was. My guess is he’ll still get screaming galleries but his days as a truly iconic figure OFF the golf course have passed. Once he’s back and winning again, there will be those—starting with Tiger and his team—who will talk about all he has “overcome,” to win again.
That’s when I’ll switch over to watch The Nationwide Tour. I will be perfectly happy to watch Tiger Woods the golfer perform his magic again. But I don’t want to hear one word ever again about how tough a life Tiger Woods the person has had.
I spent yesterday with a family that dealt with real tragedy, whose son dealt with the greatest adversity of all without every complaining. I don’t ever want to hear from Tiger Woods how tough it is to be Tiger Woods. I also don’t want to hear how golf is going to die because he’s gone for a while. It won’t. If fewer people want to watch, so be it. Those who really care about the sport and not just a celebrity will be tuned in this weekend. I’ll be one of them.
Comments (4)
This week's radio segments (The Kornheiser Show, The Sports Reporters):
Wed, Jan 20 2010 05:58
| Sports Radio, Jim Calhoun, PGA Tour, Tiger Woods, Tony Kornheiser
| Permalink
Today I joined the newest The Tony Kornheiser Show on Wednesday instead of my normal Thursday spot. Click the permalink, then the link below, to listen to the segment on a variety of topics, including Jim Calhoun's situation and Tiger Woods along with others on the PGA Tour, all after starting off talking about concert halls.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Tony Kornheiser Show
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I also made my regular appearance with The Sports Reporters' Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin in the normal timeslot (5:25 ET on Wednesday's) this evening. Today we talked on great topics, including Kurt Warner and his retirement talk, Tiger Woods, the early season on the PGA Tour, and Jim Calhoun's leave of absence.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters
Click here to listen to the segment: The Tony Kornheiser Show
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I also made my regular appearance with The Sports Reporters' Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin in the normal timeslot (5:25 ET on Wednesday's) this evening. Today we talked on great topics, including Kurt Warner and his retirement talk, Tiger Woods, the early season on the PGA Tour, and Jim Calhoun's leave of absence.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters
Former Executive Director of the USGA, Frank Hannigan, sends email that rings true; Insider info on the media game
Thu, Dec 17 2009 10:07
| NFL, PGA Tour, Frank Hannigan, CNBC, Tiger Woods, MLB, Tennis
| Permalink
The life of Tiger Woods really has become an accident scene. On the one hand you want to avert your eyes, on the other hand you can’t stop staring. Having Doonesbury spend an entire week lampoon you pretty much means you have gone from being an iconic golfer to an iconic punch line.
I have an absolute case of Tiger-fatigue. And yet, as I sit here this morning I’m thinking, ‘how can I not write about him?’ Are readers going to be more interested in how thrilled I was last night when American University went to DePaul and won? Or do they want my thoughts on the Islanders beating the Rangers in Madison Square Garden and some of my memories of growing up as a kid in the blue seats at The Garden? (Section 406 was the ideal if you could tickets up there. In those days the cost was $4). I could write about the Halladay-Lee trade and just how good the Mariners might be next season with Cliff Lee and Felix Rodriguez at the top of their rotation two years after losing more than 100 games.
No. Like it or not the story on everyone’s minds is Tiger and, regardless of how Charles Barkley may feel, it isn’t going away.
The Doonesbury strip a couple of days ago in which Garry Trudeau had Tiger’s mistresses deciding to unionize was funny. A lot of what’s circulated on TV and on the internet is funny. Of course every time we laugh at this stuff we also pause to think about what Tiger has done to his wife and his kids and then it isn’t so funny.
Having said that, I got an e-mail last night from Frank Hannigan, who was once executive director of the USGA and, even though he is the world’s leading curmudgeon, is still one of the very smart voices out there on any subject but especially on golf.
Hannigan usually weighs in to list all the various crimes I have committed against journalism and golf and the fate of the world in general and this note was no different. As always, a lot of what he said rang true. He told me I should cool it with the notion that Tiger’s fall from grace is some kind of epic disaster for golf. He didn’t go the, “golf was around before Tiger and will be around after Tiger,” route (even though that’s true) but what he did say is that if golf’s revenues go down for a few years life will go on.
“So the 100th ranked guy on the money list makes $800,000 instead of $1,000,000 the next few years—so what?”—he wrote. He went on to say that while there was no doubt the “Tiger golf-fan,” might disappear in his absence or not be quite so enamored of him upon his return, the core golf fans would still be there and there are other guys out there who can play the game pretty well.
He’s right of course. Sure, it’s Tim Finchem’s job as commissioner to try to keep purses going up, sponsors happy and TV ratings high so that he can wheedle more money from the networks the next time the contracts are up. But let’s say none of that happens. So, purses go down and players are unhappy about that. What are they going to do, give up golf and go to law school? (That’s not a Hannigan line but it could be one). Some tournaments might go away and that would be too bad but the tour isn’t going to shut down.
As for the TV networks, well, Golf Channel’s deal runs for something like 11 more years and do you think CBS is going to give up The Masters because Tiger isn’t as beloved as he once was? (There’s a joke in there somewhere about Tiger’s life and ‘a tradition like no other,’ but I’ll pass on that).
Sports go through downturns. Baseball took a huge hit at the box office and in TV ratings after the strike of 1994 and 1995. It came back and flourished not long afterwards. When hockey shut down in 2005 people said and wrote it would never come back. It’s doing just fine—much better than pre-lockout as a matter of fact. Go back to the 1980s before Magic and Bird and no one—NO ONE—was watching the NBA. Even the all-powerful NFL has attendance problems these days. A story in today’s Washington Post reports that The Jacksonville Jaguars are down to 27,000 season ticketholders.
All those sports have survived crises, regardless of what caused them. Tennis is in crisis right now because it has been mismanaged for so many years and hasn’t had a real American star on the men’s side since Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi retired a few years back. In fact, going back to 1993 when I started researching, “A Good Walk Spoiled,” both my editor and my agent expressed some concern that the book might not sell that well because golf had no stars. Remember the term, “faceless clones?” That book, which mentioned Tiger Woods ONCE—a sentence about this teen-age phenom getting a sponsor’s exemption to play in Los Angeles—outsold, “A Season on the Brink.”
So, Hannigan—as usual—is right. If Tiger never plays again, golf will wobble but will be fine in the long run. If, as is far more likely, he comes back a tainted icon but still a great player, golf will take a hit, especially in the short term, but will be just fine when all is said and done.
Having said all that, I don’t know about all of you but I definitely have Tiger fatigue right now even though I know I can’t just say, ‘enough,’ because it is still the story everyone is talking about.
I said last week that I don’t mind radio and TVs calling because I’m flattered that they think what I have to say might matter. It is amusing when producers call and act as if they are the very first ones to come up with the idea of asking me to talk about Tiger. Even more amusing was an e-mail I got yesterday from a producer at CNBC. It began this way: “Hi John—I wanted to let you know about a great opportunity for you tomorrow…” The ‘great opportunity,’ was to go downtown to a studio and spend two or three minutes on-air after Finchem got through talking to the network.
I couldn’t resist. I wrote back and asked her exactly what this ‘great opportunity,’ was for me. She earnestly wrote back that I would be on CNBC’s, “highest-rated,” show and would have the chance to be the, “first person,” to comment on Finchem’s comments. I wonder if she actually believes this sort of stuff or just thinks people are dumb enough to believe it. Remarkably, I decided not to give up two hours of my day for this ‘great opportunity.’ To be fair, she isn’t the first TV person—and no doubt won’t be the last—who has tried to convince me how fortunate I would be to be on their air.
I apologize for the digression. It’s just that after all these years of dealing with TV people (not all but many) I am still amazed by them. I’m not a fool. I understand that TV exposure helps sell books and that a lot of people think being on TV is absolutely the coolest thing one can do in life. I STILL have people come up and tell me how much they love watching me on ‘The Sports Reporters,” (which was great fun to do, especially when Dick Schaap was still alive) even though I haven’t been on the show in almost three years.
We are now almost three weeks into “As The Tiger Turns,” and each day I find myself shaking my head at something new. Yesterday it was Tiger’s agent, Mark Steinberg, climbing out from under the rock he’s been hiding under since this began to put out a statement ripping The New York Times for saying that IMG was involved in setting up Tiger’s sessions with the Canadian doctor who apparently used HGH in treating people recovering from major injuries. The Times wrote the story after the guy was arrested at the Canadian/U.S. border carrying illegal performance-enhancing drugs. In the statement Steinberg took a swipe at all the media reporting on his client.
Steinberg needs to shut-up. Unless he wants to take a polygraph test and tell people what he knew and what he didn’t know and what he told Tiger to do and not do when all this started, he should climb back under that rock.
There’s quite a crowd hiding there right now. My guess is they will be there for a while. But, as Frank Hannigan points out, golf will still be played—without Tiger, with a tainted Tiger, whatever—but it will still be played.
I have an absolute case of Tiger-fatigue. And yet, as I sit here this morning I’m thinking, ‘how can I not write about him?’ Are readers going to be more interested in how thrilled I was last night when American University went to DePaul and won? Or do they want my thoughts on the Islanders beating the Rangers in Madison Square Garden and some of my memories of growing up as a kid in the blue seats at The Garden? (Section 406 was the ideal if you could tickets up there. In those days the cost was $4). I could write about the Halladay-Lee trade and just how good the Mariners might be next season with Cliff Lee and Felix Rodriguez at the top of their rotation two years after losing more than 100 games.
No. Like it or not the story on everyone’s minds is Tiger and, regardless of how Charles Barkley may feel, it isn’t going away.
The Doonesbury strip a couple of days ago in which Garry Trudeau had Tiger’s mistresses deciding to unionize was funny. A lot of what’s circulated on TV and on the internet is funny. Of course every time we laugh at this stuff we also pause to think about what Tiger has done to his wife and his kids and then it isn’t so funny.
Having said that, I got an e-mail last night from Frank Hannigan, who was once executive director of the USGA and, even though he is the world’s leading curmudgeon, is still one of the very smart voices out there on any subject but especially on golf.
Hannigan usually weighs in to list all the various crimes I have committed against journalism and golf and the fate of the world in general and this note was no different. As always, a lot of what he said rang true. He told me I should cool it with the notion that Tiger’s fall from grace is some kind of epic disaster for golf. He didn’t go the, “golf was around before Tiger and will be around after Tiger,” route (even though that’s true) but what he did say is that if golf’s revenues go down for a few years life will go on.
“So the 100th ranked guy on the money list makes $800,000 instead of $1,000,000 the next few years—so what?”—he wrote. He went on to say that while there was no doubt the “Tiger golf-fan,” might disappear in his absence or not be quite so enamored of him upon his return, the core golf fans would still be there and there are other guys out there who can play the game pretty well.
He’s right of course. Sure, it’s Tim Finchem’s job as commissioner to try to keep purses going up, sponsors happy and TV ratings high so that he can wheedle more money from the networks the next time the contracts are up. But let’s say none of that happens. So, purses go down and players are unhappy about that. What are they going to do, give up golf and go to law school? (That’s not a Hannigan line but it could be one). Some tournaments might go away and that would be too bad but the tour isn’t going to shut down.
As for the TV networks, well, Golf Channel’s deal runs for something like 11 more years and do you think CBS is going to give up The Masters because Tiger isn’t as beloved as he once was? (There’s a joke in there somewhere about Tiger’s life and ‘a tradition like no other,’ but I’ll pass on that).
Sports go through downturns. Baseball took a huge hit at the box office and in TV ratings after the strike of 1994 and 1995. It came back and flourished not long afterwards. When hockey shut down in 2005 people said and wrote it would never come back. It’s doing just fine—much better than pre-lockout as a matter of fact. Go back to the 1980s before Magic and Bird and no one—NO ONE—was watching the NBA. Even the all-powerful NFL has attendance problems these days. A story in today’s Washington Post reports that The Jacksonville Jaguars are down to 27,000 season ticketholders.
All those sports have survived crises, regardless of what caused them. Tennis is in crisis right now because it has been mismanaged for so many years and hasn’t had a real American star on the men’s side since Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi retired a few years back. In fact, going back to 1993 when I started researching, “A Good Walk Spoiled,” both my editor and my agent expressed some concern that the book might not sell that well because golf had no stars. Remember the term, “faceless clones?” That book, which mentioned Tiger Woods ONCE—a sentence about this teen-age phenom getting a sponsor’s exemption to play in Los Angeles—outsold, “A Season on the Brink.”
So, Hannigan—as usual—is right. If Tiger never plays again, golf will wobble but will be fine in the long run. If, as is far more likely, he comes back a tainted icon but still a great player, golf will take a hit, especially in the short term, but will be just fine when all is said and done.
Having said all that, I don’t know about all of you but I definitely have Tiger fatigue right now even though I know I can’t just say, ‘enough,’ because it is still the story everyone is talking about.
I said last week that I don’t mind radio and TVs calling because I’m flattered that they think what I have to say might matter. It is amusing when producers call and act as if they are the very first ones to come up with the idea of asking me to talk about Tiger. Even more amusing was an e-mail I got yesterday from a producer at CNBC. It began this way: “Hi John—I wanted to let you know about a great opportunity for you tomorrow…” The ‘great opportunity,’ was to go downtown to a studio and spend two or three minutes on-air after Finchem got through talking to the network.
I couldn’t resist. I wrote back and asked her exactly what this ‘great opportunity,’ was for me. She earnestly wrote back that I would be on CNBC’s, “highest-rated,” show and would have the chance to be the, “first person,” to comment on Finchem’s comments. I wonder if she actually believes this sort of stuff or just thinks people are dumb enough to believe it. Remarkably, I decided not to give up two hours of my day for this ‘great opportunity.’ To be fair, she isn’t the first TV person—and no doubt won’t be the last—who has tried to convince me how fortunate I would be to be on their air.
I apologize for the digression. It’s just that after all these years of dealing with TV people (not all but many) I am still amazed by them. I’m not a fool. I understand that TV exposure helps sell books and that a lot of people think being on TV is absolutely the coolest thing one can do in life. I STILL have people come up and tell me how much they love watching me on ‘The Sports Reporters,” (which was great fun to do, especially when Dick Schaap was still alive) even though I haven’t been on the show in almost three years.
We are now almost three weeks into “As The Tiger Turns,” and each day I find myself shaking my head at something new. Yesterday it was Tiger’s agent, Mark Steinberg, climbing out from under the rock he’s been hiding under since this began to put out a statement ripping The New York Times for saying that IMG was involved in setting up Tiger’s sessions with the Canadian doctor who apparently used HGH in treating people recovering from major injuries. The Times wrote the story after the guy was arrested at the Canadian/U.S. border carrying illegal performance-enhancing drugs. In the statement Steinberg took a swipe at all the media reporting on his client.
Steinberg needs to shut-up. Unless he wants to take a polygraph test and tell people what he knew and what he didn’t know and what he told Tiger to do and not do when all this started, he should climb back under that rock.
There’s quite a crowd hiding there right now. My guess is they will be there for a while. But, as Frank Hannigan points out, golf will still be played—without Tiger, with a tainted Tiger, whatever—but it will still be played.
Comments (7)
John's Monday Washington Post column:
Mon, Dec 14 2009 10:31
| PGA Tour, Washington Capitals, Tiger Woods
| Permalink
Here is this week's The Washington Post article ------
It is now Day 18 of the Tiger Woods Hostage Crisis.
Okay, maybe that sounds overblown, but in a very real sense it isn't. Woods is a hostage, even though he is his own captor.
What's more, there is no doubting that both Woods and the sport of golf are in crisis. The PGA Tour needs Woods almost as much as mammals need oxygen. Woods needs golf more now than ever because playing the game he has dominated for almost 13 years may be the only way for him to him to temporarily escape the humiliation that has rained down him since the morning of Nov. 27. That day now feels as if it were closer to 18 years ago than 18 days ago given all that has happened.
Click here for the rest of the column: Unclear exactly where Tiger, Tour are headed
It is now Day 18 of the Tiger Woods Hostage Crisis.
Okay, maybe that sounds overblown, but in a very real sense it isn't. Woods is a hostage, even though he is his own captor.
What's more, there is no doubting that both Woods and the sport of golf are in crisis. The PGA Tour needs Woods almost as much as mammals need oxygen. Woods needs golf more now than ever because playing the game he has dominated for almost 13 years may be the only way for him to him to temporarily escape the humiliation that has rained down him since the morning of Nov. 27. That day now feels as if it were closer to 18 years ago than 18 days ago given all that has happened.
Click here for the rest of the column: Unclear exactly where Tiger, Tour are headed
Comments (2)
One thing is true with Tiger, the future is an absolute guess; Bill Hancock continues to smile in response
Mon, Dec 14 2009 10:32
| college football, PGA Tour, Tiger Woods, media, Bill Hancock
| Permalink
I would really like to write this morning about Army-Navy weekend, just tell a few stories about the people I encountered and the game and how I got caught (again) tearing up during the playing of the alma maters.
But it’s simply impossible to just drive past the train wreck that is Tiger Woods. I’ve said and written a lot about Tiger the last 13 years but I honestly never thought the phrase, ‘train wreck,’ would appear in a sentence describing his life. That, however, is exactly where he is right now.
It’s interesting the sort of panic that his statement that he was taking an ‘indefinite,’ leave of absence from the tour set off on Friday night. I was about to leave my hotel to meet people for dinner when Golf Channel called. They were about to break into their programming to go live with the story. Could I come on by phone and ‘react?’ Sure. I work for Golf Channel so when they call I’m there to do what they ask even if I seriously doubt I can add that much to the equation. I did the interview with Rich Lerner while standing on Broad Street outside The Philadelphia Palm before I joined everyone for dinner.
By the time we walked out of the restaurant a couple of hours later I had 18 messages from various media outlets on my cell phone. CNN—which is always there when it needs you—had called no less than four times: ‘Larry King Live,’—whose producers consistently say ‘we don’t do sports,’ whenever I have a book out even though I knew the host well when he lived fulltime in Washington—suddenly was doing sports. Same with Anderson Cooper, not to mention their regular news shows. The other calls were predictable ranging from local radio to ABC News.
The only people I called back were those I work with on a regular basis. The larger point is this: NO ONE knows what the hell any of this means. One of the reasons I’m really not that eager to play Tiger pundit right now is that anything I say is an absolute guess.
The questions are predictable: When do you think Tiger will play golf again? Answer: I have no idea and my guess is neither does he right now.
What does this mean for his career?
Again, who among us knows? Maybe golf will become his salvation in light of all that’s gone on and he’ll play better than in the past. Maybe other players won’t be as intimidated by him. Maybe he won’t feel so all-powerful on the golf course because he’s been humiliated off the golf course.
What does this mean for The PGA Tour?
Nothing good, that’s for sure. Commissioner Tim Finchem has always used the following line to pump up his sport, especially when wooing sponsors: “The most famous athlete in the world plays on our tour.” Well, he still does but he is now as infamous as he is famous. Of course there’s no way to measure the impact Tiger’s ‘leave,’ will have until we know how long he’s going to be gone for.
