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The knock on Woods
The British Open left me with one obvious question: What's up with Tiger Woods? Here's what I think: The demands on
his time while hosting his own tournament, plus the wonderful distraction of becoming a father, meant that for
the first time in his career he wasn't 100% prepared
to tee it up in a major. Hitting a four-iron OB off
the 1st tee was emblematic of his swing issues: His
swing gets flat and he gets "stuck." His old swing,
with Butch Harmon, was better. Here's what I'm afraid to think: Tiger has fallen in love with bodybuilding, and all that muscle is messing up his swing. When I look
at what's different from last year, when he won the last two majors, my answer is that now he looks like Popeye the Sailor Man. Still, it would be a mistake to dismiss Tiger at Southern Hills simply because he didn't play well there in the 2001 U.S. Open (12th). He was forced to lay up to the corners of many of the doglegged holes back then, and holstering the driver is a plus for him these days. Tiger will be in the mix next week, but he's not my pick to win.
Testing, testing ...
Gary Player says he knows firsthand of players
using performance-enhancing drugs. Unless commissioner Tim
Finchem is willing to call Mr. Player a boldfaced liar and pronounce the case closed, we should have drug testing on Tour tomorrow. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that a few guys are using, but we don't have a testing program or
even a rule against using performance-enhancing drugs. Test us or get off the pot!
The trouble with Tulsa
I'd like to thank the PGA of America for sending us to Tulsa in August. I guess Death Valley wasn't available. I'm not a huge fan of Southern Hills. It was great in its day — the 1970s — but doesn't hold up to today's power game. When we all lay up to the same spot on the corner of a dogleg, it seems like the staggered start of a 400-meter race. I hope they've fixed the 9th and 18th greens, which were such a joke in the '01 Open that they had to mow them to a different length to make them semi-playable.
No Love lost
The Canadian Open desperately needed some star power. (Apparently I didn't fill the bill.) Davis Love III took a big paycheck to tweak the Angus Glen course and make it more palatable, then didn't even show up to see how his work played out. I read in the Toronto paper how he didn't admit that he was skipping the event when some Canadian writers asked him about it on Friday at Carnoustie, a couple of hours before the entry deadline. I bet Davis doesn't miss out on the free money at this week's
Bridgestone Invitational.
