Tag Archives: Masters Tournament

Sports news

Yep, he is bigger than the game

Tiger Woods would never say such a thing out loud, within earshot of others.

However, I am going to say what would remain unspoken by the greatest golfer of this generation: Tiger Woods is bigger than the game.

Woods won his 15th major pro golf title over the weekend, winning the Masters Tournament by a stroke the all-world field of the greatest golfers on the planet. Sports pundits can’t stop talking about it. They won’t stop talking and writing about what they have described as the “greatest sports comeback in human history.”

Woods had gone 11 years without winning a major tournament, and 15 years since winning the Masters.

Hmm. I’ll offer this note, and then move on to the topic at hand: Muhammad Ali’s return as heavyweight boxing champion in 1974 after being stripped of his title and exiled from the sport for more than three years ranks as the No. 1 sports comeback — in my mind.

But yes, Tiger’s comeback was one for the ages.

He is bigger than the game. I admit to watching the Masters with exponentially greater interest when he entered the weekend rounds in hunt for his fifth Masters green jacket. I love watching the Masters anyway, but with Tiger lurking near the top of the leader board, my interest turned into an obsession.

I wasn’t alone. Others around the world who aren’t even necessarily golf fans took time to watch Tiger Woods pounce when Francesco Molinari doused his 12th-hole tee shot, paving the way for a double-bogey on the hole.

Woods’ endorsement income from Nike is going to fly into the stratosphere. There might be other corporate sponsors that will sign the 43-year-old up as well.

Think of it. Woods’ career started tanking when his wife, Elin, caught him messing around with other women. Then he got caught driving while impaired. Injuries later would damn near take him out for keeps. He couldn’t play the game he dominated since his arrival on the pro tour in 1996.

He fought back. Now he’s back on the top of his game. On top of the world. On top of the heap.

Tiger Woods wouldn’t dare say what many of us believe, that he is bigger than the game.

He is. There. I’ve said it.

Sports news

Masters exerts ‘prior restraint’?

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The third round of the Masters Tournament is about to end and I want to comment on something that has stuck in my craw for the past several years.

CBS Sports has been broadcasting this professional golf “major” for as long as I can remember. Some years back, CBS hired a smart aleck announcer named Gary McCord to broadcast golf on the network.

McCord played on the PGA tour. He didn’t win any tournaments. But he fancies himself as a comedian. I don’t find him funny.

Neither do the snotty souls who belong to Augusta (Ga.) National Golf Club, where they play the Masters every year.

What did these ultra-rich guys do some years back? They ordered CBS to pull McCord off its broadcast team for the Masters.

Why did this stick in my craw? It kind of smacks of a form of “prior restraint,” with an exclusive, private country club dictating to a major media outlet how it can do its job.

This brings to mind a question I wish I would have asked the corporate owner of the Amarillo Globe-News, where I worked for nearly 18 years until Aug. 31, 2012. William Morris III is chairman of Morris Communications, which owns the G-N. It is based in Augusta, Ga. Morris is a member of Augusta National, an outfit filled with members who are “invited” to join; one doesn’t apply for membership, mind you. The blue-noses at the country club have to ask you to join.

As near as I can tell, the predominant qualifier for membership has something to do with the size of one’s bank account.

The question I wish I would have asked Billy Morris? Why do you people at Augusta National take yourselves so damn seriously?

Sports news

Pulling for a comeback from Tiger

Call me strange.

But I do enjoy watching pro golf on TV more than pro football. Pro basketball, too, except when the Portland Trail Blazers are on the tube.

Accordingly, I keep hoping for a comeback from a young man named Eldrick “Tiger” Woods, who announced this week he is going to skip next week’s Masters Tournament, an event he has won four times.

Tiger’s back is acting up. He can’t rehab it sufficiently to allow him to play at a competitive level. So, he’s sitting out an event that the great Jack Nicklaus once said he’d win more Masters green jackets than he and the late Arnold Palmer did combined; Jack won six of ’em, Arnie won four.

I’m not entirely sure why I remain drawn to Tiger Woods, the golfer. Tiger the husband turned out to be pretty much of a dirt bag, as he cheated wildly on his gorgeous then-wife, Elin.

It pretty much went to hell after that for Tiger.

Tiger remains on the injured list

He hurt his back. His major championship total stands at 14; he says he wants to surpass the 18 majors owned by Nicklaus.

I don’t know what pro golf’s TV ratings have done since Tiger hit the skids. I’m guessing many TV watchers are like me: They’d prefer to watch Tiger on the course than nearly anyone else.