Does Tiger have to actually talk to the media at some point and stop hiding behind his carefully crafted statement on his web site?
Actually no, he doesn’t. He can continue to play the, ‘this is my private life,’ card and a lot of people will buy it. He’s also going to have his apologists running around acting as if he’s a ‘victim,’ of some kind—which he is if you count the fact that he’s a victim of his own selfishness and stupidity. Charles Barkley did some kind of commentary on TBS the other night that was actually embarrassing, trying to claim the whole thing is the fault of all the ‘losers,’ in the media who continue to report the story. Hey Chuck, if the media are such losers why don’t you get OUT of the media. And of course there’s my friend Mike Wilbon (pal of Chuck) who keeps insisting that every famous person on the face of the planet has done this so it’s a non-story.
That’s the way it always is in these situations. There are people who still blame Woodward and Bernstein for Richard Nixon’s resignation and others who insist that what happened to Bill Clinton was a ‘right wing conspiracy.’ It’s worth remembering that Bernstein probably would have still been covering Virginia state politics and Woodward local cops and courts if the burglars hadn’t been caught and that there isn’t any evidence that Monica Lewinsky was working undercover for Rush Limbaugh.
It’s human nature when we screw up to initially try to blame someone or something for our troubles. There’s an old saying among golfers that you can tell the truly great players because they always tap down a spike mark in their line after missing a putt. You see it can’t be THEIR fault. Part of what makes them great is always believing that they made the putt; something simply conspired to keep the ball out of the hole.
There is no one more like that than Tiger. The looks to the heavens; the eye-rolling; the club tossing are all part of that mentality. Sometimes you feel as if Tiger has the hardest life every lived, that he is the first and only player to have a putt do a 360 around the hole and stay out. It is one reason why he always seems to make the next one, as if he’s saying, ‘no matter what you do you won’t get me!’
There’s no doubt that’s how he feels now. He’s certainly surrounded by people (with the likely exception of his wife) who are telling him that every day. They are all Barkley times ten in large part because they’re trying to save their jobs. Some people have called for Tiger to fire IMG; to fire Steve Williams; to fire everyone on his payroll. Look, I’m no fan of IMG and would love to see Steve Williams in a parking lot holding up a sign that says, ‘will caddy for food.’ But if Tiger wants to fire the person responsible for all this he’d have to fire himself.
Personally, I hope he comes back before The Masters. Golf is better with Tiger than without Tiger and anyone who believes different is a fool. But I also hope that sometime between now and his return he goes outside his circle of sycophants and asks for help whether it be from a crisis manager or someone else as long as it is someone who has NO financial involvement in Tiger Woods Inc. And I hope whomever that is tells him that stonewalling is never the answer; that blaming others is never the answer.
He’s admitted his “infidelities,”; he admitted “letting people down.” People need to HEAR him say it, need to get a sense if he means it or if he’s just saying it because that’s what his spinners have told him to say.
There’s another more selfish reason why I hope Tiger starts talking sometime soon: CNN will stop calling me. I swear to God they called again while I was writing this. Maybe I’ll give them Barkley’s number. I’m sure he’ll talk to them—he’s on their payroll.
---------------------------------
On a far lighter and more pleasant note: My pal Bill Hancock from the BCS dealt with being bombarded with his usual good humor during dinner Friday night. He answered NONE of the questions posed to him—most by former Army and Navy football players, I just sat and watched—to anyone’s satisfaction. I think my friend Jim Cantelupe, the co-captain of the Army team I wrote about in ‘A Civil War,’ summed it up well at the end of the night: “Everything he says is wrong but he’s so nice about it you can’t get pissed off at him.”
What was funny was Bill saying that a four team playoff would still have left out an undefeated team when everyone at the table was calling for at least eight teams. When someone asked him about the presidents adding a 12th game strictly to make more money, Bill shook his head sincerely and said, “you know a lot of presidents were against that.
I couldn’t resist jumping in at that point and saying, “not a majority though, huh Bill?”
He just smiled in response.
He also made the mistake of trying the “regular season has more meaning,” argument which was shouted down by people noting that TCU and Boise State could have had NFL teams on their schedule and still wouldn’t have gotten a shot at the championship game.
“I hope I’ll still have some friends left when this is all over,” Bill said after dinner.
I promised I’d always be his friend—which I will—no matter how wrong he might be.
But it’s simply impossible to just drive past the train wreck that is Tiger Woods. I’ve said and written a lot about Tiger the last 13 years but I honestly never thought the phrase, ‘train wreck,’ would appear in a sentence describing his life. That, however, is exactly where he is right now.
It’s interesting the sort of panic that his statement that he was taking an ‘indefinite,’ leave of absence from the tour set off on Friday night. I was about to leave my hotel to meet people for dinner when Golf Channel called. They were about to break into their programming to go live with the story. Could I come on by phone and ‘react?’ Sure. I work for Golf Channel so when they call I’m there to do what they ask even if I seriously doubt I can add that much to the equation. I did the interview with Rich Lerner while standing on Broad Street outside The Philadelphia Palm before I joined everyone for dinner.
By the time we walked out of the restaurant a couple of hours later I had 18 messages from various media outlets on my cell phone. CNN—which is always there when it needs you—had called no less than four times: ‘Larry King Live,’—whose producers consistently say ‘we don’t do sports,’ whenever I have a book out even though I knew the host well when he lived fulltime in Washington—suddenly was doing sports. Same with Anderson Cooper, not to mention their regular news shows. The other calls were predictable ranging from local radio to ABC News.
The only people I called back were those I work with on a regular basis. The larger point is this: NO ONE knows what the hell any of this means. One of the reasons I’m really not that eager to play Tiger pundit right now is that anything I say is an absolute guess.
The questions are predictable: When do you think Tiger will play golf again? Answer: I have no idea and my guess is neither does he right now.
What does this mean for his career?
Again, who among us knows? Maybe golf will become his salvation in light of all that’s gone on and he’ll play better than in the past. Maybe other players won’t be as intimidated by him. Maybe he won’t feel so all-powerful on the golf course because he’s been humiliated off the golf course.
What does this mean for The PGA Tour?
Nothing good, that’s for sure. Commissioner Tim Finchem has always used the following line to pump up his sport, especially when wooing sponsors: “The most famous athlete in the world plays on our tour.” Well, he still does but he is now as infamous as he is famous. Of course there’s no way to measure the impact Tiger’s ‘leave,’ will have until we know how long he’s going to be gone for.
Does Tiger have to actually talk to the media at some point and stop hiding behind his carefully crafted statement on his web site?
Actually no, he doesn’t. He can continue to play the, ‘this is my private life,’ card and a lot of people will buy it. He’s also going to have his apologists running around acting as if he’s a ‘victim,’ of some kind—which he is if you count the fact that he’s a victim of his own selfishness and stupidity. Charles Barkley did some kind of commentary on TBS the other night that was actually embarrassing, trying to claim the whole thing is the fault of all the ‘losers,’ in the media who continue to report the story. Hey Chuck, if the media are such losers why don’t you get OUT of the media. And of course there’s my friend Mike Wilbon (pal of Chuck) who keeps insisting that every famous person on the face of the planet has done this so it’s a non-story.
That’s the way it always is in these situations. There are people who still blame Woodward and Bernstein for Richard Nixon’s resignation and others who insist that what happened to Bill Clinton was a ‘right wing conspiracy.’ It’s worth remembering that Bernstein probably would have still been covering Virginia state politics and Woodward local cops and courts if the burglars hadn’t been caught and that there isn’t any evidence that Monica Lewinsky was working undercover for Rush Limbaugh.
It’s human nature when we screw up to initially try to blame someone or something for our troubles. There’s an old saying among golfers that you can tell the truly great players because they always tap down a spike mark in their line after missing a putt. You see it can’t be THEIR fault. Part of what makes them great is always believing that they made the putt; something simply conspired to keep the ball out of the hole.
There is no one more like that than Tiger. The looks to the heavens; the eye-rolling; the club tossing are all part of that mentality. Sometimes you feel as if Tiger has the hardest life every lived, that he is the first and only player to have a putt do a 360 around the hole and stay out. It is one reason why he always seems to make the next one, as if he’s saying, ‘no matter what you do you won’t get me!’
There’s no doubt that’s how he feels now. He’s certainly surrounded by people (with the likely exception of his wife) who are telling him that every day. They are all Barkley times ten in large part because they’re trying to save their jobs. Some people have called for Tiger to fire IMG; to fire Steve Williams; to fire everyone on his payroll. Look, I’m no fan of IMG and would love to see Steve Williams in a parking lot holding up a sign that says, ‘will caddy for food.’ But if Tiger wants to fire the person responsible for all this he’d have to fire himself.
Personally, I hope he comes back before The Masters. Golf is better with Tiger than without Tiger and anyone who believes different is a fool. But I also hope that sometime between now and his return he goes outside his circle of sycophants and asks for help whether it be from a crisis manager or someone else as long as it is someone who has NO financial involvement in Tiger Woods Inc. And I hope whomever that is tells him that stonewalling is never the answer; that blaming others is never the answer.
He’s admitted his “infidelities,”; he admitted “letting people down.” People need to HEAR him say it, need to get a sense if he means it or if he’s just saying it because that’s what his spinners have told him to say.
There’s another more selfish reason why I hope Tiger starts talking sometime soon: CNN will stop calling me. I swear to God they called again while I was writing this. Maybe I’ll give them Barkley’s number. I’m sure he’ll talk to them—he’s on their payroll.
---------------------------------
On a far lighter and more pleasant note: My pal Bill Hancock from the BCS dealt with being bombarded with his usual good humor during dinner Friday night. He answered NONE of the questions posed to him—most by former Army and Navy football players, I just sat and watched—to anyone’s satisfaction. I think my friend Jim Cantelupe, the co-captain of the Army team I wrote about in ‘A Civil War,’ summed it up well at the end of the night: “Everything he says is wrong but he’s so nice about it you can’t get pissed off at him.”
What was funny was Bill saying that a four team playoff would still have left out an undefeated team when everyone at the table was calling for at least eight teams. When someone asked him about the presidents adding a 12th game strictly to make more money, Bill shook his head sincerely and said, “you know a lot of presidents were against that.
I couldn’t resist jumping in at that point and saying, “not a majority though, huh Bill?”
He just smiled in response.
He also made the mistake of trying the “regular season has more meaning,” argument which was shouted down by people noting that TCU and Boise State could have had NFL teams on their schedule and still wouldn’t have gotten a shot at the championship game.
“I hope I’ll still have some friends left when this is all over,” Bill said after dinner.
I promised I’d always be his friend—which I will—no matter how wrong he might be.
Comments (15)
Tiger and I are in full agreement: enough is enough; Learning about pre-interviews the hard way
Thu, Dec 3 2009 08:49
| The Children's Charities Foundation, Tiger Woods, Bill Clinton, Ted Koppel, Nightline, Jimmy Conners
| Permalink
Okay, I’ve had enough.
In fact, I can tell you the exact moment when I knew I’d had enough of ‘Tiger-gate.’ It was last night at halftime of the George Mason-George Washington game, which turned out to be a disappointing blowout because Mason Coach Jim Larranaga suspended two key players after they stole pillows from a hotel last weekend for the plane ride home.
Pillow-gate?
I was sitting with GW Athletic Director Jack Kvancz and his wife Janis (one of the world’s great people) and Bob Zurfluh, who has been tournament director for the BB+T Classic (which is this Sunday at Verizon Center) since we first started the event 15 years ago. (I say we because I’m on the board of The Children’s Charities Foundation which has raised about $10 million for kids at risk in the DC area through the BB+T).
We should have been talking about the game, the BB+T, the obvious improvement GW has made this season with a sterling freshman class. Nope. It was all Tiger, all the time. Look, I understand completely. There are two stories dominating the news at all levels right now: Afghanistan and Tiger. For many, it isn’t in that order.
But I’d been talking Tiger almost non-stop, or so it seemed, since last Friday. I’m not complaining: I’ve always said I would rather have too many phone calls to return than no phone calls to return. If I get to go to The Masters every year then this story is part of what I do too. What’s more when there is breaking news I understand that a lot of the shows that call me are the same ones my publicist calls when I have a book out. So I try not to say no to people who have always said yes to me in the past. Nightline doesn’t sell books for me but it is, well, Nightline.
(Let me digress here to tell one story about Nightline because I know I have to get to the Tiger apology eventually. In 1991, just as my tennis book, “Hard Courts,” was coming out Jimmy Connors did me a great favor by getting to the semifinals of the U.S. Open at the age of 39. My media appearances—and the quality of them—soared thanks to Connors and the book was No. 3 on the New York Times bestseller list the week after the Open.
I got a call from a Nightline producer. They were going to do a show focusing on tennis and Connors the night before the Open semis if Connors got that far. Would I be interested in being a guest since I’d written the book and Connors had been prominently featured in it? You bet.
On Thursday the producer called to do what’s called a pre-interview. This is one of the most worthless exercises in the history of the world: You answer a bunch of questions on the phone and, almost without fail NOTHING you discuss comes up in the actual interview. But, as I found out the hard way, there’s a reason for them.
The guy asked me this question: Why are people so enamored of Connors who was once one of the real bad boys of tennis? My answer, almost word-for-word, was this: “Because he’s defying mortality. You aren’t supposed to be able to play tennis at this level at 39 and he’s doing it. Who among us can’t identify with the notion of defying mortality?”
The guy thanked me and asked me if I would need a car to get me to the studio. No, I knew where it was I could actually walk there from where I was staying. Fine. The next afternoon the guy called me again: “Well, I’m sorry, you didn’t make the cut,” he said.
“What cut?” I asked.
“Well, you were one of several candidates for the show…”
“Hang on, that’s not what you said to me when you called. You asked if I’d like to be on the show.”
“That’s right. I didn’t say you WOULD be on the show.”
I won’t repeat my response here.
“We decided to go with Robert Lipsyte from the New York Times. We prefer journalists to authors if we have a choice.”
I won’t repeat my response to that either.
It gets better. I guess because I’m a masochist I turned the show on that night. Here’s how Ted Koppel opened the segment: “What James Scott Connors has done these past two weeks at the U.S. Open tennis championships is defy mortality. Who among us can’t identify with that?”
I used to run into Koppel on occasion at a local Italian restaurant near where I live. He and I frequently picked up take-out there on Sunday nights. For years I was tempted to say something but never did. What the heck, he didn’t know the producer stole the line, why bother? But I have never—ever—done a pre-interview since then. And never will.)
Okay, back to Tiger.
There’s no sense rehashing the whole thing here again. The people I feel worst for in all this are his wife and—even more so—his children. When they get older they’re going to know this was something their father did.
Tiger will play great golf again and he’ll still break Jack Nicklaus’s record in majors. The golf media will still fawn on him constantly and his sponsors will, “stick by him,” because they have too much money invested in him to dump him and because they want to be there with new ads trumpeting his redemption when he wins again.
In a sense, this is much like Bill Clinton. When he was finally forced to admit to his involvement with Monica Lewinsky he said he was “sorry but…” Remember him saying that his personal life was no one’s business? Of course it was. He was President of the United States. I really believe that attitude rather than just saying, “I’m sorry,” is the reason the House of Representatives was able to impeach him—he turned a lot of the public, including Democrats like me against him with his attitude.
Today, Bill Clinton gets $250,000 for a speech and is treated with the respect that ex-presidents get when they leave office. He has a presidential library, the whole thing. But Monica Lewinsky will ALWAYS be part of his life’s resume. Her name will always appear in his biography.
Tiger isn’t the President and he’s not going to be impeached. He’ll continue to make millions and win golf tournaments. But, as with Clinton, this will be on his life’s resume. He did the same thing yesterday that Clinton did eleven years ago—“I’m sorry, but…”
In this case the but-line made the media the fall guy—what a surprise. It reminded me a little of the old Peanuts cartoon in which Peppermint Patty is asked by the teacher why she didn’t do her homework. “Well,” she says. I spent some time watching TV…I read a magazine…Then there was something on the radio…I BLAME THE MEDIA!”
That was Tiger yesterday: I let my family down, I acted badly, I’m very sorry…I BLAME THE MEDIA!”
Oh well, it’s the way of the world.
The good news—I sincerely hope—is that we can now move on. Tiger can go into character-rehab mode along with his spinners and sponsors. There will still be some dirt on the internet or in the tabloids and there will be LOTS more jokes. But it won’t be on the front page of The New York Times and The Washington Post and my phone will probably stop ringing after today. (That’s me being selfish, yes).
It will crop up again when Tiger plays next—probably San Diego unless he decides to delay the start of his season until Florida—but it isn’t going to be THE subject everyone is talking about.
This is one time when Tiger and I are in full agreement: enough is enough. He messed up and he’s going to pay a big price. As I said to a friend at Golf Channel yesterday, “tell everybody on air to stop looking like they’re covering a funeral. Nobody died.”
Of course I wasn’t completely right about that. No one died but something did die: Tiger’s carefully crafted image. That’s gone forever.
In fact, I can tell you the exact moment when I knew I’d had enough of ‘Tiger-gate.’ It was last night at halftime of the George Mason-George Washington game, which turned out to be a disappointing blowout because Mason Coach Jim Larranaga suspended two key players after they stole pillows from a hotel last weekend for the plane ride home.
Pillow-gate?
I was sitting with GW Athletic Director Jack Kvancz and his wife Janis (one of the world’s great people) and Bob Zurfluh, who has been tournament director for the BB+T Classic (which is this Sunday at Verizon Center) since we first started the event 15 years ago. (I say we because I’m on the board of The Children’s Charities Foundation which has raised about $10 million for kids at risk in the DC area through the BB+T).
We should have been talking about the game, the BB+T, the obvious improvement GW has made this season with a sterling freshman class. Nope. It was all Tiger, all the time. Look, I understand completely. There are two stories dominating the news at all levels right now: Afghanistan and Tiger. For many, it isn’t in that order.
But I’d been talking Tiger almost non-stop, or so it seemed, since last Friday. I’m not complaining: I’ve always said I would rather have too many phone calls to return than no phone calls to return. If I get to go to The Masters every year then this story is part of what I do too. What’s more when there is breaking news I understand that a lot of the shows that call me are the same ones my publicist calls when I have a book out. So I try not to say no to people who have always said yes to me in the past. Nightline doesn’t sell books for me but it is, well, Nightline.
(Let me digress here to tell one story about Nightline because I know I have to get to the Tiger apology eventually. In 1991, just as my tennis book, “Hard Courts,” was coming out Jimmy Connors did me a great favor by getting to the semifinals of the U.S. Open at the age of 39. My media appearances—and the quality of them—soared thanks to Connors and the book was No. 3 on the New York Times bestseller list the week after the Open.
