The Tiger Variations

Did anyone see this coming?  Johnny, maybe, but that's about all...  Shall we have at it?

First the news, as reported at TW.com:

"After a lot of soul searching and honest reflection, I know that I am not yet ready to play 

on the PGA Tour or compete in Turkey," Woods said on his website. "My health is good, and I feel strong, but my game is vulnerable and not where it needs to be. When I announced last week I was going to Safeway, I had every intention of playing, or I wouldn't have committed." 

The 40-year-old said he practiced the last several days in California, "but after a lot of hours, I knew I wasn't ready to compete against the best golfers in the world."

Vulnerable?   Didja ever think you'd hear Tiger use that word?

Shack does his first-class aggregation thing, and we'll plagiarize cite that liberally in a sec, but this was Geoff's take:

A) Tiger Woods may be afflicted with injury-induced golf yips that have not gone away

and are not close to going away. What part of his game they afflict is not clear and not really important. 

B) Tiger has had some strange and irresponsible moments, yet committing with last Friday while planning a weekend "cram" session to find a final something appears irresponsible even for someone who wisely made clear all along that this was a maybe start. 

C) Tiger continues to allow surrogates to peddle stories about his comeback and he's making them look bad with such erratic behavior, statements and a fear of teeing it up on a big stage. 

D) Passing on Arnold Palmer's funeral should have been a sign... 

E) Jesper Parnevik was either full of malarkey, saw some nice range work, or was getting some sort of revenge. Or all of the above.

Agreed.  Tiger's use of the "V" word cause me to think of the "Y" word....

Otherwise I'm in complete agreement with Geoff, perhaps even tending towards a harsher reaction to his pulling the rug out from under the event.

Steiny, a man who's raised tone-deafness to an art-form, offered up this classic of the genre:

“He was really looking forward to competing, to playing, to being in the locker room again,” Steinberg said. “He really missed being in the locker room. At the Ryder Cup he was in the locker room and he felt great being in there. He was ready to go. But when he ramped it up the past few days, hole by hole he realized his game was just not responding in the way he wanted it to.”

Shack pounces on the topicality of locker room talk in recent news cycles.... Well played, sir, though we have to score you low on degree of difficulty.  And this is pretty gosh-darn rich:

Steinberg said Woods felt he didn't believe it was "appropriate'' to make his return at the Turkish Airlines Open, a European Tour event. It was out of "respect for the PGA Tour'' that he is skipping that tournament abroad next month, not some doom and gloom scenario that keeps him from being ready then.

OK, let's pause for a moment to unpack this nonsense....  After allowing the Safeway event to sell tickets based upon his scheduled return for a month and formally committing only three days earlier, Your Honor, my client is a man that wants to do the right thing for his Tour.  I know, why start now?

First and most obvious, if he could be ready to play then why doesn't he tee it up in one of the late-season PGA Tour events.  I'm sure his bestie Davis would love to have him at Sea Island, as an example....  Also, because I hold grudges, did he ever honor that commitment to play the Frys/Safeway dating back to his first Turkish appearance (fee)?

Johnny Miller, host of the event, seems to have kept some emotional distance with his apparent good fortune:

“I just had a feeling. Everybody in the world was texting me, offering me congratulations [on Tiger playing Silverado]. I wrote back, ‘I’ll believe he’s coming when he tees off first thing Thursday morning on the first tee.’ My gut is that he wanted to come, but the hoopla, even on the Golf Channel the last couple days, he must be looking at that thinking, ‘Oh, my gosh. What am I getting into? I’d like to be home, taking my kids to school, running my restaurant, nothing like having to posting a score.’ 

“He’s got to suck up the pressure of it all, the tension, and go back in there and mix it up. It’s hard to do, because once you get away from the tour, life can be so sweet when you’re not so judgmental. The hardest thing about golf is the score. The greatest thing about golf is the score. If you post the scores you win. It’s the greatness of golf. Frank Sinatra at 70 probably couldn’t sing a lick, but he didn’t have to post a score.”