I want the young man to make a full comeback. Do I care if he breaks the all-time major championship record? Not really. Jack Nicklaus, by all rights, should stand as the greatest of all time.

Tiger Woods belongs on the golf course — and on my TV screen.

Sports news

Shrieking? At Wimbledon of all places?

Wimbledon is supposed to be a place of grand decorum, politeness and good manners.

Now, though, we hear gripes about the grunting that goes on while the world’s greatest tennis stars are playing each other. What’s more, the fans apparently get tanked up on gin-laced drinks and have been mimicking the grunts some of the players — notably the women — make while they’re competing.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/tennis/sound-and-fury-as-azarenka-blasts-scream-queen-critics/ar-AAcGf3z

I’ll stipulate that I’m not a huge fan of tennis. I like watching it some of the time. I’m not glued to my TV set when the “majors” are being played. Wimbledon is one of them. The closest my wife and have ever been to the place was on an airplane that in June 2006 was making its approach to Heathrow Airport in London; the bird flew over the stadium, and I’ll admit it was kind of cool to see it from the air.

It fascinates me somewhat that an uproar would occur at this place.

Why, they don’t even allow the competitors to wear anything but white on the court. Headbands? They have to be white, too.

Wimbledon is as stodgy a place as, say, Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, which has banned CBS Sports announcer Gary McCord from taking part in the network’s TV coverage of the Masters Tournament because, well, McCord’s smart-alecky personality rankles the stuffed shirts who run the Masters.

So, if the green jacket crowd can dictate who covers their golf event in Augusta, why can’t the stuffy Brits who run Wimbledon get the athletes to stop their grunting and shrieking?

What’s more, why don’t they make the stands a booze-free zone?

Do I like hearing the grunting? No. It does distract me from what I’m watching. But that’s not my call.

It’s just that if the tennis royalty that runs Wimbledon is going to demand certain behavior and make the athletes wear only white, then let’s go all the way.

Stop the shrieks and tell the fans to behave themselves.

 

Sports news

Glad to see Tiger get his game back

I haven’t yet watched much of the 2015 Masters golf tournament, but I do like the prospect of Tiger Woods possibly finishing on the first page of the leader board when it’s all over.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/golf/armour-tiger-woods-lets-his-game-speak-for-itself/ar-AAaSOzq

Tiger Woods isn’t bigger than the game. But he does make it more fun to watch on TV when he’s in the hunt, particularly in a major tournament such as the Masters.

He’s had his struggles of late. His game was thought to be in the crapper. He took some time off and returned to this tournament, which he’s won four times — out of the 14 major tournaments he’s already won.

He likely won’t win it Sunday. But I do wish him the young man well as he continues his comeback.

Tiger Woods might not have been the role model for husbands around the world, but he does swing a pretty mean golf stick.

Let’s face it, when he’s playing his “A-Game,” the world takes notice.

 

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Tiger will be just fine, thank you very much

Tiger Woods didn’t win the PGA this past weekend. He’s still looking to win his 15th major golf tournament.

And strange as it seems, golf’s pundit class is giving him a bad time because he hasn’t won a major since 2008.

Get off it, already.

http://msn.foxsports.com/golf/story/pga-championship-tiger-woods-departs-a-major-empty-handed-again-081113

Even if Tiger Woods never wins another major championship, he’ll be able to look back on what has been an extraordinary golf career. He’s won 79 PGA events overall, second to Sam Snead’s 82 wins. He is stuck on 14 major wins, with Jack Nicklaus ahead of him with 18. The way I see it, being mentioned in the same sentence with Slammin’ Sammy and the Golden Bear puts Tiger in the middle of some pretty tall cotton.

I think he’ll win more majors. Whether he catches Jack is another matter. Still, it shouldn’t really matter when measuring the impact Tiger Woods has had on the game of golf.

All of this armchair handwringing reminds of what sports talkers used to say about auto racing legend Mario Andretti, who’s generally recognized as one of the greatest drivers in the history of his sport. But he won only a single Indianapolis 500 race, in 1969. He figured to win many Indy races when he arrived on the scene in 1965. He had bad luck at Indy.

Someone finally asked Mario to comment on one of his many failures to win a second Indy 500. His answer, which I only can paraphrase now, was classic. He said he doesn’t measure the success of his career by what he didn’t do at Indy. He prefers to look instead at the big picture: Daytona 500 victory in 1967, Formula One championship in 1978 … and a host of victories at tracks worldwide of all kinds and shapes racing open-wheeled cars, NASCAR stock cars, Formula One road course vehicles.

I believe the totality of Tiger Woods’s career, when it finally concludes, will measure up.