I got a call from a Nightline producer. They were going to do a show focusing on tennis and Connors the night before the Open semis if Connors got that far. Would I be interested in being a guest since I’d written the book and Connors had been prominently featured in it? You bet.
On Thursday the producer called to do what’s called a pre-interview. This is one of the most worthless exercises in the history of the world: You answer a bunch of questions on the phone and, almost without fail NOTHING you discuss comes up in the actual interview. But, as I found out the hard way, there’s a reason for them.
The guy asked me this question: Why are people so enamored of Connors who was once one of the real bad boys of tennis? My answer, almost word-for-word, was this: “Because he’s defying mortality. You aren’t supposed to be able to play tennis at this level at 39 and he’s doing it. Who among us can’t identify with the notion of defying mortality?”
The guy thanked me and asked me if I would need a car to get me to the studio. No, I knew where it was I could actually walk there from where I was staying. Fine. The next afternoon the guy called me again: “Well, I’m sorry, you didn’t make the cut,” he said.
“What cut?” I asked.
“Well, you were one of several candidates for the show…”
“Hang on, that’s not what you said to me when you called. You asked if I’d like to be on the show.”
“That’s right. I didn’t say you WOULD be on the show.”
I won’t repeat my response here.
“We decided to go with Robert Lipsyte from the New York Times. We prefer journalists to authors if we have a choice.”
I won’t repeat my response to that either.
It gets better. I guess because I’m a masochist I turned the show on that night. Here’s how Ted Koppel opened the segment: “What James Scott Connors has done these past two weeks at the U.S. Open tennis championships is defy mortality. Who among us can’t identify with that?”
I used to run into Koppel on occasion at a local Italian restaurant near where I live. He and I frequently picked up take-out there on Sunday nights. For years I was tempted to say something but never did. What the heck, he didn’t know the producer stole the line, why bother? But I have never—ever—done a pre-interview since then. And never will.)
Okay, back to Tiger.
There’s no sense rehashing the whole thing here again. The people I feel worst for in all this are his wife and—even more so—his children. When they get older they’re going to know this was something their father did.
Tiger will play great golf again and he’ll still break Jack Nicklaus’s record in majors. The golf media will still fawn on him constantly and his sponsors will, “stick by him,” because they have too much money invested in him to dump him and because they want to be there with new ads trumpeting his redemption when he wins again.
In a sense, this is much like Bill Clinton. When he was finally forced to admit to his involvement with Monica Lewinsky he said he was “sorry but…” Remember him saying that his personal life was no one’s business? Of course it was. He was President of the United States. I really believe that attitude rather than just saying, “I’m sorry,” is the reason the House of Representatives was able to impeach him—he turned a lot of the public, including Democrats like me against him with his attitude.
Today, Bill Clinton gets $250,000 for a speech and is treated with the respect that ex-presidents get when they leave office. He has a presidential library, the whole thing. But Monica Lewinsky will ALWAYS be part of his life’s resume. Her name will always appear in his biography.
Tiger isn’t the President and he’s not going to be impeached. He’ll continue to make millions and win golf tournaments. But, as with Clinton, this will be on his life’s resume. He did the same thing yesterday that Clinton did eleven years ago—“I’m sorry, but…”
In this case the but-line made the media the fall guy—what a surprise. It reminded me a little of the old Peanuts cartoon in which Peppermint Patty is asked by the teacher why she didn’t do her homework. “Well,” she says. I spent some time watching TV…I read a magazine…Then there was something on the radio…I BLAME THE MEDIA!”
That was Tiger yesterday: I let my family down, I acted badly, I’m very sorry…I BLAME THE MEDIA!”
Oh well, it’s the way of the world.
The good news—I sincerely hope—is that we can now move on. Tiger can go into character-rehab mode along with his spinners and sponsors. There will still be some dirt on the internet or in the tabloids and there will be LOTS more jokes. But it won’t be on the front page of The New York Times and The Washington Post and my phone will probably stop ringing after today. (That’s me being selfish, yes).
It will crop up again when Tiger plays next—probably San Diego unless he decides to delay the start of his season until Florida—but it isn’t going to be THE subject everyone is talking about.
This is one time when Tiger and I are in full agreement: enough is enough. He messed up and he’s going to pay a big price. As I said to a friend at Golf Channel yesterday, “tell everybody on air to stop looking like they’re covering a funeral. Nobody died.”
Of course I wasn’t completely right about that. No one died but something did die: Tiger’s carefully crafted image. That’s gone forever.
Comments (14)
Updated -- This Week's Radio Segments (The Sports Reporters, The Gas Man, The Tony Kornheiser Show):
Wed, Dec 2 2009 11:34
| Sports Radio, Bobby Bowden, Tiger Woods, Tony Kornheiser
| Permalink
I made my regular appearance on The Sports Reporters with Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin in the normal timeslot (5:25 ET on Wednesday's) this evening. Click the permalink, then the link below, to listen to the segment which focused on Tiger Woods.
Click here to listen to Wednesday afternoon's segment: The Sports Reporters
I also made my regular spot with The Gasman that has moved to Wednesday's at 5:25 PT during the NFL late season. This week we talked about the retirement of Bobby Bowden and the Tiger Woods incident.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Gas Man
Thursday morning during my regular 11:05 spot, I had a segment on the newest The Tony Kornheiser Show. Of course, we talked about the hot topic of the week, along with the BB+T Classic, which is being played Sunday.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Tony Kornheiser Show
Click here to listen to Wednesday afternoon's segment: The Sports Reporters
I also made my regular spot with The Gasman that has moved to Wednesday's at 5:25 PT during the NFL late season. This week we talked about the retirement of Bobby Bowden and the Tiger Woods incident.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Gas Man
Thursday morning during my regular 11:05 spot, I had a segment on the newest The Tony Kornheiser Show. Of course, we talked about the hot topic of the week, along with the BB+T Classic, which is being played Sunday.
Click here to listen to the segment: The Tony Kornheiser Show
Moving on to Notre Dame and Serena Williams, Following a Short Rehash of Yesterday
Tue, Dec 1 2009 09:41
| Notre Dame, Mary Carillo, Charlie Weis, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams
| Permalink
As I’ve said before, some mornings it is hard to know where to begin.
The biggest story in sports continues to be ‘Tiger-gate.’ Yesterday, to no one’s surprise, he announced he was pulling out of his own tournament—it is really an exhibition since every player collects a big check—because of the injuries he suffered last Friday morning. What’s interesting about that is that his spin-doctors rushed out with a statement on Friday claiming his injuries were, “minor.” Now, four days later he’s too badly hurt to get on a private plane to, at the very least put in an appearance on behalf of the tournament sponsor who is putting up $5.5 million in prize money alone.
Methinks he’s not ready to let anyone see him public.
Let me pause a moment here to go back to yesterday and some of the comments that were posted here. I’m always very curious to see what readers write, especially because they frequently raise questions or issues I hadn’t thought about. Since I started the blog five months ago very few of those who have posted or sent e-mails have been especially negative or angry. In fact, one of the things that has made me happy is the thoughtfulness and, well, smartness of so many of the posts. It isn’t like reading some other blog posting areas where people scream cyber-profanities at one another and toss anonymous cheap shots around.
Yesterday, a lot of the posts were pretty much the norm: smart people agreeing to perhaps disagree on a complicated topic which very much involves how much privacy a public figure is entitled to have. But there were also some that were angry—angry with me for suggesting that Woods owes the public some kind of an explanation because there are so many un-answered questions about what happened last Friday. I also wrote that it would be best for HIM to give some kind of explanation and I think the fact that he had to pull out of his own tournament is more evidence of that. At the moment he is, for all intents and purposes, a prisoner in his own home.
What I realized reading the posts is something I hadn’t thought about in the past. I’ve always known that fans of a TEAM don’t care at all about the off-field behavior of their stars as long as they perform. Right now fans of the Yankees could care less about Alex Rodriguez’s steroids admissions last spring. All they know is he (finally) performed in postseason and the Yankees won The World Series. Fans of college football and basketball teams could care less about whether their players graduate: they want them to perform, win games, make them feel good. If you graduate, that’s fine, but it doesn’t matter. No coach—repeat NO coach—has ever been fired because he had a low graduation rate.
Woods is such a transcendent figure that many fans look at him as THEIR golfer. As a number of posts said, “as long as he entertains me with spectacular golf, I don’t care what he does off the course.” (At least one poster spelled it coarse, but that’s okay). A couple of others went the kind of tired route that those of us who report on athletes transgressions are essentially ambulance chasers and we should leave the guy alone, mind our own business, yata-yata-yata. My suggestion to them is that they not waste their time with this blog because what I write here for the most part is about people I know and have known in sports, the good and the bad. If you are looking for happy talk, go to TigerWoods.com.
Here’s the larger point: In the end most fans just want athletes to perform, to make them feel happy by winning and, in Tiger’s case, often winning spectacularly. I get all that, I have a better understanding of that today than I did yesterday because I hadn’t thought of it in those terms for an athlete in an individual sport.
I will say this: Golf Channel had a crisis-management expert on the air yesterday, a guy who clearly has no vested interest in this at all. He basically said what I had said: the longer Tiger stonewalls, the worse it gets for him—because there are LOTS of people who see a carefully cultivated image and wonder now if it’s real. That’s not going away regardless of what I say, write or think. I would add one more thing for those of you who care only about what Tiger does on the golf course: He’s not ON the golf course entertaining you this week. It may be because he’s more beat up than his people let on last Friday or it may be because he’s hiding out. Either way, it’s really too damn bad for everyone—including Tiger.
-----------------------
On to happier topics: Charlie Weis got fired yesterday. That wasn’t even a little bit of a surprise to anyone but it always amuses me how guys in suits think they can spin things just by claiming they’re true. Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick, who does look good in a suit, talked about how difficult the decision was because Weis is really such a good guy. “I have never met anyone for whom there was a larger gulf between perception and reality than Charlie Weis,” he claimed and then went into all the hoo-ha about how much Weis loves Notre Dame—as if that qualifies ANYONE to coach. I love the New York Islanders. That doesn’t mean I should coach them.
Here’s some Weis reality: he swaggered into Notre Dame telling people he was going to out-scheme other coaches and bullying the media, using his opening press conference to “lay down the law,” on what would and wouldn’t be allowed and threatening reporters with banishment if they failed to follow all his rules.
More reality: he never once took responsibility for his failures. It was always the players who failed to run a route right, didn’t make a block or a tackle. The old, “I coached good, they played bad,” routine. When Notre Dame won it was because of some brilliant offensive scheme he came up with. (See last year’s Hawaii Bowl).
A bit more reality: Weis ducked the media after the Stanford game last Saturday, wasn’t man enough to stand there and accept that he had failed. Actually, it may be a good thing: no doubt he would have blamed the players for his failures. Then he went out and started leaking about all the NFL teams that were interested in him.
THAT’s the reality of Charlie Weis.
What was almost as amusing was to hear the two morning guys on ESPN apologizing for him today. Of course one has two sons recruited by Weis and is an apologist for all things Notre Dame. The other is simply an apologist for anyone who has ever appeared on-air so it really isn’t surprising.
Weis got what he deserved—except for the fact that Notre Dame still has to pay him $18 million. That part is just sad.
------------------
One last note for the day: In a major non-surprise the folks who run the tennis Grand Slams yesterday fined Serena Williams $82,500 for her outburst at a lineswoman during the U.S. Open and gave her a stern talking to: as in, ‘do this again and you could be suspended.’
Yeah, right.
Let me allow my pal Mary Carillo, who is more worthy to comment on this than I am (or anyone else) explain exactly what happened. This is what she wrote in an e-mail yesterday to The Washington Post’s Liz Clarke:
“Serena Williams physically threatened and verbally assaulted an official during one of the most watched tennis matches of 2009 and after three months of considered cogitation the Grand Slam Committee came up with ‘Grand Slam Probation and a ‘suspended ban?’ And half of what was deemed to be her fine? Boy, that ought to show everyone.”
Carillo’s summation: “It was a cockamamie decision.”
Mary grew up in Queens with John McEnroe. She knows a “you can NOT be serious,” situation when she sees one. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Mary should be the commissioner of tennis. She’s smarter than every person with authority in the game—smarter than all of them combined.
The biggest story in sports continues to be ‘Tiger-gate.’ Yesterday, to no one’s surprise, he announced he was pulling out of his own tournament—it is really an exhibition since every player collects a big check—because of the injuries he suffered last Friday morning. What’s interesting about that is that his spin-doctors rushed out with a statement on Friday claiming his injuries were, “minor.” Now, four days later he’s too badly hurt to get on a private plane to, at the very least put in an appearance on behalf of the tournament sponsor who is putting up $5.5 million in prize money alone.
Methinks he’s not ready to let anyone see him public.
Let me pause a moment here to go back to yesterday and some of the comments that were posted here. I’m always very curious to see what readers write, especially because they frequently raise questions or issues I hadn’t thought about. Since I started the blog five months ago very few of those who have posted or sent e-mails have been especially negative or angry. In fact, one of the things that has made me happy is the thoughtfulness and, well, smartness of so many of the posts. It isn’t like reading some other blog posting areas where people scream cyber-profanities at one another and toss anonymous cheap shots around.
Yesterday, a lot of the posts were pretty much the norm: smart people agreeing to perhaps disagree on a complicated topic which very much involves how much privacy a public figure is entitled to have. But there were also some that were angry—angry with me for suggesting that Woods owes the public some kind of an explanation because there are so many un-answered questions about what happened last Friday. I also wrote that it would be best for HIM to give some kind of explanation and I think the fact that he had to pull out of his own tournament is more evidence of that. At the moment he is, for all intents and purposes, a prisoner in his own home.
What I realized reading the posts is something I hadn’t thought about in the past. I’ve always known that fans of a TEAM don’t care at all about the off-field behavior of their stars as long as they perform. Right now fans of the Yankees could care less about Alex Rodriguez’s steroids admissions last spring. All they know is he (finally) performed in postseason and the Yankees won The World Series. Fans of college football and basketball teams could care less about whether their players graduate: they want them to perform, win games, make them feel good. If you graduate, that’s fine, but it doesn’t matter. No coach—repeat NO coach—has ever been fired because he had a low graduation rate.
Woods is such a transcendent figure that many fans look at him as THEIR golfer. As a number of posts said, “as long as he entertains me with spectacular golf, I don’t care what he does off the course.” (At least one poster spelled it coarse, but that’s okay). A couple of others went the kind of tired route that those of us who report on athletes transgressions are essentially ambulance chasers and we should leave the guy alone, mind our own business, yata-yata-yata. My suggestion to them is that they not waste their time with this blog because what I write here for the most part is about people I know and have known in sports, the good and the bad. If you are looking for happy talk, go to TigerWoods.com.
Here’s the larger point: In the end most fans just want athletes to perform, to make them feel happy by winning and, in Tiger’s case, often winning spectacularly. I get all that, I have a better understanding of that today than I did yesterday because I hadn’t thought of it in those terms for an athlete in an individual sport.
I will say this: Golf Channel had a crisis-management expert on the air yesterday, a guy who clearly has no vested interest in this at all. He basically said what I had said: the longer Tiger stonewalls, the worse it gets for him—because there are LOTS of people who see a carefully cultivated image and wonder now if it’s real. That’s not going away regardless of what I say, write or think. I would add one more thing for those of you who care only about what Tiger does on the golf course: He’s not ON the golf course entertaining you this week. It may be because he’s more beat up than his people let on last Friday or it may be because he’s hiding out. Either way, it’s really too damn bad for everyone—including Tiger.
-----------------------
On to happier topics: Charlie Weis got fired yesterday. That wasn’t even a little bit of a surprise to anyone but it always amuses me how guys in suits think they can spin things just by claiming they’re true. Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick, who does look good in a suit, talked about how difficult the decision was because Weis is really such a good guy. “I have never met anyone for whom there was a larger gulf between perception and reality than Charlie Weis,” he claimed and then went into all the hoo-ha about how much Weis loves Notre Dame—as if that qualifies ANYONE to coach. I love the New York Islanders. That doesn’t mean I should coach them.
Here’s some Weis reality: he swaggered into Notre Dame telling people he was going to out-scheme other coaches and bullying the media, using his opening press conference to “lay down the law,” on what would and wouldn’t be allowed and threatening reporters with banishment if they failed to follow all his rules.
More reality: he never once took responsibility for his failures. It was always the players who failed to run a route right, didn’t make a block or a tackle. The old, “I coached good, they played bad,” routine. When Notre Dame won it was because of some brilliant offensive scheme he came up with. (See last year’s Hawaii Bowl).
A bit more reality: Weis ducked the media after the Stanford game last Saturday, wasn’t man enough to stand there and accept that he had failed. Actually, it may be a good thing: no doubt he would have blamed the players for his failures. Then he went out and started leaking about all the NFL teams that were interested in him.
THAT’s the reality of Charlie Weis.
What was almost as amusing was to hear the two morning guys on ESPN apologizing for him today. Of course one has two sons recruited by Weis and is an apologist for all things Notre Dame. The other is simply an apologist for anyone who has ever appeared on-air so it really isn’t surprising.
Weis got what he deserved—except for the fact that Notre Dame still has to pay him $18 million. That part is just sad.
------------------
One last note for the day: In a major non-surprise the folks who run the tennis Grand Slams yesterday fined Serena Williams $82,500 for her outburst at a lineswoman during the U.S. Open and gave her a stern talking to: as in, ‘do this again and you could be suspended.’
Yeah, right.
Let me allow my pal Mary Carillo, who is more worthy to comment on this than I am (or anyone else) explain exactly what happened. This is what she wrote in an e-mail yesterday to The Washington Post’s Liz Clarke:
“Serena Williams physically threatened and verbally assaulted an official during one of the most watched tennis matches of 2009 and after three months of considered cogitation the Grand Slam Committee came up with ‘Grand Slam Probation and a ‘suspended ban?’ And half of what was deemed to be her fine? Boy, that ought to show everyone.”
Carillo’s summation: “It was a cockamamie decision.”
Mary grew up in Queens with John McEnroe. She knows a “you can NOT be serious,” situation when she sees one. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Mary should be the commissioner of tennis. She’s smarter than every person with authority in the game—smarter than all of them combined.
Comments (8)
John's Monday Washington Post Article:
Tue, Dec 1 2009 08:27
| Washington Post, Tiger Woods
| Permalink
Here is this weeks column from The Washington Post -----
Most very successful people, particularly athletes, have one trait in common: the desire to control everyone and everything around them.
There is no better example of this than Tiger Woods. No one on Team Tiger speaks for or about him except in the form of an occasional statement made on his Web site. Woods himself rarely speaks publicly on any subject other than birdies, bogeys or a product he's promoting, his charity foundation being one of them. About the only times Woods shows his true feelings is on the golf course: a fist pump after making an important putt or a club slam after hitting a wayward shot. It is not an accident that he named his 155-foot yacht "Privacy."