Playing the role of George Stephanopolous at this morning's performance is compromised golf analyst Notah Begay, who tells us it's all due to global warming (I'm kidding, but barely):

The two spoke on the phone Monday, and Begay believes that Woods' decision - which came just three days after he formally committed to the event - is the product of one last self-assessment of his game.

"The hurricane didn't help, and he had some concerns about the sharpness of his game," Begay said. "Everyone knows there's going to be rust. Everybody knows there's going to be shots that he's going to call on that might not come off the way he wanted. But after talking to him this morning, he just didn't feel like his game was where he wanted it to be to be competitive."

It was the hurricane, yeah, that's the ticket.  Pay no mind to the fact that he was in California for most of this period, so I'm going to blame it on the drought.  Or perhaps the construction delays on that light-rail project.... Or....the Kardashian robbery, so shocking.

Notah seems like a nice guy, but when you're primary qualification for your gig is that you were college buds with the alpha dog, there are times you'll look silly.  He doubles down and parrots Jesper with this:

"I was down there about 4-5 weeks ago in Jupiter, and the full swing and everything else looked great. The short irons looked great," he said. "But as we all know, it's not just a succession of full shots that are required on the PGA Tour. You have to have the feel shots, the in-between shots. And just not having had enough time to get the reps in prior to, would probably be my guess based upon my conversations with Tiger."

OK, I get it... Not enough reps to get back his golf feels....  But, what about his release point?  We're all fluent in Tigeresperanto by now, but you lapse into that when you have nothing else to say.

Jeff Babineau auditions for the role of Tiger lapdog with this positive take:

Let’s think of it this way: It’s opening night on Broadway, and Tiger Woods, a highly

decorated actor, knows the curtain is about to rise. This is the moment. There’s one huge problem: He hasn’t been on stage in a while, and his heart is racing because he isn’t fully confident that he’ll know all his lines.

So to be safe, he turns to a stage hand and asks that the curtain not go up. Some in the audience will understand; others will not. Regardless of emotions, all will have to wait for another day.

Know this: Plenty of folks will take this latest setback and take the opportunity to write off Woods, to tell you he’s done. This will only fuel him. He takes more notes than anyone. The naysayers have little idea just how stubborn this man is.

Jeff, you do realize that all those folks sitting on the other side of the curtain hired babysitters and paid for tickets and parking?  What ever happened the that "The Show Must Go On" spirit?

 I think Jeff is wrong about most everything in that piece...  Yes, there are people speculating that he's done... Here's a perfect example:

Tiger Woods might not play another competitive round of golf again. 

I hope that isn’t true. His star power and success are great for the game, attracting people who wouldn’t otherwise watch a golf tournament. Even if he never matches Jack Nicklaus’ major total, he’s one of those rare athletes you can’t help but watch. 

But it’s time to acknowledge reality. 

The problem is that he's a bit of a self-absorbed jerk that doesn't seem to expend a lot of effort on others, and he's demonstrated that yet again this go round.   I wish he could come back under the radar as well, but being Tiger Woods has pluses and minuses.  He's just created a nightmare in Napa, all because he doesn't know whether he's ready....  Well, I'm sorry, but he was ready on Friday....

Shack gives him an out for the time between the announcement and the commitment, though I'm not that charitable.  I understand in a legal sense that he provided caveats to his initial statement, but that's a little BS.  Golf Channel and the event itself have been promoting the hell out of his prospective return, all based upon his assessment.  He should have been ready to go when he made that announcement, instead of creating this mess for others to clean up.

Karen Crouse in Pravda calls it "Performance anxiety", Mark Canizarro in the paper of record calls it "Stage fright", and Derek Lawrenson asks if we have "ever seen a more shocking example of sporting stage fright?"  I'll leave you with these words on the subject from the great Robbie Robertson:

See the man with the stage fright

Just standing up there to give it all his might.

And he got caught in the spotlight,

But when we get to the end

He wants to start all over again.

Well, don't we all?