Monday, April 12, 2010

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“[Ads by Yahoo!] Start Your Career In <b>Golf</b>” plus 3 more

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[Ads by Yahoo!] Start Your Career In <b>Golf</b>

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Golf Clinic at Castle Creek

On Wednesday, February 3rd, 30 students from the class hosted a clin...

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<b>GOLF</b>-Tiger Woods boosts TV audience, but fails at record

Posted: 12 Apr 2010 12:04 PM PDT

LOS ANGELES, April 12 (Reuters) - Tiger Woods' losing battle to win the Masters golf tournament in his comeback after months of sex scandal gave broadcaster CBS its highest ratings for the event in nine years, the network said on Monday.

CBS said the U.S. audience for Saturday's coverage of the Masters was up 33 percent from last year, while Sunday's broadcast of the final round was up 36 percent from 2009.

But the audience was lower than the 20.3 million viewers who tuned in to watch Woods win his first Masters in 1997, and also below the TV viewership for his second Masters win in 2001.

The network, which is owned by CBS Corp, said its final round coverage was the third-highest rated final round of any golf tournament since 1986.

Woods, the world's No. 1 golfer, returned to the sport after a riveting sex scandal forced him to take a break, during which he underwent treatment. But he failed to win a fifth Masters, played each year at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, finishing in a tie for fourth place on Sunday, five shots behind winner Phil Mickelson.

Spurred by sordid revelations of Woods' multiple affairs behind his wife Elin's back, viewers also turned out in droves on Thursday and Friday to give cable network ESPN the highest U.S. audience ever for a golf event on cable TV.

ESPN said an average 4.4 million viewers watched its coverage on Thursday and Friday, up 29 percent from 2009.

In addition, the Masters on ESPN.com led to 88 percent more page views and 98 percent more visits to the website than last year, the Walt Disney Co.-owned cable TV sports network said on Monday.

Woods, 34, had remained in the hunt for a 15th major title until the end but said afterward he was disappointed with his performance.

"I entered this event and I only enter events to win and I didn't get it done," he told reporters. "I'm going to take a little time off and kind of reevaluate things."

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte and Philip Barbara)

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ANALYSIS-<b>Golf</b>-Tiger struggles to stay on the straight and narrow

Posted: 12 Apr 2010 10:04 AM PDT

By Mark Lamport-Stokes

AUGUSTA, Georgia, April 12 (Reuters) - Tiger Woods returned to Augusta promising a cleaned-up act but delivered a mixture of the impossibly good and some rank bad golf plus a sprinkling of behaviour bordering on the ugly.

He had promised a "more respectful" approach to the game but in many ways during four days of white-hot U.S. Masters competition, Woods showed he has not changed from the pre-scandal version of the world number one.

True, the worst expletives and club-throwing which have marred his majestic play of the last couple of years were gone but Woods still struggled to maintain his cool when a drive or approach shot soared a fairway's width away from its target.

"Ti-ger—you suck!" he hollered at himself and quite often he was right.

His technique verged from the sublime to the almost ridiculous, often within the space of a couple of holes, with only an unmatched determination not to cede ground to his rivals taking him to his eventual fourth place behind winner Phil Mickelson.

One minute in a final round of 69, he was carving a Sunday hacker's drive deep into a copse, the next he was fashioning an extraordinary recovery from pine needles over sky-high trees to within 10 feet of the pin from about 190 yards.

The next moment he would be miserably pushing a snatched four foot putt past the hole for a bogey with the attitude of a man who had apparently lost his technique and touch completely.

Fans who feared that this extraordinary player, who had pocketed 14 major titles before his dramatic fall from grace through a string of extra-marital affairs, had lost his fighting spirit and frightening will to win could have nothing to worry about.

Others hoping to see a more relaxed and amiable individual who had put the sport and its inevitable travails into perspective would largely have been disappointed, certainly on the final two days as the pressure grew.

Woods, in short, gave a pretty convincing impression of a golfer both temperamentally and technically on the very edge of his game. A man often literally struggling to keep his balance.

He could not have asked for a warmer welcome from the huge galleries who watched him and, as he had promised in a news conference, he initially engaged with the fans at every opportunity.