Perhaps no mega-star athlete in history has done a better job of keeping his private life under tight control. Six years ago, when his intention to ask Elin Nordegren to marry him was leaked 48 hours in advance, Woods was furious. There have been few such breakdowns since.
Click here for the rest of the column: In a rarity, the World spins out of Woods's control
Most very successful people, particularly athletes, have one trait in common: the desire to control everyone and everything around them.
There is no better example of this than Tiger Woods. No one on Team Tiger speaks for or about him except in the form of an occasional statement made on his Web site. Woods himself rarely speaks publicly on any subject other than birdies, bogeys or a product he's promoting, his charity foundation being one of them. About the only times Woods shows his true feelings is on the golf course: a fist pump after making an important putt or a club slam after hitting a wayward shot. It is not an accident that he named his 155-foot yacht "Privacy."
Perhaps no mega-star athlete in history has done a better job of keeping his private life under tight control. Six years ago, when his intention to ask Elin Nordegren to marry him was leaked 48 hours in advance, Woods was furious. There have been few such breakdowns since.
Click here for the rest of the column: In a rarity, the World spins out of Woods's control
Comments (3)
On a Day I Hoped to Write About the Ongoing NCAA DI-AA Playoffs, Instead it's on Tiger
Mon, Nov 30 2009 01:16
| Notre Dame, PGA Tour, Charlie Weis, NCAA, Tiger Woods
| Permalink
I was really hoping to write this morning about the Division 1-AA playoffs—or as the NCAA likes to call them the, “Football Championship Sub-Division,” playoffs—that began last Saturday. I even scheduled a trip to Philadelphia Saturday to see Villanova play Holy Cross in one of the eight first round games.
Holy Cross is a wonderful story, the kind that doesn’t get enough attention. Six years ago the Crusaders were 1-11 while their coach, Dan Allen, was dying of ALS. Tom Gilmore arrived in 2004 and, with considerable help from a quarterback named Dominic Randolph, went 9-3 this season and won The Patriot League Championship to qualify for the tournament.
Villanova won an entertaining game 38-28 but I knew by the time I made the drive to Philly that I wasn’t going to be writing today about players who compete in college football for an actual championship.
My phone began ringing sometime around 3 o’clock on Friday afternoon. Tiger Woods had been in a “serious,” car accident. That sounded scary although it didn’t take long to find out he had already been released from the hospital and his spin-doctors were putting out a statement that the accident was, “minor,” and he was already home in “good,” condition.
Okay, I thought, maybe this will pass in a few hours. I understood that a Tiger Woods fender-bender is a 50-car pileup in the golf world but even those are usually cleared in a few hours when they occur. The police said there was no evidence that alcohol played a role in the accident. End of story.
Not exactly.
Details began to emerge that raised questions. Detail 1: the accident took place at 2:28 a.m. on Black Friday a few yards from the front door of Woods’ house and he was LEAVING when it happened. Question 1: Why was he leaving his house at that hour of the night/morning? The odds are pretty good it wasn’t to get to Walmart to beat the crowds and buy discounted golf clubs.
Detail 2: His wife, Elin, pulled him from the car after smashing the back window of the car so she could get to him. Question 2: Why would one smash the BACK window of an SUV to get to someone in the front seat?
Detail 3: Elin used a golf club to smash in the window. Question 3: Did she run all the way down to the accident scene, then back to the house to grab a golf club and then back to the car? Or, did she have the wherewithal to grab a golf club after hearing the crash? Or, was neither of those the correct answer?
These were questions that needed answers. The best and smartest thing Tiger could have done was talk to the police as soon as possible—it probably would have taken five minutes: one car accident, no one else hurt, no sign of alcohol being involved—and let them write their report and perhaps charge him with careless driving and send him a bill for the hydrant.
Soon after that he should have held a press conference during which he could have explained that, yes, he and Elin had an argument. Say something like, “Any of you guys been married? Ever had an argument with your wife? Sometimes the best thing to do is just get out of the house for a while. I was frazzled and wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing and here I am.”
No need to go into any further details. If the tabloid/cyber-space rumors making the rounds are brought up, just smile and say, “come on fellas, I’m not going to dignify that sort of thing with an answer, you know me better than that.”
Talk about the football games you watched on Thanksgiving and move on. Revel in Stanford’s win over Notre Dame. You see, that’s the way you move on in these situations. You don’t move on by making the police asking routine questions into a story by avoiding them for three days and brining in some lawyer to stonewall on your behalf. It makes you look like you have something to hide.
You don’t move on by playing the “this is a private matter,” card either. It ceased being a private matter once he hit the fire hydrant. He’s a public figure and something put him in that car and on that road and out of control. He owes the public—which has helped make him wealthy beyond his wildest dreams—more than the privacy card. Privacy stops at the front door.
Beyond that, supplying some kind of explanation is the best thing for WOODS. He may be able to intimidate most of the golf media but he isn’t going to intimidate the tabloids or the gossip web sites or TV joke-writers. They could care less if he cuts them off or stops calling them by name during his press conferences.
Woods is a control freak—like most hugely successful people—and he can’t stand being in a situation in which he loses any control. That’s why he gets SO angry when he hits a wayward shot. At that moment, he’s lost control of his golf game. It’s why he has fired caddies and agents who have dared speak up without his permission and why those who work for him live in fear of saying or doing anything that might make him angry.
Up until now Woods has done as good a job as any mega-celebrity has ever done in keeping his life under control. There has been nothing really serious to criticize him for. Sure, he throws clubs and uses profanity on the golf course and, a month shy of turning 34, most people think he needs to outgrow those habits. He’s let his caddy, Steve Williams, behave very badly far too often and he should sign more autographs than he does. But that’s about the list of things you can criticize him for—unless you count blowing off the media on occasion after a bad round which I know almost no one in the public could care less about.
I’ve had my battles with Tiger and his people but I have great respect for him, certainly as a golfer (it would be insane not to) but also for the way he has dealt most of the time with his fame. I’ve often said that he’s as bright as any athlete I’ve ever met and perhaps as bright as any person I’ve met.
Of course because I have been critical of him at times dating back to his rookie year I’ve been viewed by Tiger and his team as a bad guy. The fact that I wrote early on that I believed he had succeeded in spite of his father rather than because of him earned me a permanent spot on his bad list. Which is fine. As I said to him once, I’d never put a guy down for defending his dad.
I’d like to think the fact that we aren’t pals and he doesn’t use a nickname when addressing me the way he does with some other writers doesn’t affect the way I judge him. I remember doing a U.S. Open preview for National Public Radio in 2001 soon after he had completed his, “Tiger Slam,” in which I called it the greatest feat in golf history given the competition and the media pressures he’d had to deal with. Later that day I got a call from the producer of the show I was on saying, “Is there any way I can get you to stop sucking up to Tiger Woods?” I suggested she call Tiger’s agent (she wasn’t like to reach Tiger) and repeat that comment if only so we could all have a good laugh.
I’m the last person to sit in judgment of what goes on inside someone’s home and inside someone’s marriage. None of us knows the truth from the outside. But Tiger—for Tiger’s sake—needs to stop hiding out behind statements and lawyers and end this by saying SOMETHING. Until he does he’s going to be a punch line. And I know him well enough to know just how much he has to hate that idea.
-----------------------------
One more note from the weekend that begs for a comment: Did anyone notice that on Sunday one of those ESPN hacks who will put out any bit of information he’s fed “reported,” that Charlie Weis has been contacted by six NFL teams about a job as a coordinator next season?
Who do you think the guy’s source was—Ara Parseghian? This is so typical of Weis. Rather than just accept his likely firing at Notre Dame as his responsibility—which it is—he has to get it out there that NFL teams are just dying to hire him. No doubt someone will hire him—he’s a fine coordinator—but it really is a shame that he has no shame or dignity at all. It’s all about him all the time, which is a big part of the reason why he failed so utterly as a head coach. Record the last three seasons once Ty Willingham’s players were just about gone: 16-21. Number of times he took responsibility for those losses: zero.
Holy Cross is a wonderful story, the kind that doesn’t get enough attention. Six years ago the Crusaders were 1-11 while their coach, Dan Allen, was dying of ALS. Tom Gilmore arrived in 2004 and, with considerable help from a quarterback named Dominic Randolph, went 9-3 this season and won The Patriot League Championship to qualify for the tournament.
Villanova won an entertaining game 38-28 but I knew by the time I made the drive to Philly that I wasn’t going to be writing today about players who compete in college football for an actual championship.
My phone began ringing sometime around 3 o’clock on Friday afternoon. Tiger Woods had been in a “serious,” car accident. That sounded scary although it didn’t take long to find out he had already been released from the hospital and his spin-doctors were putting out a statement that the accident was, “minor,” and he was already home in “good,” condition.
Okay, I thought, maybe this will pass in a few hours. I understood that a Tiger Woods fender-bender is a 50-car pileup in the golf world but even those are usually cleared in a few hours when they occur. The police said there was no evidence that alcohol played a role in the accident. End of story.
Not exactly.
Details began to emerge that raised questions. Detail 1: the accident took place at 2:28 a.m. on Black Friday a few yards from the front door of Woods’ house and he was LEAVING when it happened. Question 1: Why was he leaving his house at that hour of the night/morning? The odds are pretty good it wasn’t to get to Walmart to beat the crowds and buy discounted golf clubs.
Detail 2: His wife, Elin, pulled him from the car after smashing the back window of the car so she could get to him. Question 2: Why would one smash the BACK window of an SUV to get to someone in the front seat?
Detail 3: Elin used a golf club to smash in the window. Question 3: Did she run all the way down to the accident scene, then back to the house to grab a golf club and then back to the car? Or, did she have the wherewithal to grab a golf club after hearing the crash? Or, was neither of those the correct answer?
These were questions that needed answers. The best and smartest thing Tiger could have done was talk to the police as soon as possible—it probably would have taken five minutes: one car accident, no one else hurt, no sign of alcohol being involved—and let them write their report and perhaps charge him with careless driving and send him a bill for the hydrant.
Soon after that he should have held a press conference during which he could have explained that, yes, he and Elin had an argument. Say something like, “Any of you guys been married? Ever had an argument with your wife? Sometimes the best thing to do is just get out of the house for a while. I was frazzled and wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing and here I am.”
No need to go into any further details. If the tabloid/cyber-space rumors making the rounds are brought up, just smile and say, “come on fellas, I’m not going to dignify that sort of thing with an answer, you know me better than that.”
Talk about the football games you watched on Thanksgiving and move on. Revel in Stanford’s win over Notre Dame. You see, that’s the way you move on in these situations. You don’t move on by making the police asking routine questions into a story by avoiding them for three days and brining in some lawyer to stonewall on your behalf. It makes you look like you have something to hide.
You don’t move on by playing the “this is a private matter,” card either. It ceased being a private matter once he hit the fire hydrant. He’s a public figure and something put him in that car and on that road and out of control. He owes the public—which has helped make him wealthy beyond his wildest dreams—more than the privacy card. Privacy stops at the front door.
Beyond that, supplying some kind of explanation is the best thing for WOODS. He may be able to intimidate most of the golf media but he isn’t going to intimidate the tabloids or the gossip web sites or TV joke-writers. They could care less if he cuts them off or stops calling them by name during his press conferences.
Woods is a control freak—like most hugely successful people—and he can’t stand being in a situation in which he loses any control. That’s why he gets SO angry when he hits a wayward shot. At that moment, he’s lost control of his golf game. It’s why he has fired caddies and agents who have dared speak up without his permission and why those who work for him live in fear of saying or doing anything that might make him angry.
Up until now Woods has done as good a job as any mega-celebrity has ever done in keeping his life under control. There has been nothing really serious to criticize him for. Sure, he throws clubs and uses profanity on the golf course and, a month shy of turning 34, most people think he needs to outgrow those habits. He’s let his caddy, Steve Williams, behave very badly far too often and he should sign more autographs than he does. But that’s about the list of things you can criticize him for—unless you count blowing off the media on occasion after a bad round which I know almost no one in the public could care less about.
I’ve had my battles with Tiger and his people but I have great respect for him, certainly as a golfer (it would be insane not to) but also for the way he has dealt most of the time with his fame. I’ve often said that he’s as bright as any athlete I’ve ever met and perhaps as bright as any person I’ve met.
Of course because I have been critical of him at times dating back to his rookie year I’ve been viewed by Tiger and his team as a bad guy. The fact that I wrote early on that I believed he had succeeded in spite of his father rather than because of him earned me a permanent spot on his bad list. Which is fine. As I said to him once, I’d never put a guy down for defending his dad.
I’d like to think the fact that we aren’t pals and he doesn’t use a nickname when addressing me the way he does with some other writers doesn’t affect the way I judge him. I remember doing a U.S. Open preview for National Public Radio in 2001 soon after he had completed his, “Tiger Slam,” in which I called it the greatest feat in golf history given the competition and the media pressures he’d had to deal with. Later that day I got a call from the producer of the show I was on saying, “Is there any way I can get you to stop sucking up to Tiger Woods?” I suggested she call Tiger’s agent (she wasn’t like to reach Tiger) and repeat that comment if only so we could all have a good laugh.
I’m the last person to sit in judgment of what goes on inside someone’s home and inside someone’s marriage. None of us knows the truth from the outside. But Tiger—for Tiger’s sake—needs to stop hiding out behind statements and lawyers and end this by saying SOMETHING. Until he does he’s going to be a punch line. And I know him well enough to know just how much he has to hate that idea.
-----------------------------
One more note from the weekend that begs for a comment: Did anyone notice that on Sunday one of those ESPN hacks who will put out any bit of information he’s fed “reported,” that Charlie Weis has been contacted by six NFL teams about a job as a coordinator next season?
Who do you think the guy’s source was—Ara Parseghian? This is so typical of Weis. Rather than just accept his likely firing at Notre Dame as his responsibility—which it is—he has to get it out there that NFL teams are just dying to hire him. No doubt someone will hire him—he’s a fine coordinator—but it really is a shame that he has no shame or dignity at all. It’s all about him all the time, which is a big part of the reason why he failed so utterly as a head coach. Record the last three seasons once Ty Willingham’s players were just about gone: 16-21. Number of times he took responsibility for those losses: zero.
Comments (33)
What a Great Game!!; Notes on Recent Comments
Wed, Oct 7 2009 12:13
| PGA Tour, Tiger Woods, MLB
| Permalink
So how good was that?
Frequently, when you get really fired up to watch a game, it lets you down. That was NOT the case last night with Twins-Tigers. As I said yesterday, only baseball gives us one game to decide whether a team reaches postseason after a 162 game season. We have now had 163 games the last three seasons and all three have been one run games: The Rockies long-journey-into-late-night 134 inning, 9-8 win over the Padres two years ago; the White Sox 1-0 victory over the Twins and then last night's 6-5 win for the Twins over the Tigers in 12 excruciating innings.
Even as a neutral observer the second half of the game was excruciating to watch. When the Tigers took a 3-0 lead, I felt bad for the Twins because I admire what the organization has achieved up there so much and because I knew if the Twins lost it would be The Metrodome's last game. Not that the Metrodome is Fenway Park or Wrigley Field by any stretch, but it is unique. I've been in the place when it is LOUD like last night and two of the great games in baseball history--game six and game seven of the '91 World Series--were played there on back-to-back nights.
Then when Orlando Cabrera hit the seventh inning homer to put the Twins up 4-3 I kept looking at Jim Leyland and remembering the pain in his voice on the night in 1992 when his Pirates lost to the Braves, 3-2 in game 7 of the NLCS after leading 2-0. He's a terrific manager and a wonderful guy. I thought about the city of Detroit and everything it has been through and what a downer it would be to lose the division after leading by seven with four weeks to play and by three with four games to play (!!).
Back and forth it went, momentum swinging, it seemed on every batter. I actually got chills a couple of times--on behalf of each team. Brandon Inge as hero--great story. Nick Punto not only had three remarkable at-bats late in the game--and would have driven in the winning run if Alexi Casilla (the hero two innings later of course) hadn't forgotten to tag up on his line drive in the 10th--but made one of the great defensive plays I've ever seen in the 12th. I'm telling you 99 out of 100 second basemen would have instinctively tried for the double play in that situation but Punto knew right away he couldn't pull it off and the go-ahead run would score. He made that split second decision and then threw a STRIKE to Joe Mauer to force Miguel Cabrera. As many heroes as there were in that game, if I was giving an MVP it would be Punto.
Tiger fans will always--justifiably--wonder what would have happened if Randy Marsh had seen the ball graze Brandon Inge's uniform on the first pitch of his at-bat (the one that produced the ground ball to Punto) in the 12th. Maybe the Tigers would have scored five. We'll never know. I will say this: if the Tigers had gone ahead 6-5 in the inning I do not believe Fernando Rodney would have gotten through the bottom of the 12th. He was clearly gassed and Leyland stayed with him because he had no other options.
I was fascinated watching Marsh's strike zone all night. It was, by today's standards, huge. It was also what strike zones once were before umpires decided that squeezing pitchers made them more important and powerful. Most important, it was consistent. When Orlando Cabrera struck out in the 11th, he almost got tossed for arguing on two pitches. Both were borderline--at best. But here's the point: they had been strikes all night.
It reminded me a little of a 19 inning game I saw years ago between the Indians and Red Sox. In the bottom of the 18th Mike Hargrove came out of the dugout to argue a called third strike on Mark Whiten with plate umpire Dale Scott.
"How can that be a strike?" Hargrove asked Scott.
"Because it's been a strike now for 18 f----- innings," Scott answered. "It was a strike six hours ago and it's a strike now."
After the game (this was when umpires were still easily accessible to the media) when Scott repeated the line to me he added, "Now THAT's a line I hope I don't have to use again anytime soon."
You couldn't not feel for the Tigers when Carlos Gomez dove into home plate with the winning run more than five hours after the game started. As Ron Darling--who has become a GREAT analyst--had pointed out an inning earlier: "One of these teams flies to New York to prepare for the Yankees, the other starts preparing for spring training two thousand and ten."
That kind of put it in perspective.
I loved the Twins victory lap. It was so sweet and spontaneous and even if the Yankees sweep the Division Series that's a memory all of them and all in the ballpark will carry forever. It was just a really cool sports moment. In an entirely different way it brought back memories of Cal Ripken Jr's victory lap on September 6, 1995 after he broke Lou Gehrig's unbreakable consecutive games played record. Nothing was planned--it just happened and if you were in the ballpark that night, you still get chills when you think about it. This will be the same sort of memory.
My only problem with the entire night--and this is a real nitpick--was hearing Denard Span tell the four letter network that the Twins 17-4 finish and their victory in game 163 was all due to, "The Good Lord. He took care of us. He looked after us."
Oh please. As if the Twins did something to deserve divine intervention that the Tigers didn't. God played absolutely no role in that game or that magic of the night. He was like the rest of us: sitting back and watching with a big smile on His face.
------------------------------------------------------
Some notes on recent posts: Great comment on the over-abundance of champagne celebrations in baseball. It is a little much when they hand out T-shirts and spray champagne after a team clinches the wild card. That being said, if ever a champagne celebration was appropriate it was last night...
Someone asked about PGA Tour fines: They are more closely guarded than Fort Knox. A player can actually be fine for revealing that he was fined! It's all about image. Tiger Woods is the most fined player in PGA Tour history (profanity, club throwing, his caddy's behavior et al). You think The Tour and Tiger's sponsors would want it in the paper every time he was fined? That's exactly why the fines should be published: if they were, you can bet Tiger would clean up his act in a hurry because he's so image conscious. Best fine ever: my pal Paul Goydos being fined for yelling profanities at a TAPE RECORDING in the tour's travel office because he was frustrated they had closed early on a Saturday...
One other golf note: Gunnar, one of our regular posters told a story about Curtis Strange telling his amateurs on the first tee that he didn't plan to speak to them until the 18th green after the photo was taken. Sammy, another regular, wrote in wondering if it was Bobby Wadkins or J.C. Snead--not Curtis. I'm inclined to think he may be right. I walked pro-am rounds with Curtis and he was always very nice to his amateurs, at least when I was around. The one thing he DID say on the first tee was: "I'll be glad to read putts for you, give you swing advice if you ask but I will NOT look for lost balls."...
Finally: Thank you to everyone who posted or e-mailed about Friday's blog regarding my mom. As I said to someone that day, unique is one of the most over-used words in our society (it is also mis-used constantly by TV and radio people who love to say, 'very unique,'--Mike Greenburg and Mike Francessa are two frequent mis-users--since you can't be very one of kind) but I think I can say without fear of being contradicted that my mom was unique.
Frequently, when you get really fired up to watch a game, it lets you down. That was NOT the case last night with Twins-Tigers. As I said yesterday, only baseball gives us one game to decide whether a team reaches postseason after a 162 game season. We have now had 163 games the last three seasons and all three have been one run games: The Rockies long-journey-into-late-night 134 inning, 9-8 win over the Padres two years ago; the White Sox 1-0 victory over the Twins and then last night's 6-5 win for the Twins over the Tigers in 12 excruciating innings.
Even as a neutral observer the second half of the game was excruciating to watch. When the Tigers took a 3-0 lead, I felt bad for the Twins because I admire what the organization has achieved up there so much and because I knew if the Twins lost it would be The Metrodome's last game. Not that the Metrodome is Fenway Park or Wrigley Field by any stretch, but it is unique. I've been in the place when it is LOUD like last night and two of the great games in baseball history--game six and game seven of the '91 World Series--were played there on back-to-back nights.
Then when Orlando Cabrera hit the seventh inning homer to put the Twins up 4-3 I kept looking at Jim Leyland and remembering the pain in his voice on the night in 1992 when his Pirates lost to the Braves, 3-2 in game 7 of the NLCS after leading 2-0. He's a terrific manager and a wonderful guy. I thought about the city of Detroit and everything it has been through and what a downer it would be to lose the division after leading by seven with four weeks to play and by three with four games to play (!!).
Back and forth it went, momentum swinging, it seemed on every batter. I actually got chills a couple of times--on behalf of each team. Brandon Inge as hero--great story. Nick Punto not only had three remarkable at-bats late in the game--and would have driven in the winning run if Alexi Casilla (the hero two innings later of course) hadn't forgotten to tag up on his line drive in the 10th--but made one of the great defensive plays I've ever seen in the 12th. I'm telling you 99 out of 100 second basemen would have instinctively tried for the double play in that situation but Punto knew right away he couldn't pull it off and the go-ahead run would score. He made that split second decision and then threw a STRIKE to Joe Mauer to force Miguel Cabrera. As many heroes as there were in that game, if I was giving an MVP it would be Punto.
Tiger fans will always--justifiably--wonder what would have happened if Randy Marsh had seen the ball graze Brandon Inge's uniform on the first pitch of his at-bat (the one that produced the ground ball to Punto) in the 12th. Maybe the Tigers would have scored five. We'll never know. I will say this: if the Tigers had gone ahead 6-5 in the inning I do not believe Fernando Rodney would have gotten through the bottom of the 12th. He was clearly gassed and Leyland stayed with him because he had no other options.
I was fascinated watching Marsh's strike zone all night. It was, by today's standards, huge. It was also what strike zones once were before umpires decided that squeezing pitchers made them more important and powerful. Most important, it was consistent. When Orlando Cabrera struck out in the 11th, he almost got tossed for arguing on two pitches. Both were borderline--at best. But here's the point: they had been strikes all night.
It reminded me a little of a 19 inning game I saw years ago between the Indians and Red Sox. In the bottom of the 18th Mike Hargrove came out of the dugout to argue a called third strike on Mark Whiten with plate umpire Dale Scott.
"How can that be a strike?" Hargrove asked Scott.
"Because it's been a strike now for 18 f----- innings," Scott answered. "It was a strike six hours ago and it's a strike now."
After the game (this was when umpires were still easily accessible to the media) when Scott repeated the line to me he added, "Now THAT's a line I hope I don't have to use again anytime soon."
You couldn't not feel for the Tigers when Carlos Gomez dove into home plate with the winning run more than five hours after the game started. As Ron Darling--who has become a GREAT analyst--had pointed out an inning earlier: "One of these teams flies to New York to prepare for the Yankees, the other starts preparing for spring training two thousand and ten."
That kind of put it in perspective.
I loved the Twins victory lap. It was so sweet and spontaneous and even if the Yankees sweep the Division Series that's a memory all of them and all in the ballpark will carry forever. It was just a really cool sports moment. In an entirely different way it brought back memories of Cal Ripken Jr's victory lap on September 6, 1995 after he broke Lou Gehrig's unbreakable consecutive games played record. Nothing was planned--it just happened and if you were in the ballpark that night, you still get chills when you think about it. This will be the same sort of memory.
My only problem with the entire night--and this is a real nitpick--was hearing Denard Span tell the four letter network that the Twins 17-4 finish and their victory in game 163 was all due to, "The Good Lord. He took care of us. He looked after us."
Oh please. As if the Twins did something to deserve divine intervention that the Tigers didn't. God played absolutely no role in that game or that magic of the night. He was like the rest of us: sitting back and watching with a big smile on His face.
------------------------------------------------------
Some notes on recent posts: Great comment on the over-abundance of champagne celebrations in baseball. It is a little much when they hand out T-shirts and spray champagne after a team clinches the wild card. That being said, if ever a champagne celebration was appropriate it was last night...
Someone asked about PGA Tour fines: They are more closely guarded than Fort Knox. A player can actually be fine for revealing that he was fined! It's all about image. Tiger Woods is the most fined player in PGA Tour history (profanity, club throwing, his caddy's behavior et al). You think The Tour and Tiger's sponsors would want it in the paper every time he was fined? That's exactly why the fines should be published: if they were, you can bet Tiger would clean up his act in a hurry because he's so image conscious. Best fine ever: my pal Paul Goydos being fined for yelling profanities at a TAPE RECORDING in the tour's travel office because he was frustrated they had closed early on a Saturday...
One other golf note: Gunnar, one of our regular posters told a story about Curtis Strange telling his amateurs on the first tee that he didn't plan to speak to them until the 18th green after the photo was taken. Sammy, another regular, wrote in wondering if it was Bobby Wadkins or J.C. Snead--not Curtis. I'm inclined to think he may be right. I walked pro-am rounds with Curtis and he was always very nice to his amateurs, at least when I was around. The one thing he DID say on the first tee was: "I'll be glad to read putts for you, give you swing advice if you ask but I will NOT look for lost balls."...
Finally: Thank you to everyone who posted or e-mailed about Friday's blog regarding my mom. As I said to someone that day, unique is one of the most over-used words in our society (it is also mis-used constantly by TV and radio people who love to say, 'very unique,'--Mike Greenburg and Mike Francessa are two frequent mis-users--since you can't be very one of kind) but I think I can say without fear of being contradicted that my mom was unique.
Comments (5)
Final Event of PGA Tour ‘Playoffs’---And My Suggestion; Yesterday’s Radio Hosting
Tue, Sep 22 2009 09:37
| Sports Radio, NFL, Tim Finchem, Phil Mickelson, PGA Tour, Tiger Woods
| Permalink
One of the notes that came in yesterday about the blog--I try to read the posts every day and e-mail as often as possible--expressed some disappointment that I wasn't, "telling more stories." To be honest, I was a little surprised because I've wondered from time to time these past three months if I should focus more on the news and less on telling stories about my experiences past and present with some of those I've encountered along the road. I would be very curious to hear from more of you whether you prefer more news, more stories or blogs like yesterday where I combined writing about the weekend's news with a couple of anecdotes about my misadventures on the road to and from Pittsburgh.
I am not going to mimick Ken Beatrice, a long time sportstalk host in Boston and Washington who used to always say, "This is YOUR show." This is my blog but if I'm going to keep doing it you readers have to enjoy it. So, needless to say, input is welcomed.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled blog.
I watched some of The Monday Night Football game last night. I missed the finish because I just can't stay up that late and then get up at 7 to start getting my son ready for school. I noticed Tiger Woods on the Colts sideline. One thing that told me was just how important the upcoming Tour Championship in Atlanta this week is to him. I know he knows the golf course (East Lake) well and I'm not saying he won't win--to quote Lefty Driesell, "I may be dumb, but I ain't stupid,"--but if this FedEx Cup thing really mattered to him do you think he'd be standing on a sideline in Miami less than three days before he tees it up? Don't think so.
That's the problem with these so-called 'playoffs,' they concocted on The PGA Tour three years ago, mostly because Woods and Phil Mickelson told Commissioner Tim Finchem they weren't going to show up for the season ending event if it was still played in early November. It's kind of tough for golf to have a "climactic," event without Woods and Mickelson so Finchem managed to get FedEx to put up big money to sponsor the "FedEx Cup," and tried to create drama with the four tournament "playoffs."
There are problems with this that may be unsolvable because golf just doesn't lend itself to this sort of format. For one thing, how big a deal can 'playoffs,' be when 125 players make it? That makes the NBA and NHL playoffs look elite. No knock on Heath Slocum but he gets in at No. 124--his key points coming at a tournament played opposite a World Golf Championship event meaning none of the top guys were in the field--then wins the first playoff event and goes to number FIVE on the list?
If they want to shorten the season, that's fine. But just throwing more money at a bunch of rich guys in order to get them to tee it up a few extra times--during football season--isn't going to generate interest no matter how much you try to hype the thing, and God knows the tour has tried to hype it. My suggestion is this: Let the first three tournaments that are currently, 'playoff,' events be the last three events of the so-called regular season. Inch the points up as little--but not too much--and then send the top 32 guys to East Lake and have them play MATCH play.
The TV folks might have a heart attack at the thought of a Mark Leishman-Retief Goosen final (no offense to either guy) but the fact is their ratings are nowhere right now anyway. And, if some year you did get Tiger-Phil in the final or Tiger-Ernie Els or how about this: Tiger-Y.E. Yang this year in a PGA rematch, you might get a few people to watch. Plus, it would be far more dramatic.
That's my suggestion for the day. Oh, in case you were wondering why Woods was hanging out on the Colts sideline, it's because he's friendly with Peyton Manning. They played together in the pro-am this year in Charlotte. Like a lot of elite athletes, Manning loves to play golf and is a good player. I was the MC for the pro-am draw party for the tournament and ran into Manning before dinner started. I was curious about how things were going during the offseason with Tony Dungy gone and Jim Caldwell taking his place. Manning wanted to talk about golf--tour golf and his own golf. I got a detailed description of his off-season regimen--on the golf course.
Changing subjects...I hosted Jim Rome's radio show yesterday. I've been an occasional guest host for about 10 years now and Jim has always had me on whenever I have a book out. People have asked in the past how I became friends with Jim. It's a pretty simple story. Twenty (or more) years ago a friend of mine named Judy Carlough was running the new all sports station in San Diego. She called and told me she had a young overnight host she thought was talented and he was hoping I'd go on with him and that he could pre-tape before I went to bed so I wouldn't have to stay up half the night to be on.
I was happy to do it--I never could turn Judy down under any circumstances--and then the young host turned out to be very bright and asked very good questions. We hit it off. I became a semi-regular having no idea that Jim would end up not long after with national shows on radio and then TV. I know Jim can be an acquired taste. To be honest I could live without most of the "clone takes," and when I host I tell the call screeners to tell callers I'm looking for questions and discussion, not takes. Every once in a while someone starts in on a take and someone presses a button in LA and they're gone.
I enjoy hosting although I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to do three hours a day alone in a studio, five days a week. That's work. If I ever did radio on a regular basis I would want someone in studio with me--preferably someone I liked. In the past I've been approached on a number of occasions about hosting a show and the conversation usually goes something like this:
"We've heard you when you've hosted shows in the past and really like what you do."
"Thanks. It's fun, I just wouldn't want it to interfere with my writing because that's what I like to do the most."
"Oh, of course. We could work something around your schedule."
"Great."
Things usually go well until the forbidden subject comes up: money. Most radio programming guys (not to mention my old friends at ESPN) always count on ego to get them past the money issue. As in: you'll have your own radio show (!!) so you don't need to be paid very much. (Or in the case of ESPN, 'you're on ESPN, that should be honor enough for you.'). I have as much ego as anybody but I also am lucky enough to have a very busy writing life for which I'm well paid. I don't NEED my own radio show (or to be on ESPN) although I'd do it under the right circumstances for reasonable money.
So, it always comes down to this. "We couldn't pay you very much--but you wouldn't be doing this for the money."
"Really? Why else would I do it?"
That usually brings negotiations to a screeching halt. One guy at a national radio network (no, NOT ESPN in fact) must have called me a half dozen times to discuss his philosophy of radio. I listened and listened and finally brought up the subject of money. He said he would get back to me, "within a week."
That was exactly a year ago.
Thank God I didn't sit and wait by the phone.
I am not going to mimick Ken Beatrice, a long time sportstalk host in Boston and Washington who used to always say, "This is YOUR show." This is my blog but if I'm going to keep doing it you readers have to enjoy it. So, needless to say, input is welcomed.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled blog.
I watched some of The Monday Night Football game last night. I missed the finish because I just can't stay up that late and then get up at 7 to start getting my son ready for school. I noticed Tiger Woods on the Colts sideline. One thing that told me was just how important the upcoming Tour Championship in Atlanta this week is to him. I know he knows the golf course (East Lake) well and I'm not saying he won't win--to quote Lefty Driesell, "I may be dumb, but I ain't stupid,"--but if this FedEx Cup thing really mattered to him do you think he'd be standing on a sideline in Miami less than three days before he tees it up? Don't think so.
That's the problem with these so-called 'playoffs,' they concocted on The PGA Tour three years ago, mostly because Woods and Phil Mickelson told Commissioner Tim Finchem they weren't going to show up for the season ending event if it was still played in early November. It's kind of tough for golf to have a "climactic," event without Woods and Mickelson so Finchem managed to get FedEx to put up big money to sponsor the "FedEx Cup," and tried to create drama with the four tournament "playoffs."
There are problems with this that may be unsolvable because golf just doesn't lend itself to this sort of format. For one thing, how big a deal can 'playoffs,' be when 125 players make it? That makes the NBA and NHL playoffs look elite. No knock on Heath Slocum but he gets in at No. 124--his key points coming at a tournament played opposite a World Golf Championship event meaning none of the top guys were in the field--then wins the first playoff event and goes to number FIVE on the list?
If they want to shorten the season, that's fine. But just throwing more money at a bunch of rich guys in order to get them to tee it up a few extra times--during football season--isn't going to generate interest no matter how much you try to hype the thing, and God knows the tour has tried to hype it. My suggestion is this: Let the first three tournaments that are currently, 'playoff,' events be the last three events of the so-called regular season. Inch the points up as little--but not too much--and then send the top 32 guys to East Lake and have them play MATCH play.
The TV folks might have a heart attack at the thought of a Mark Leishman-Retief Goosen final (no offense to either guy) but the fact is their ratings are nowhere right now anyway. And, if some year you did get Tiger-Phil in the final or Tiger-Ernie Els or how about this: Tiger-Y.E. Yang this year in a PGA rematch, you might get a few people to watch. Plus, it would be far more dramatic.
That's my suggestion for the day. Oh, in case you were wondering why Woods was hanging out on the Colts sideline, it's because he's friendly with Peyton Manning. They played together in the pro-am this year in Charlotte. Like a lot of elite athletes, Manning loves to play golf and is a good player. I was the MC for the pro-am draw party for the tournament and ran into Manning before dinner started. I was curious about how things were going during the offseason with Tony Dungy gone and Jim Caldwell taking his place. Manning wanted to talk about golf--tour golf and his own golf. I got a detailed description of his off-season regimen--on the golf course.
Changing subjects...I hosted Jim Rome's radio show yesterday. I've been an occasional guest host for about 10 years now and Jim has always had me on whenever I have a book out. People have asked in the past how I became friends with Jim. It's a pretty simple story. Twenty (or more) years ago a friend of mine named Judy Carlough was running the new all sports station in San Diego. She called and told me she had a young overnight host she thought was talented and he was hoping I'd go on with him and that he could pre-tape before I went to bed so I wouldn't have to stay up half the night to be on.
I was happy to do it--I never could turn Judy down under any circumstances--and then the young host turned out to be very bright and asked very good questions. We hit it off. I became a semi-regular having no idea that Jim would end up not long after with national shows on radio and then TV. I know Jim can be an acquired taste. To be honest I could live without most of the "clone takes," and when I host I tell the call screeners to tell callers I'm looking for questions and discussion, not takes. Every once in a while someone starts in on a take and someone presses a button in LA and they're gone.
I enjoy hosting although I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to do three hours a day alone in a studio, five days a week. That's work. If I ever did radio on a regular basis I would want someone in studio with me--preferably someone I liked. In the past I've been approached on a number of occasions about hosting a show and the conversation usually goes something like this:
"We've heard you when you've hosted shows in the past and really like what you do."
"Thanks. It's fun, I just wouldn't want it to interfere with my writing because that's what I like to do the most."
"Oh, of course. We could work something around your schedule."
"Great."
Things usually go well until the forbidden subject comes up: money. Most radio programming guys (not to mention my old friends at ESPN) always count on ego to get them past the money issue. As in: you'll have your own radio show (!!) so you don't need to be paid very much. (Or in the case of ESPN, 'you're on ESPN, that should be honor enough for you.'). I have as much ego as anybody but I also am lucky enough to have a very busy writing life for which I'm well paid. I don't NEED my own radio show (or to be on ESPN) although I'd do it under the right circumstances for reasonable money.
So, it always comes down to this. "We couldn't pay you very much--but you wouldn't be doing this for the money."