For the first two rounds, Woods continually tipped his cap to acknowledge his supporters, repeatedly saying 'Thank you' as the Georgian pines resounded with calls of 'Go Tiger' and 'We love you, Tiger'.

HOT TONGUE

After five holes in Saturday's third round, however, the old Tiger with the hot tongue returned.

A poor swing on the par-three sixth tee sparked a profanity-laced outburst which was heard clearly on live television. Woods followed up by shouting to himself: "You suck!"

Further outbursts of mild swearing sporadically followed as the world number one went on a roller-coaster ride of great and dreadful golf for the final 30 holes of the tournament.

While many had doubted whether Woods would be able to contend at Augusta, he was not among them and he became increasingly frustrated as he failed to put more pressure on Mickelson in the final round.

"I wanted to win this tournament," he said after finishing five shots behind his compatriot and arch-rival. "As the week wore on I kept hitting the ball worse.

"I entered this event and I only enter events to win and I didn't get it done. I didn't hit the ball good enough and I made too many mistakes around the greens, consequently I'm not there."

Asked whether it would take him more time to control his on-course emotions since he pledged to show more respect for the game, he replied with a look almost of contempt.

"People are making way too much of a big deal of this thing," he said. "I was not feeling good. I'm not going to be walking around there with a lot of pep in my step because I hadn't hit a good shot yet."

NO HINT

Woods gave no hint as to the next event he would play on the PGA Tour.

"I'm going to take a little time off and kind of re-evaluate things," he said.

With the June 17-20 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach the next major on his horizon, Woods is likely to compete in at least two tournaments before then.

The May 6-9 Players Championship at the PGA Tour's headquarters in Florida is a virtual certainly, given its status as the unofficial fifth major at the venue where he made his first public apology following his stunning fall from grace.

Also likely is the Jack Nicklaus-hosted Memorial tournament in Dublin, Ohio from June 3-6 where he typically plays.

The April 29-May 2 Quail Hollow Championship in Charlotte, North Carolina is another possibility and Woods has until the Friday before that week to commit to the event.

Wherever he does play next, the world number one will not have the luxury of the tightly controlled environment at Augusta and he could well experience his first on-course heckling since he became engulfed in his sex scandal.

Should he be heckled by the fans, he will have to negotiate yet another severe test of his ability to keep his now notorious tongue in check.

It will also help if he can start regularly hitting the ball straight again.

(Editing by Jon Bramley; To query or comment on this story email sportsfeedback@thomsonreuters.com)

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For Woods, it's finally about <b>golf</b> again

Posted: 12 Apr 2010 07:38 AM PDT

The tournament at Augusta National Golf Club is one of the most controlled environments in sports — with sympathetic, polite crowds and limited access to players. If Woods, a four-time Masters champion, came here looking for a gentle re-entry to competitive golf, it was clear Monday that he had found it.

He was embraced warmly from the first tee to the 18th green as he was joined by Fred Couples at 8 a.m. for an 18-hole practice round. Normally distant and stoic, Woods acknowledged fans repeatedly during the round, tipping his cap, signing autographs for kids and smiling as the cheers and crowds grew louder and larger as the day went on.

"Great day for golf, Tiger," one fan shouted near the second tee.

"Yes, it is," Woods said, with a big smile.

Six hours later, sitting in front of a packed interview room, Woods looked more comfortable and at ease than he did Feb. 19, when he appeared in public for the first time since his Thanksgiving night car crash led to revelations of a sordid private life full of extramarital affairs. Back then, he declined to take questions and instead gave a 14-minute statement.

On Monday, he seemed more like the world's No. 1 golfer than the tabloid figure he became after the crash. Woods, 34, answered news reporters' questions for 35 minutes.

Woods discussed his relationship with a doctor who is under investigation over performance-enhancing drugs, spoke candidly about how his secret lifestyle had taken much of the fun out of playing golf well and lamented the scandal's impact on his wife, Elin, his 2-year-old daughter, Sam, and his son, Charlie, 1.

He described the pain of having to miss Charlie's first birthday because Woods was in rehab (He continues to decline to specify what type of therapy he was receiving). He also described taking prescription drugs to help him deal with the pain from injuries — and to help him sleep at a time when his late father, Earl, was ill.