"Really? Why else would I do it?"
That usually brings negotiations to a screeching halt. One guy at a national radio network (no, NOT ESPN in fact) must have called me a half dozen times to discuss his philosophy of radio. I listened and listened and finally brought up the subject of money. He said he would get back to me, "within a week."
That was exactly a year ago.
Thank God I didn't sit and wait by the phone.
Comments (16)
John's Monday Washington Post Article...
Mon, Aug 31 2009 02:31
| Stan Kasten, Tiger Woods, Stephen Strasburg, Arnold Palmer, Washington Nationals
| Permalink
Here's my column from The Washington Post today, covering the Nats newest, Stephen Strasburg.....
Let's begin today with Stephen Strasburg's opening line to the media after his first 45-minute workout on Sunday as an employee of the Washington Nationals: "I thought I'd get a little bit of peace out here, but you guys are following me everywhere. It's something I guess I gotta deal with. I guess it just goes with the territory."
Yes it does. It goes with the territory when you're the No. 1 pick in the Major League Baseball draft and when you are seen as the potential savior of a woebegone franchise. Athletes with special gifts can expect scrutiny -- sometimes over-the-top scrutiny.
Click here for the full story.......For Stephen Strasburg, the Missing 'Peace'
Let's begin today with Stephen Strasburg's opening line to the media after his first 45-minute workout on Sunday as an employee of the Washington Nationals: "I thought I'd get a little bit of peace out here, but you guys are following me everywhere. It's something I guess I gotta deal with. I guess it just goes with the territory."
Yes it does. It goes with the territory when you're the No. 1 pick in the Major League Baseball draft and when you are seen as the potential savior of a woebegone franchise. Athletes with special gifts can expect scrutiny -- sometimes over-the-top scrutiny.
Click here for the full story.......For Stephen Strasburg, the Missing 'Peace'
John's Monday Washington Post Article...
Mon, Aug 17 2009 04:54
| PGA Tour, Washington Post, Tiger Woods
| Permalink
Here is my column for the Washington Post today......
The next eight months will not be a lot of fun for Tiger Woods. Until the Masters next April, he is going to be subjected to questions about his failure to win a major championship in 2009. Every time he turns on the Golf Channel -- which he does a lot -- he's going to see some kind of panel wondering if he's lost a little bit of his edge because of fatherhood and knee troubles. His swing and his putting stroke will be replayed in super slow motion about a zillion times.
Nothing's Wrong With Tiger; Everything's Fine With Golf
The next eight months will not be a lot of fun for Tiger Woods. Until the Masters next April, he is going to be subjected to questions about his failure to win a major championship in 2009. Every time he turns on the Golf Channel -- which he does a lot -- he's going to see some kind of panel wondering if he's lost a little bit of his edge because of fatherhood and knee troubles. His swing and his putting stroke will be replayed in super slow motion about a zillion times.
Nothing's Wrong With Tiger; Everything's Fine With Golf
Comments (1)
The Answer: Ed Fiori AND Y.E. Yang
Mon, Aug 17 2009 08:04
| PGA Tour, Michael Phelps, Tiger Woods, Ed Fiori, Y.E. Yang
| Permalink
So now the answer is Ed Fiori AND Y.E. Yang.
The question is: name all the players who have come from behind no a Sunday in a PGA Tour event to beat Tiger Woods.
Until Sunday, Fiori wore that title the way Sir Nick Faldo wear his knighthood. Fiori hung around on tour for a lot of years but nothing he ever did came close to the fall day in 1996 when he beat the then 20-year-old phenom to win what was then known (I think) as The Hardees Classic. In any event it was at Quad Cities, it was Woods’ third tournament as a pro and those who were there say Tiger made an 8 early and went into an angry tailspin and never recovered.
There were, by the way, quite a few media present. I still remember being at the second President’s Cup that weekend and watching guys making plane reservations on Saturday when Woods took the lead. You could see the PGA Tour staffers looking pale because people were leaving their almost-new event to go see the kid perhaps win for the first time.
After The Grip (Fiori’s nickname) won that day, Tiger led tournaments after 54 holes 36 times over the next 13 years. And he never lost once. Until Sunday.
While all the people you might have thought could challenge him were doing disappearing acts all over Hazeltine National Golf Club, there was Yang hanging with him. To be honest, the thought that Tiger might lose never crossed my mind until Yang chipped in for eagle at the 14th hole. Even then the thought was a brief one. We’d all seen this show before, right? Bob May at The PGA in 2000; Rocco Mediate at The Open last year. Every once in a while a not-so-famous player with nothing to lose would not be intimidated by Tiger and it still wouldn’t matter: if the opponent didn’t find a way to lose, Tiger would find a way to win.
Only this time he didn’t. When Yang three-putted 17, I thought he had come out of his trance and would now bogey 18 (or Tiger would birdie it) and Tiger would win in the playoff. I even said to my brother, who had been in the car all afternoon and was almost home, “you’ll be able to watch the playoff.”
Not so much. Yang hit one of those second shots that will be replayed forever, forcing Tiger to fire at the flag—he missed the green-and, amazingly, it was over before Tiger holed out. Did anyone else notice Stevie Williams nowhere in sight during the handshakes? Can’t figure out if he stalked off ala LeBron or if Tiger turned to him as he was lining up the last putt and said, “you’re fired.”
Hey, I can dream can’t I?
In a way this scenario was perfect for golf. CBS’s ratings for Saturday were up—according to CBS—390 percent from last year. Of course that stat is deceiving because it rained last year on Saturday. But I guarantee, with Tiger in the last group, they’re going to be way up for Sunday too. Combine that with an ending that was DIFFERENT than what we’re used to and it was all good.
Except for Tiger. And for The Grip.
This will now go down as The Year That Wasn’t in golf. Kenny Perry didn’t become the oldest man in history to win a major at The Masters. Instead Angel Cabrera won. Phil Mickelson had a chance to finally win the U.S. Open with his wife facing cancer surgery in two weeks. Instead, Lucas Glover won. We all know how historic a Tom Watson win at The British Open would have been. Stewart Cink has the claret jug. And now Y.E. Yang moves into history not only alongside Fiori but next to Jack Fleck, the club pro who stunned Ben Hogan to win a playoff at the 1955 U.S. Open.
Yang is clearly a smart man. When someone asked if he would like to go head-to-head with Tiger again he shook his head and said (through an interpreter). “No. No rematch, no-redo. I will take this one. It’s enough.”
Reminded me of the last round scene in Rocky 1 when Apollo Creed says, “Ain’t gonna be no rematch,” and Rocky answers, “Don’t want one.”
There will be a lot made of Tiger not winning a major in 2009. Certainly it makes the year disappointing for him, even though he’ll probably roar through the FedEx Cup playoff events and end up with seven or eight wins and another Player-of-the-Year Award.
But anyone who reads anything more into this than the fact that he’s occasionally human is being ridiculous. He is still the co-most-dominant athlete in the world (Michael Phelps) and this simply delays the inevitable slightly, that being him passing Nicklaus’s all-time record of 18 for professional major wins.
Let me also say this: People think I’m hard on Tiger and, sometimes I am. During one of our very few one-on-one talks years ago I told him that I tend to be harder on people I think are smart because they should know better and I put him at the top of that category. He handled a very tough day well yesterday. I didn’t see a club slam (lots of angry muttering, but who could blame him?) and he was gracious in defeat—and let’s remember he’s NEVER been through a loss like this one.
So good for him.
And good for Yang. He doesn’t want a rematch.
I don’t blame him.
The question is: name all the players who have come from behind no a Sunday in a PGA Tour event to beat Tiger Woods.
Until Sunday, Fiori wore that title the way Sir Nick Faldo wear his knighthood. Fiori hung around on tour for a lot of years but nothing he ever did came close to the fall day in 1996 when he beat the then 20-year-old phenom to win what was then known (I think) as The Hardees Classic. In any event it was at Quad Cities, it was Woods’ third tournament as a pro and those who were there say Tiger made an 8 early and went into an angry tailspin and never recovered.
There were, by the way, quite a few media present. I still remember being at the second President’s Cup that weekend and watching guys making plane reservations on Saturday when Woods took the lead. You could see the PGA Tour staffers looking pale because people were leaving their almost-new event to go see the kid perhaps win for the first time.
After The Grip (Fiori’s nickname) won that day, Tiger led tournaments after 54 holes 36 times over the next 13 years. And he never lost once. Until Sunday.
While all the people you might have thought could challenge him were doing disappearing acts all over Hazeltine National Golf Club, there was Yang hanging with him. To be honest, the thought that Tiger might lose never crossed my mind until Yang chipped in for eagle at the 14th hole. Even then the thought was a brief one. We’d all seen this show before, right? Bob May at The PGA in 2000; Rocco Mediate at The Open last year. Every once in a while a not-so-famous player with nothing to lose would not be intimidated by Tiger and it still wouldn’t matter: if the opponent didn’t find a way to lose, Tiger would find a way to win.
Only this time he didn’t. When Yang three-putted 17, I thought he had come out of his trance and would now bogey 18 (or Tiger would birdie it) and Tiger would win in the playoff. I even said to my brother, who had been in the car all afternoon and was almost home, “you’ll be able to watch the playoff.”
Not so much. Yang hit one of those second shots that will be replayed forever, forcing Tiger to fire at the flag—he missed the green-and, amazingly, it was over before Tiger holed out. Did anyone else notice Stevie Williams nowhere in sight during the handshakes? Can’t figure out if he stalked off ala LeBron or if Tiger turned to him as he was lining up the last putt and said, “you’re fired.”
Hey, I can dream can’t I?
In a way this scenario was perfect for golf. CBS’s ratings for Saturday were up—according to CBS—390 percent from last year. Of course that stat is deceiving because it rained last year on Saturday. But I guarantee, with Tiger in the last group, they’re going to be way up for Sunday too. Combine that with an ending that was DIFFERENT than what we’re used to and it was all good.
Except for Tiger. And for The Grip.
This will now go down as The Year That Wasn’t in golf. Kenny Perry didn’t become the oldest man in history to win a major at The Masters. Instead Angel Cabrera won. Phil Mickelson had a chance to finally win the U.S. Open with his wife facing cancer surgery in two weeks. Instead, Lucas Glover won. We all know how historic a Tom Watson win at The British Open would have been. Stewart Cink has the claret jug. And now Y.E. Yang moves into history not only alongside Fiori but next to Jack Fleck, the club pro who stunned Ben Hogan to win a playoff at the 1955 U.S. Open.
Yang is clearly a smart man. When someone asked if he would like to go head-to-head with Tiger again he shook his head and said (through an interpreter). “No. No rematch, no-redo. I will take this one. It’s enough.”
Reminded me of the last round scene in Rocky 1 when Apollo Creed says, “Ain’t gonna be no rematch,” and Rocky answers, “Don’t want one.”
There will be a lot made of Tiger not winning a major in 2009. Certainly it makes the year disappointing for him, even though he’ll probably roar through the FedEx Cup playoff events and end up with seven or eight wins and another Player-of-the-Year Award.
But anyone who reads anything more into this than the fact that he’s occasionally human is being ridiculous. He is still the co-most-dominant athlete in the world (Michael Phelps) and this simply delays the inevitable slightly, that being him passing Nicklaus’s all-time record of 18 for professional major wins.
Let me also say this: People think I’m hard on Tiger and, sometimes I am. During one of our very few one-on-one talks years ago I told him that I tend to be harder on people I think are smart because they should know better and I put him at the top of that category. He handled a very tough day well yesterday. I didn’t see a club slam (lots of angry muttering, but who could blame him?) and he was gracious in defeat—and let’s remember he’s NEVER been through a loss like this one.
So good for him.
And good for Yang. He doesn’t want a rematch.
I don’t blame him.
Comments (9)
Access to College Practices; Follow-Up Note on PGA Championship, Tiger
Fri, Aug 14 2009 12:04
| college football, USC, Holy Cross, Duke, Tiger Woods
| Permalink
The biggest story in sports today is, of course, Michael Vick signing with the Philadelphia Eagles. I certainly get why it is a big story but, to be honest, I’m sort of one with it. I really don’t care how much they use him or whether they put in the ‘wildcat,’ to get him some snaps behind Donovan McNabb.
Like a lot of people I’ve said what I have to say about him. If he gets back on the field and is productive and stays out of trouble, good for him. He’s a relatively low-risk signing for the Eagles because they have an established quarterback who isn’t going to be worried about losing his job to Vick. If he doesn’t behave or doesn’t perform, they can just cut him and say, ‘oh well we tried.’
I’m actually more interested today in a report someone sent me from Scout.com that lists the access policies college football teams have to their practices. I know that this is something fans really don’t care about and, to be honest, I don’t care that much either. It’s not as if being unable to watch Nick Saban’s practices has any affect on my life.
In fact, as I wrote recently about an incident years ago with the Redskins, I’m just as happy most times to not watch practice. Years ago, shortly after I had made the decision to give up covering politics to cover sports again, I was up at Holy Cross writing a story about a coach named Rick Carter.
To be fair, the story was my idea. I was going up to cover the Hall of Fame tip-off game in Springfield between North Carolina State and Houston and I suggested to my boss that I stop en route to see Carter. He was, at the time, a hot young coach who people thought might someday coach the Redskins since he was a friend/protégé of then Redskins GM Bobby Beathard.
Carter seemed like a very good guy and, after we had talked awhile, invited me to watch practice and then finish our interview afterwards. That sounds good to me. Holy Cross’s practice field is right at the top of the campus, essentially on top of a mountain. It was mid-November and the sun set about 30 minutes in to the practice. It then started to snow. I honestly can’t remember ever being colder but I couldn’t leave - I’d been INVITED by the guy I was writing about to watch.
All I could think standing there was: “I could be in a bar in Annapolis right now having a drink with a politician. Instead I’m standing here freeing to death. WHAT was I thinking?”
I made it through practice and finished the interview. Of course I couldn’t know that behind his friendly smile, Carter was a very troubled man. Not long after I wrote the story he had a chance to get the North Carolina State job but, as I recall, Holy Cross wouldn’t let him interview. The program slipped a little bit and a couple years later, Carter committed suicide.
If you are a beat writer—which I haven’t been for a long time now—you need access to practice. That’s because you have editors breathing down your neck wanting to know how a quarterback looked or if someone hobbled off the field and went straight to the training room.
What’s more striking about it all is the continuing—and escalating—paranoia—of coaches. If someone is putting in a trick play for a specific game and doesn’t want it on tape or reported in a newspaper or online, I get that. But generally speaking there are no secrets in football—or any sport really—anymore. Do you think Ohio State is going to be surprised on September 5th when Navy comes out and runs the triple option?
It’s interesting to note that Pete Carroll at Southern California, who has been as successful as anyone in the game for the past 10 years, runs what are essentially open practices. One might think—MIGHT think—that other coaches would look at that and say, ‘well, somehow the Trojans have overcome the presence of the media at their workouts.’ Having really good players tends to be more important than closing practices.
I couldn’t help but get a laugh when I noticed that Duke—my alma mater—allows TV crews to tape ‘B role,’—I think that means they can’t show live plays, just show players stretching and talking and warming up—for the first 20 minutes of practice.
Duke won four games last year and people acted as if David Cutcliffe was Bear Bryant reincarnated. Certainly the four wins were a major improvement over the four wins in four years prior to 2008 but let’s not get carried away here. Right now, Duke should be sending a stretch limo to the home of anyone who wants to publicize the program in any way. It basically takes a court order these days to get into one of Mike Krzyzewski’s practices—unless you’ve known him for 100 years as some of us have—but he’s won THREE national championships. Let’s see four WINS vs. three NATIONAL TITLES. Yeah, I’d say their access standards should be about the same.
One other note before we all go off to watch Tiger Woods win The PGA this weekend: I wrote the other day that the reason Tiger reacted badly to being put on the clock is that last Sunday in Akron is that he doesn’t like anyone telling him what to do. Someone put up an angry post demanding to know how I knew Tiger didn’t like being told what to do. The answer’s simple: I’ve watched him in action for 13 years now. He’s a control freak—and I say that as a complete control freak myself—and it’s part of what makes him great. Why do you think he’s fired caddies, agents and plenty of others in the past? Why don’t you think his current caddy plays the role of attack dog for him? Since his dad was brought up, the fact is Tiger, who loved his dad without any doubt, asked his dad to back off and give him some space to make his own decisions after he turned pro.
I don’t dislike Tiger and my respect for him as an athlete knows no bounds, but unlike a lot of people who cover him I’m not going to roll over and write and say that he’s always right so he’ll call me ‘Johnny,’ in press conferences (he tends to add a ‘y’ to the names of people he likes).
He was wrong last Sunday. The pace of play he and Padraig Harrington were moving at all day was ridiculous. Athletes ask officials to be one thing in sports: consistent. That’s what John Paramour was doing—being consistent. Tiger didn’t like that. Doesn’t make him a bad guy, just means he was wrong.
He’s also the greatest player in the history of golf.
Like a lot of people I’ve said what I have to say about him. If he gets back on the field and is productive and stays out of trouble, good for him. He’s a relatively low-risk signing for the Eagles because they have an established quarterback who isn’t going to be worried about losing his job to Vick. If he doesn’t behave or doesn’t perform, they can just cut him and say, ‘oh well we tried.’
I’m actually more interested today in a report someone sent me from Scout.com that lists the access policies college football teams have to their practices. I know that this is something fans really don’t care about and, to be honest, I don’t care that much either. It’s not as if being unable to watch Nick Saban’s practices has any affect on my life.
In fact, as I wrote recently about an incident years ago with the Redskins, I’m just as happy most times to not watch practice. Years ago, shortly after I had made the decision to give up covering politics to cover sports again, I was up at Holy Cross writing a story about a coach named Rick Carter.
To be fair, the story was my idea. I was going up to cover the Hall of Fame tip-off game in Springfield between North Carolina State and Houston and I suggested to my boss that I stop en route to see Carter. He was, at the time, a hot young coach who people thought might someday coach the Redskins since he was a friend/protégé of then Redskins GM Bobby Beathard.
Carter seemed like a very good guy and, after we had talked awhile, invited me to watch practice and then finish our interview afterwards. That sounds good to me. Holy Cross’s practice field is right at the top of the campus, essentially on top of a mountain. It was mid-November and the sun set about 30 minutes in to the practice. It then started to snow. I honestly can’t remember ever being colder but I couldn’t leave - I’d been INVITED by the guy I was writing about to watch.
All I could think standing there was: “I could be in a bar in Annapolis right now having a drink with a politician. Instead I’m standing here freeing to death. WHAT was I thinking?”
I made it through practice and finished the interview. Of course I couldn’t know that behind his friendly smile, Carter was a very troubled man. Not long after I wrote the story he had a chance to get the North Carolina State job but, as I recall, Holy Cross wouldn’t let him interview. The program slipped a little bit and a couple years later, Carter committed suicide.
If you are a beat writer—which I haven’t been for a long time now—you need access to practice. That’s because you have editors breathing down your neck wanting to know how a quarterback looked or if someone hobbled off the field and went straight to the training room.
What’s more striking about it all is the continuing—and escalating—paranoia—of coaches. If someone is putting in a trick play for a specific game and doesn’t want it on tape or reported in a newspaper or online, I get that. But generally speaking there are no secrets in football—or any sport really—anymore. Do you think Ohio State is going to be surprised on September 5th when Navy comes out and runs the triple option?
It’s interesting to note that Pete Carroll at Southern California, who has been as successful as anyone in the game for the past 10 years, runs what are essentially open practices. One might think—MIGHT think—that other coaches would look at that and say, ‘well, somehow the Trojans have overcome the presence of the media at their workouts.’ Having really good players tends to be more important than closing practices.
I couldn’t help but get a laugh when I noticed that Duke—my alma mater—allows TV crews to tape ‘B role,’—I think that means they can’t show live plays, just show players stretching and talking and warming up—for the first 20 minutes of practice.
Duke won four games last year and people acted as if David Cutcliffe was Bear Bryant reincarnated. Certainly the four wins were a major improvement over the four wins in four years prior to 2008 but let’s not get carried away here. Right now, Duke should be sending a stretch limo to the home of anyone who wants to publicize the program in any way. It basically takes a court order these days to get into one of Mike Krzyzewski’s practices—unless you’ve known him for 100 years as some of us have—but he’s won THREE national championships. Let’s see four WINS vs. three NATIONAL TITLES. Yeah, I’d say their access standards should be about the same.
One other note before we all go off to watch Tiger Woods win The PGA this weekend: I wrote the other day that the reason Tiger reacted badly to being put on the clock is that last Sunday in Akron is that he doesn’t like anyone telling him what to do. Someone put up an angry post demanding to know how I knew Tiger didn’t like being told what to do. The answer’s simple: I’ve watched him in action for 13 years now. He’s a control freak—and I say that as a complete control freak myself—and it’s part of what makes him great. Why do you think he’s fired caddies, agents and plenty of others in the past? Why don’t you think his current caddy plays the role of attack dog for him? Since his dad was brought up, the fact is Tiger, who loved his dad without any doubt, asked his dad to back off and give him some space to make his own decisions after he turned pro.
I don’t dislike Tiger and my respect for him as an athlete knows no bounds, but unlike a lot of people who cover him I’m not going to roll over and write and say that he’s always right so he’ll call me ‘Johnny,’ in press conferences (he tends to add a ‘y’ to the names of people he likes).
He was wrong last Sunday. The pace of play he and Padraig Harrington were moving at all day was ridiculous. Athletes ask officials to be one thing in sports: consistent. That’s what John Paramour was doing—being consistent. Tiger didn’t like that. Doesn’t make him a bad guy, just means he was wrong.
He’s also the greatest player in the history of golf.
Comments (2)
Roundup from Yesterday and Why Tiger Is Wrong
Wed, Aug 12 2009 10:42
| Padraig Harrington, Book Tours, Tiger Woods
| Permalink
Wow, some days are just longer than others. I’m in Vermont now because my son Danny finishes his summer camp today. I drove up from New York yesterday—six solid hours, including a monsoon the instant I crossed into Vermont—after doing my TV satellite tour for, “Change-Up—Mystery at The World Series,” my new kids book.
The tour went really well. There were no cancellations—which often happen—and everyone seemed happy to talk about the book. Or at least willing to talk about it which is all that matters. I even got to see some early reviews of the book which were very good. For the record: any author who tells you he or she doesn’t read reviews is a liar. It reminds me of something Ivan Lendl said to me years ago: “I never read what you write but it’s all terrible.”
We actually sort of made peace late in his career but that’s another story.
The only problem Tuesday came at the start of the day. I have this aversion to car services. Maybe I’m just my father’s son—my dad grew up in Brooklyn during the depression and couldn’t stand anything that even resembled wasting money. Literally on his death bed he screamed at me for setting a glass of water down on a night table because he thought it might make a mark and thus need polishing.
I’m not that way but when someone says, “we’ll send a car for you when the TV studio is nine blocks from my hotel I just can’t see it. I always walk in New York, it’s usually faster than driving anyway and, since my heart surgery I’m supposed to walk every day anyway.
Except today wasn’t the day to walk. It was 90 degrees and humid even at 8 a.m. and I was SOAKED by the time I got to the studio. The poor make-up woman had to literally blow dry my shirt before I could do the first interview. I could have used a shower but there was no time. (There was a shower but apparently Lisa Kudrow who was in the studio for some reason was using it. Seriously).
While I was doing the interviews—there were 18 in all—I had some time to read the newspaper. I noticed an item that said Tiger Woods had been fined by The PGA Tour for publicly criticizing rules official John Paramour for putting he and Padraig Harrington on the clock on the 16th hole on Sunday. In fact, Tiger basically blamed Paramour for Harrington’s triple bogey eight on the hole.
Let me say a couple of things here. First, John Paramour is a friend of mine. It’s my belief that golf’s rules officials are the most underpaid and underrated officials in sports. Their typical day during a tournament is about 14 hours long and they have to do everything from setting up the golf course, to making all the volunteers feel important, to dealing with the players—and their wives—to make rulings and trying as hard as they can to keep the pace of play reasonable.
Paramour has been the lead official on The European Tour for years. He is as respected as anyone in golf and he is one of the truly good men in sports. He loves the game—cherishes it—and would no more put the two leaders on the clock than he would cut off his arm unless HE HAD NO CHOICE.
In this case, he had no choice. To begin with both Harrington and Woods are very slow players on a tour filled with slow players. Woods has improved but he can still be brutal. Harrington too.
The two of them had been warned on the front nine. They had caught up for a while on the back nine because J.B. Holmes slowed everyone down when he had a disaster on 16 himself. Then they dropped behind again and when they got to 16 which is 667 yards long (!!!) the hole had been open for two minutes. Mike Weir, who is on the verge of a fine for repeated slow play this year, had already been on the clock. So had Zach Johnson, who is on the tour’s policy board. If Paramour had let Woods and Harrington skate, other players would have—justifiably—screamed.
Tiger doesn’t like ANYONE telling him anything at anytime. “You’re on the clock,” no doubt made him angry. So, he ripped Paramour when it was over, knowing most people in the public, not understanding the rules, would probably side with him because, well, he’s Tiger Woods.
Then came the AP story that he’d been fined for ripping Paramour. Soon after that came Tiger saying he hadn’t been fined.
This is yet another example of the tour’s RIDICULOUS secrecy on fines. Every other sport in the world announces fines because the money is meaningless. The only deterrent is the embarrassment. Woods is the most fined player in the history of the tour because of all of his various outbursts: slamming clubs, profanity, his caddy’s often ludicrous behavior.
But, since the fines are never announced, they don’t affect his image or his marketing. He doesn’t like the fines—complains at times that they’re unfair because, unlike other players he always has cameras and microphones following him—but has done nothing through the years to control his temper.
Now, he says he wasn’t fined. Someone inside the tour said Monday he was. Doug Ferguson at the AP does NOT get stuff like this wrong, I can promise you that.
So, because of the tour’s Dick Cheney-like belief in secrecy, we don’t know what happened.
Here are the possibilities; Commissioner Tim Finchem got cold feet and withdrew the fine. OR: Tiger has not yet received the paperwork from the tour so he was technically correct on Tuesday when he said he hadn’t been fined. I’m inclined to think the former but we just don’t know—and we should know.
Paramour did the right thing. The tour, if it did fine Tiger, did the right thing. In fact, Tiger owes Paramour an apology which will happen the same day he calls me and says, “Hey John, I’m ready to do my book and tell people what I really think and I want YOU to write it.”
If Finchem really cares about pace of play AND about the behavior of his players he will change the fine policy. Announce every one of them. I will bet serious money you’ll see a lot less club slamming if he ever does that.
But he won’t do it in part because he somehow thinks he’s protecting the “image of the game,” (he told me that once) and because he knows Tiger’s bigger than the game. (He never told me that but we all know it’s true).
I will leave you today with one question, which I know is rhetorical but I can’t resist: Throughout Vermont there are signs that say, “Moose Crossing,”—they are everywhere. My question is this: how do the moose know where they are supposed to cross?
The tour went really well. There were no cancellations—which often happen—and everyone seemed happy to talk about the book. Or at least willing to talk about it which is all that matters. I even got to see some early reviews of the book which were very good. For the record: any author who tells you he or she doesn’t read reviews is a liar. It reminds me of something Ivan Lendl said to me years ago: “I never read what you write but it’s all terrible.”
We actually sort of made peace late in his career but that’s another story.
The only problem Tuesday came at the start of the day. I have this aversion to car services. Maybe I’m just my father’s son—my dad grew up in Brooklyn during the depression and couldn’t stand anything that even resembled wasting money. Literally on his death bed he screamed at me for setting a glass of water down on a night table because he thought it might make a mark and thus need polishing.
I’m not that way but when someone says, “we’ll send a car for you when the TV studio is nine blocks from my hotel I just can’t see it. I always walk in New York, it’s usually faster than driving anyway and, since my heart surgery I’m supposed to walk every day anyway.
Except today wasn’t the day to walk. It was 90 degrees and humid even at 8 a.m. and I was SOAKED by the time I got to the studio. The poor make-up woman had to literally blow dry my shirt before I could do the first interview. I could have used a shower but there was no time. (There was a shower but apparently Lisa Kudrow who was in the studio for some reason was using it. Seriously).
While I was doing the interviews—there were 18 in all—I had some time to read the newspaper. I noticed an item that said Tiger Woods had been fined by The PGA Tour for publicly criticizing rules official John Paramour for putting he and Padraig Harrington on the clock on the 16th hole on Sunday. In fact, Tiger basically blamed Paramour for Harrington’s triple bogey eight on the hole.
Let me say a couple of things here. First, John Paramour is a friend of mine. It’s my belief that golf’s rules officials are the most underpaid and underrated officials in sports. Their typical day during a tournament is about 14 hours long and they have to do everything from setting up the golf course, to making all the volunteers feel important, to dealing with the players—and their wives—to make rulings and trying as hard as they can to keep the pace of play reasonable.
Paramour has been the lead official on The European Tour for years. He is as respected as anyone in golf and he is one of the truly good men in sports. He loves the game—cherishes it—and would no more put the two leaders on the clock than he would cut off his arm unless HE HAD NO CHOICE.
In this case, he had no choice. To begin with both Harrington and Woods are very slow players on a tour filled with slow players. Woods has improved but he can still be brutal. Harrington too.
The two of them had been warned on the front nine. They had caught up for a while on the back nine because J.B. Holmes slowed everyone down when he had a disaster on 16 himself. Then they dropped behind again and when they got to 16 which is 667 yards long (!!!) the hole had been open for two minutes. Mike Weir, who is on the verge of a fine for repeated slow play this year, had already been on the clock. So had Zach Johnson, who is on the tour’s policy board. If Paramour had let Woods and Harrington skate, other players would have—justifiably—screamed.
Tiger doesn’t like ANYONE telling him anything at anytime. “You’re on the clock,” no doubt made him angry. So, he ripped Paramour when it was over, knowing most people in the public, not understanding the rules, would probably side with him because, well, he’s Tiger Woods.
Then came the AP story that he’d been fined for ripping Paramour. Soon after that came Tiger saying he hadn’t been fined.
This is yet another example of the tour’s RIDICULOUS secrecy on fines. Every other sport in the world announces fines because the money is meaningless. The only deterrent is the embarrassment. Woods is the most fined player in the history of the tour because of all of his various outbursts: slamming clubs, profanity, his caddy’s often ludicrous behavior.
But, since the fines are never announced, they don’t affect his image or his marketing. He doesn’t like the fines—complains at times that they’re unfair because, unlike other players he always has cameras and microphones following him—but has done nothing through the years to control his temper.
Now, he says he wasn’t fined. Someone inside the tour said Monday he was. Doug Ferguson at the AP does NOT get stuff like this wrong, I can promise you that.
So, because of the tour’s Dick Cheney-like belief in secrecy, we don’t know what happened.
Here are the possibilities; Commissioner Tim Finchem got cold feet and withdrew the fine. OR: Tiger has not yet received the paperwork from the tour so he was technically correct on Tuesday when he said he hadn’t been fined. I’m inclined to think the former but we just don’t know—and we should know.
Paramour did the right thing. The tour, if it did fine Tiger, did the right thing. In fact, Tiger owes Paramour an apology which will happen the same day he calls me and says, “Hey John, I’m ready to do my book and tell people what I really think and I want YOU to write it.”
If Finchem really cares about pace of play AND about the behavior of his players he will change the fine policy. Announce every one of them. I will bet serious money you’ll see a lot less club slamming if he ever does that.
But he won’t do it in part because he somehow thinks he’s protecting the “image of the game,” (he told me that once) and because he knows Tiger’s bigger than the game. (He never told me that but we all know it’s true).
I will leave you today with one question, which I know is rhetorical but I can’t resist: Throughout Vermont there are signs that say, “Moose Crossing,”—they are everywhere. My question is this: how do the moose know where they are supposed to cross?
Comments (9)
Why Don’t Golf Fans Root for Underdogs? Harrington is my Type of Guy, Even Though He Isn’t ‘David’
Mon, Aug 10 2009 11:39
| Navy, Padraig Harrington, Notre Dame, PGA Tour, Tiger Woods
| Permalink
It was Frank Chirkinian, the man who basically invented the art of producing golf on TV (among other things he came up with the idea of showing a players score relative to par, rather than his total score) who years ago made a very smart and insightful comment about why the sport is different than others.
"For some reason, golf fans don't want the underdog to win," he said. "They don't mind if he contends, he can even lead after 54 holes, but on Sunday afternoon they want the stars to win--the bigger the star the harder they pull for him. In other sports, people tend to root for the underdog."
Chirkinian made the comment to me in 1994. He was talking soon after John Daly had won in Atlanta, beating my friend Brian Henninger down the stretch. Henninger might as well have been invisible that day. Chirkinian was baffled. "Skinny little kid just trying to get a chance to play on tour against a millionaire who has been given a dozen chances by the public already," he said. "Nothing against Daly. He's great for us. But I don't get it."
I don't either. Chirkinian was right then and he's right now. The only player golf fans MIGHT pull for in a battle against Tiger Woods is Phil Mickelson. When Mike Weir, who was then a skinny kid trying to find his way on tour, was paired with Woods in the last round at the 1999 PGA Championship, he felt invisible too.
Almost 30 years ago, a couple months after beating Bjorn Borg at Wimbledon, John McEnroe played his first match at the U.S. Open against a qualifier who was ranked, I think, 187th in the world. He was South American and I don't remember his name but he won the first set. The stadium went nuts.
"An hour ago no one in the place had even heard of the guy, now they're cheering for him like he's a relative," McEnroe said after winning the next three sets. "I like underdogs too, I'm a Mets fan, but that was ridiculous."
You can say some of it was anti-McEnroe sentiment but it really was more pro-underdog sentiment. When Andy Roddick pushed Roger Federer to five sets at Wimbledon last month, most folks were for Roddick--and Federer is one of the most popular champions in tennis history. The reason was simple: Federer's won Wimbledon five times (now six) Roddick none. Give the 'little guy,' his day in the sun.
The invisible thing happened again on Sunday at Firestone. Padraig Harrington winning the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational would have been a lot better story than Woods winning it AGAIN (seven times now). Harrington won two majors last year when Woods was hurt and he's won three altogether. He's struggled this year trying to change his swing--something Woods had gone through a couple of times himself. He also happens to be one of the nicest men you'll ever come across in any walk of life.
The fact that Woods threw a 30 at him on the front line and Harrington didn't blink and came back to lead should have made him a more compelling story. You would think people would like to see the man bites dog story (or Tiger loses lead, which is the same thing) every once in a while. And yet, it was all about Tiger for the fans. I get CBS wanting him to be there, he doubles, maybe triples their ratings. I even get fans pulling for Mickelson after what he's been through this summer with cancer scares involving both his wife and his mother.
Is it because Woods is American and Harrington is Irish? Don't think so, this isn't The Ryder Cup is it? And I suspect it would have been roughly the same if, say, Steve Stricker would have been one shot up with three holes to play. Maybe the only time a crowd wasn't 99 percent for Woods was at the '08 U.S. Open where--finally--on Monday some fans came around to the idea that a 45-year-old with a history of back troubles winning his first and only major MIGHT be a better story than a multi-millionaire with a golden life winning his 14th. Even then, the crowd was split.
It isn't because Woods exudes warmth--he doesn’t, photogenic smile or no photogenic smile. It's because he WINS and golf fans like guys who WIN even more than fans in other sports do. It's as if all golf fans were born to be Yankee fans; Notre Dame football fans or Dallas Cowboys fans
The worst--to me--are Notre Dame fans who didn't even go to Notre Dame. Do they think all the players are Irish or something? Years ago, when I was researching "A Civil War," I was on the Navy sideline at Notre Dame Stadium. The game had been close for three quarters before Notre Dame--aided by a couple of those mystery calls that often happen in that place (do NOT get me started on the '99 game) pulled away. In the final couple of minutes, Navy was trying to drive for a consolation touchdown when Ben Fay, the Mids quarterback, was sacked.
Two security guys, allegedly there to protect the Mids from the fans behind us, who started jumping up and down and high-fiving one another and yelling at Fay as he went down. I'd had enough.
"Hey, are you guys here for security?" I said.
"Yes we are," one of them said.
"Then shut up and do your job," I said. "If you want to be fans, go sit in the stands."
One of them took a step towards me. "Who are you?" he said.
Before I could answer--I was planning to say I was the Secretary of the Navy--Kent Owens, who was then Navy's officer representative, grabbed me and pulled me away. "They have guns John," he said. "Calm down."
I did. The security people kept quiet the last two minutes.
Anyway, the point is I simply don't get people who revel in Goliath winning and, as Chirkinian pointed out all those years ago, it happens in golf more than any other sport.
So, while all the TV guys and the fans are pulling this week for Tiger--or Phil (on TV, neither one of them has a last name) I'll be hoping someone like Rich Beem wins The PGA. Or Padraig Harrington. He's not exactly David, but he is my kind of guy.
"For some reason, golf fans don't want the underdog to win," he said. "They don't mind if he contends, he can even lead after 54 holes, but on Sunday afternoon they want the stars to win--the bigger the star the harder they pull for him. In other sports, people tend to root for the underdog."
Chirkinian made the comment to me in 1994. He was talking soon after John Daly had won in Atlanta, beating my friend Brian Henninger down the stretch. Henninger might as well have been invisible that day. Chirkinian was baffled. "Skinny little kid just trying to get a chance to play on tour against a millionaire who has been given a dozen chances by the public already," he said. "Nothing against Daly. He's great for us. But I don't get it."
I don't either. Chirkinian was right then and he's right now. The only player golf fans MIGHT pull for in a battle against Tiger Woods is Phil Mickelson. When Mike Weir, who was then a skinny kid trying to find his way on tour, was paired with Woods in the last round at the 1999 PGA Championship, he felt invisible too.
Almost 30 years ago, a couple months after beating Bjorn Borg at Wimbledon, John McEnroe played his first match at the U.S. Open against a qualifier who was ranked, I think, 187th in the world. He was South American and I don't remember his name but he won the first set. The stadium went nuts.
"An hour ago no one in the place had even heard of the guy, now they're cheering for him like he's a relative," McEnroe said after winning the next three sets. "I like underdogs too, I'm a Mets fan, but that was ridiculous."
You can say some of it was anti-McEnroe sentiment but it really was more pro-underdog sentiment. When Andy Roddick pushed Roger Federer to five sets at Wimbledon last month, most folks were for Roddick--and Federer is one of the most popular champions in tennis history. The reason was simple: Federer's won Wimbledon five times (now six) Roddick none. Give the 'little guy,' his day in the sun.
The invisible thing happened again on Sunday at Firestone. Padraig Harrington winning the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational would have been a lot better story than Woods winning it AGAIN (seven times now). Harrington won two majors last year when Woods was hurt and he's won three altogether. He's struggled this year trying to change his swing--something Woods had gone through a couple of times himself. He also happens to be one of the nicest men you'll ever come across in any walk of life.
The fact that Woods threw a 30 at him on the front line and Harrington didn't blink and came back to lead should have made him a more compelling story. You would think people would like to see the man bites dog story (or Tiger loses lead, which is the same thing) every once in a while. And yet, it was all about Tiger for the fans. I get CBS wanting him to be there, he doubles, maybe triples their ratings. I even get fans pulling for Mickelson after what he's been through this summer with cancer scares involving both his wife and his mother.
Is it because Woods is American and Harrington is Irish? Don't think so, this isn't The Ryder Cup is it? And I suspect it would have been roughly the same if, say, Steve Stricker would have been one shot up with three holes to play. Maybe the only time a crowd wasn't 99 percent for Woods was at the '08 U.S. Open where--finally--on Monday some fans came around to the idea that a 45-year-old with a history of back troubles winning his first and only major MIGHT be a better story than a multi-millionaire with a golden life winning his 14th. Even then, the crowd was split.
It isn't because Woods exudes warmth--he doesn’t, photogenic smile or no photogenic smile. It's because he WINS and golf fans like guys who WIN even more than fans in other sports do. It's as if all golf fans were born to be Yankee fans; Notre Dame football fans or Dallas Cowboys fans
The worst--to me--are Notre Dame fans who didn't even go to Notre Dame. Do they think all the players are Irish or something? Years ago, when I was researching "A Civil War," I was on the Navy sideline at Notre Dame Stadium. The game had been close for three quarters before Notre Dame--aided by a couple of those mystery calls that often happen in that place (do NOT get me started on the '99 game) pulled away. In the final couple of minutes, Navy was trying to drive for a consolation touchdown when Ben Fay, the Mids quarterback, was sacked.
Two security guys, allegedly there to protect the Mids from the fans behind us, who started jumping up and down and high-fiving one another and yelling at Fay as he went down. I'd had enough.
"Hey, are you guys here for security?" I said.
"Yes we are," one of them said.
"Then shut up and do your job," I said. "If you want to be fans, go sit in the stands."
One of them took a step towards me. "Who are you?" he said.
Before I could answer--I was planning to say I was the Secretary of the Navy--Kent Owens, who was then Navy's officer representative, grabbed me and pulled me away. "They have guns John," he said. "Calm down."
I did. The security people kept quiet the last two minutes.
Anyway, the point is I simply don't get people who revel in Goliath winning and, as Chirkinian pointed out all those years ago, it happens in golf more than any other sport.
So, while all the TV guys and the fans are pulling this week for Tiger--or Phil (on TV, neither one of them has a last name) I'll be hoping someone like Rich Beem wins The PGA. Or Padraig Harrington. He's not exactly David, but he is my kind of guy.
Comments (4)
Finishing Up Book Research in Akron; Parking Passes are Key for Me (and Kornheiser and Jenkins)
Tue, Aug 4 2009 05:25
| PGA Tour, Tiger Woods, Book Research, Tony Kornheiser
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I am in Akron, Ohio today at what is now called—let’s see if I get this right, “The World Golf Championships—Bridgestone Invitational.”
Once, this was The World Series of golf and it was a four man event—the four players being the winners of that year’s majors. Now it has a field of about 100, a huge purse and—much to the delight of the locals and CBS—Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. Woods is here because he loves the golf course (six wins) and decided to play two straight tournaments prior to next week’s PGA since his win two weeks out, skip a week and then play a major strategy has bombed this year. Mickelson, of course, is coming back after his wife Amy’s surgery for breast cancer and will be treated—as he should—as a returning hero.
That’s not why I’m here though. In fact, for me, the presence of Tiger and Phil just means more security, more crowds and more media. I understand their importance to the game—CBS’s rating for the Buick Open went up a ridiculous 167 percent with Woods leading on Sunday—but more often than not, they aren’t my job.
My job the next two days is Ben Curtis and Mike Weir. I am wrapping up the research on a book I’m writing on the 2003 major championships. The winners that year were Weir, Jim Furyk, Curtis and Shaun Micheel. The latter two had never won on the PGA Tour and came completely out of nowhere; Weir had won but wasn’t known anywhere outside Canada except by golf geeks. People knew Furyk, but he’d never won a major. The book is about sudden fame and how it changes your life and how people—including family, friends, agents—deal with it.
It’s been fascinating to work on. I was supposed to do what I call my “exit,” interviews—the wrap-up talks to tie up all loose ends—with Curtis, Micheel and Weir at Congressional five weeks ago, very convenient since Congressional is two miles from my house. Heart surgery got in the way that week so here I am. I’ll have to go to Greensboro in a couple weeks to catch up with Micheel because he’s not playing here.
The great thing about covering golf is that, in most cases, the guys are almost always cooperative. They give you their cell numbers and return your calls—eventually. With luck, I will finish the reporting in two weeks and, since the book is about 60 percent written, finish writing it by the end of September for publication in the spring.
Since I’m back at a golf tournament, a word today on parking. At any sports event, parking is an issue. Some places—like the Masters—its simple: you have a press credential they give you parking, easy walking distance to the front gate. Other places—the U.S. Open for example—there is, for all intents and purposes, no media parking.
I’m a control freak. I don’t like waiting for shuttle buses or being dependent on others. I like to walk out after a day of work and get me in my car. Am I spoiled? You bet. The only person more spoiled than I am is my friend Tony Kornheiser who won’t go to an event unless he gets what he calls, “Feinstein parking.”
Last February on a Saturday morning I’d just finished working out when my phone rang. It was my pal Sally Jenkins. She was in town and she and Tony wanted to go to that day’s Maryland game to, “show Gary support.” No doubt the two of them walking in would mean the end of any further controversy involving Coach Gary Williams.
“Why don’t you go with us?” she said.
“I’m going to another game,” I said.
There was a pause. “Can we have your parking pass?”
The real reason for the call. “Sure you can,” I said. “But it isn’t on the loading dock (right next to the back door) where Tony likes to park. You’ll have to walk about 50 yards.” (Since I rarely go to Maryland games these days the only time I’d ask Gary for a spot on the loading dock would be if I HAD to go and it was snowing or freezing cold).
Sally called back soon after to say they didn’t need the pass. Tony had called Gary a few hours before tipoff and Gary had gotten him onto the loading dock.
Here in Akron, my friend Slugger White, who is a long-time rules official, handed me my parking lot at dinner last night. That meant I slept well. I wouldn’t have to go to a will call window and have someone look at me blankly, or try to talk my way through to get to the media center and be handed a pass. I just get in the car and go.
My favorite parking memory took place at the 2002 U.S. Open. That’s the one at Bethpage Black I wrote the book about called, “Open.” When David Fay, the executive director of the USGA agreed to give me access to his staff and meetings before and during the Open I told him I needed one more thing: clubhouse parking. I was going to be arriving before 6 a.m. each morning and not leaving until very late. I wasn’t going to mess with shuttles.
He agreed. And so, at the most secure event in sports history—it was 35 miles from ground zero nine months after 9-11—I made it through about eight check points each morning to the clubhouse lot. One morning as I pulled into a mostly empty lot, I saw a Buick pulling in a few spots down from where I was pulling in.
Tiger Woods, arriving early to practice. I gave him a casual wave as I got out of the car. I can only imagine what thoughts ran through his mind. I guarantee you they weren’t, ‘gee, I’m sure glad the USGA took care of John.”
Of course he couldn’t have been TOO upset. He won that week going away.
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Best Two Athletes in Action Over Weekend, Who Has Had Bigger Impact? Greg Norman’s Comments About Marriage
Mon, Aug 3 2009 05:23
| Michael Phelps, Tiger Woods, Greg Norman
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There was a lot to watch this weekend. Arguably the two greatest athletes of this generation were both competing: Tiger Woods was easing his way to another win at the last Buick Open (General Motors is shutting it down after 51 years for reasons that are pretty obvious) and Michael Phelps, after a bad start, was back to being his dominant self the last couple days at The World Swimming Championships.
It’s interesting because when the TV networks act as if Tiger’s the only guy on the golf course I roll my eyes. I mean if CBS had shown his swing in slo-mo one more time on Sunday I think I would have put out a contract on Peter Kostis. Maybe it’s because, as much as I respect Tiger’s remarkable ability and competitiveness, deep down I find him hard to like. I get tired of the club-slamming and the looks at the sky as if God is out to get him when a putt doesn’t go in. I get tired of the media lining up to pay homage to him at all times.
I don’t honestly think he’s a bad guy and, no doubt, I’m influenced if I’m being honest with myself by the fact that Tiger doesn’t like ME. Early on in his career he got angry at some things I wrote and said about his father—my theory being that Tiger became Tiger in spite of his dad not because of him. I’ve told him in the past I respect anyone who stands up for their dad but that doesn’t change the way I feel.
So, when we see each other the hellos are cordial and it pretty much ends at that.
I certainly don’t know Phelps well, but I had the chance to sit down with him and his mom and his coach several years ago and I just LIKED him. Unlike Tiger, who is as smart as anyone I’ve ever met, Phelps is just a nice kid who, even though his mom is an educator, has gotten most of his education with his head under water. He screwed up with the bong episode—his allegedly smart agents screwed up worse—but I still just like him.
And, just as Tiger takes your breath away when he plays golf, Phelps takes your breath away when he swims.
It’s ridiculous to say I identify with Phelps because saying he and I are both swimmers is like saying Tiger and I are both golfers. It’s silly. But having been a butterflyer—even a mediocre one—since high school I DO relate to some of the things he goes through when he’s in the water. The messed up goggles in the 200 fly at the Olympics have happened to everyone who swims. Coming up short or long on a turn is a malady that everyone deals with at some point. Even though it doesn’t show I KNOW he’s feeling overwhelming pain in his shoulders the last few meters of a 200 fly.
So, when NBC becomes at least as Phelps-centric as CBS (or the other networks) are golf-centric, I love it. I guess that’s the way most golf fans feel about Tiger—they can’t get enough. I can’t get enough Phelps. Of course I love to watch the other swimmers too—guys like Aaron Peirsol and Ryan Lochte don’t get nearly enough credit because Phelps is SO good.
At the end of the meet, Rowdy Gaines said this about Phelps: “He has had a bigger impact on his sport than any athlete in history.”
That’s quite a statement. But you know what? If it’s not true, it’s damn close. Jackie Robinson changed baseball and our country forever. Arnold Palmer made golf a sport people cared about and, contrary to what people think today, was the most IMPORTANT golfer who ever lived.
But Phelps has brought people to swimming, changed it from an absolute niche sport into a network TV sport. Walk down the street and ask someone like my sister, who never quite understood why the Redskins didn’t draft Michael Jordan, to name athletes and she’ll come up with two: Woods and Phelps. That says a lot. She’d probably name her 10-year-old son Ethan third.
I would be remiss today if I didn’t bring up one other guy I watched this weekend: Greg Norman. In his own way, Norman is as predictable as Woods or Phelps. Put the latter two under pressure and you are likely to see something spectacular.
Same is true of Norman: except in reverse. There he was on Sunday during the final round of the U.S. Senior Open with ANOTHER chance to win a major—albeit a senior major, but still—and there he was going backwards. Fred Funk outscored him on Sunday by EIGHT shots as Norman slipped from a tie for second, one shot back to a tie for fourth NINE shots back.
This after recently saying during a TV interview that he probably would have won more than two major championships if he had married earlier in his life to Chris Evert rather than Laura Andrassy.
Let’s put aside for a moment that Andrassy is the mother of his two kids who had to be THRILLED to hear him say that. Let’s even concede that Evert was one of the great competitors ever. In fact, when she divorced John Lloyd, her first husband, there were whispers that one of the factors was that he took losing (he was a top 100 ranked tennis player) as well as he did. Lloyd was, in fact, one of the nicest men I’ve ever met. I still remember him losing in the first round of the 1981 U.S. Open to Jimmy Connors by something like 6-0, 6-0, 6-2 (Connors, who was once engaged to Evert tried his level best to humiliate him love, love and love) and standing in front of his locker wrapped in a towel talking to Pete Alfano (then of Newday) and I for about 45 minutes.
All of that aside, Evert can’t hit shots for Norman, can she? She was married to him last year when he shot 77 in the last round at the British Open to go from two shots ahead of Padraig Harrington to six behind. She was married to him two weeks ago when he led the Senior British going into the last round and finished sixth. And she was married to him Sunday when he hit two of the first 10 fairways and looked scared to death until the tournament was safely out of reach.
I’ve always gotten along with Norman. He’s bright and—maybe because he’s so experienced—he deals with awful defeats with remarkable grace. Years ago, after “A Good Walk Spoiled,” came out he thought I had been quoted in a People Magazine piece about the book’s success as saying he had the biggest ego on the tour. He called me—furious—screaming, “I gave you all that time (which he had) for the book and you say that about me?”
“Greg,” I answered. “Have you got the story there?”
“Damn right I do.”
“Look closely. The line about your ego ISN’T in quotes. I didn’t say it—the guy who wrote the story said it.”
There was a pause. “Oh my god, you’re right,” he said “I’m really sorry. I see it now, you didn’t say it did you?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I’m sorry for doubting you,” he said. Then there was a pause. “Okay then,” he said finally. “What’s the phone number for this guy at People?”
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Phelps Trapped by Technology and Marketing; Other Notable Tidbits from Yesterday’s Headlines
Wed, Jul 29 2009 05:16
| USGA, Mets, Padraig Harrington, Michael Phelps, Tiger Woods
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I’ve written often in the past about how amazed I am by Michael Phelps. Of course that’s a little bit like saying I’m amazed by the earth, the moon and the stars because one doesn’t have to know anything about swimming to know that Phelps is the greatest swimmer of all time.
And yet, as an old swimmer, even though I never came within light years of Phelps, I always felt that if it was possible, Phelps didn’t get the credit he deserved. He was always measured against Mark Spitz’s seven gold medals at the Munich Olympics and if he had ‘only,’ won seven golds or, God Forbid six, in Beijing, most people would still have believed that Spitz was the best.
Which isn’t even close to true. Spitz did two things: he swam butterfly and sprint freestyle. He was absolutely fabulous at both—unbeatable in the 100 and the 200 in both strokes. Phelps can do just about anything you ask him to do in a swimming pool. He can sprint and he can swim distances—he’s never tried the 1,500 but I would bet serious money if he ever trained for it he’d blow everyone away. He’s the greatest butterflyer who ever lived and he’s one of the three best backstrokers in history. He’s even made himself a very good breastroker which is why he’s so unbeatable in the individual medley, the event that definitively proves a swimmer’s versatility.
Now, unfortunately, Phelps is trapped by both technology and marketing. You probably read in today’s papers—or online—about Phelps getting hammered by a previously unheralded German in the 200 freestyle. Much of the story is about the fact that the German, like a lot of swimmers, is wearing a suit that has already been declared illegal by the international swimming federation—except that the suit hasn’t been banned just yet because FINA (the initials for the federation since French is the officials language of international sport) doesn’t want to upset the manufacturer’s too much by banning their suits right this instant.
This reminds me a lot of the ongoing battle between the U.S. Golf Association and the golf manufacturers over equipment. On the one hand, the USGA doesn’t want to see great golf courses completely obliterated by how far players can now hit the ball. On the other hand, it doesn’t want to upset its key business partners to much.
Phelps can’t wear the latest and greatest suit because it is made by Arena and he’s under contract to Speedo. Personally, if I were Speedo, I’d tell him to wear whatever he wants if that’s what it takes to win on a short term basis. Everyone knows they’ve fallen a step behind in the suit wars for the moment whether Phelps is wearing their stuff or not.
In my opinion, Phelps hasn’t gotten a lot of help from the non-swimming people around him. It’s fortunate that most of his career has been shaped by his mom (Debbie) and his coach (Bob Bowman). But he was badly let down by his so-called management team at Octagon during bong-gate last fall when they decided the best way to handle the photo of him taking a hit from a bong at a party was to try to bribe the British tabloid that had the photo. Now, the Speedo people, who could look both smart and magnanimous by telling Phelps to wear the fastest suit allowed—regardless of label—have gone underground.
To be fair, Phelps isn’t the swimmer this summer he was last summer. His time in the 100 free leading off the winning U.S. relay Sunday (by the way, do the French surrender at EVERYTHING, including relays?) was slower than his split in Beijing. His 200 free on Tuesday night was more than a ½ second slower than his world record swim at the Olympics. All of that’s understandable. He took off six months from training and decided (mistakenly) to try to re-invent his freestyle stroke.
Again, this reminds me of golf: Padraig Harrington wins two straight majors and decides he needs to change his swing. Tiger Woods is almost constantly trying to reinvent his swing.
In the long run, Phelps is going to be fine. FINA will eventually figure out what to do about the supersonic suits—the key in the end is that everyone is using the same equipment one way or the other—and Phelps will be swimming in a level pool in London in 2012, which, as he pointed out, is the only meet he’s really pointing to at this point in his life.
One other note that has nothing to do with the suit controversy: After finishing third in the relay on Sunday, the French ducked out on the post-race press conference. Gee, what a surprise.
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If I were Omar Minaya, the Mets general manager, I wouldn’t apply for a new mortgage on my house. A day after his embarrassing attempt to somehow blame New York Daily News reporter Adam Rubin for the fact that he had to fire his pal Tony Bernazard, Minaya received a decided non-vote of confidence from team owner Jeff Wilpon. Even the Mets broadcasters on SNY—the one thing the Mets do have going for them is their broadcast team of Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling—blasted Minaya.
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