In total, Woods — long known as a ruthless, aggressive competitor on the course who occasionally curses and tosses a club when things don't go his way — came across as chastened, more humble.

"What I've done over the past years has been just terrible to my family," Woods said. "And the fact I won golf tournaments I think is irrelevant. It's the pain and the damage that I've caused my wife, my mom, my wife's family and my kids. Going forward, I am going to have to explain all this to them. That's my responsibility. I did it. And I take full responsibility for it.

"I meditate religiously again like I used to, going back to my roots with my Buddhism with my mom. I need to do these things the way I used to do it. And unfortunately, I got away from that, and I just lost that and unfortunately also lost my life in the process."

Opening up ... to a point

Although Woods was more open and had more life in his answers than he did March 21, when he gave two five-minute interviews to ESPN and the Golf Channel, he again declined to give details about the single-car crash in front of his suburban Orlando estate in November.

He also would not discuss the status of his marriage — except to note that Elin Woods would not be at The Masters. And he again declined to say what he is receiving treatment for.

Mike Paul, president of MGP & Associates PR in New York, said Woods was his usual controlling self and that the news conference was a missed opportunity — for Woods and for the news media.

Paul cited Woods' reluctance to discuss his treatment and a "cocky" reply to a question about the crash that triggered the scandal.

How can Woods really claim he has "changed," asked Paul, when he hasn't changed his agent, Mark Steinberg of IMG, caddie Steve Williams or any of his business associates or hangers-on?

"The worst thing for an addict is enablers," Paul said.

Though stating again that the facts of the accident were in the police report, Woods did say for the first time that he received five stitches for an injury to his lip on the night of the crash.

He also revealed that he had played last year with a torn Achilles tendon in his right leg. He apologized to fellow players on the PGA Tour for the attention they've received since the controversy erupted. And he promised to set a better example on the golf course by toning down his outbursts after poor shots.

"I need to be a better man going forward than I was before," Woods said. "And just because I've gone through treatment doesn't mean it stops. I'm trying as hard as I possibly can each and every day to get my life better and better and stronger, and if I win championships along the way, so be it. I can help more people going forward, infinitely more, than I did prior to all this."

Woods again was adamant that he has never taken human growth hormone, performance-enhancing drugs or "any illegal drug, ever, for that matter," after multiple knee surgeries. He disclosed that his agent, Steinberg, has been contacted by federal agents who are investigating physician Anthony Galea, who has been charged with four drug-related charges in Canada.

Galea's assistant was arrested crossing the border from Canada into the USA, allegedly carrying HGH.

"They contacted (Steinberg) and will get full cooperation whenever they need me, but right now they haven't asked for my time," Woods said. "He never gave me HGH or any PEDs. I've never taken that my entire life."

Woods said he received treatment for his surgically repaired left knee and his right Achilles tendon from Galea, who Woods said visited his Florida home on several occasions during the golfer's injury-rehab time.

Woods said he received platelet-rich plasma therapy for both injuries in 2009. The procedure involves taking blood from the patient, spinning it in a centrifuge to isolate platelets — which act as healing agents — and injecting about a teaspoon into the injured area. Woods also said he went into hyperbaric chambers to help speed recovery.

Woods blew out the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in 2008 and tore his Achilles later that year. He said he kept "re-tearing" his Achilles during 2009.

Woods said both injuries are healed heading into the first major championship of the golf season. His four championships here include his culture-shifting first win in 1997, when he became the first person of African or Asian descent to win a men's major tournament.

Woods also discussed his endorsement portfolio, which shrunk as the reports of his infidelity increased. Three sponsors — Gatorade, AT&T and Accenture— dropped Woods.

"I made a lot of mistakes in my life. And I totally understand why they would do that," Woods said. "Hopefully I can prove to other companies that I am a worthy investment."

Among the companies that have stood by Woods is EA Sports, which today launches Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online, a Web-based golf game.

Upper Deck, meanwhile, said it would sell hats and shirts personally autographed by Woods or driving-range golf balls hit by him. Prices range from $199 to $1,799.99.

If Woods wins The Masters, Upper Deck will sell five more products at prices ranging from $499.99 to $1,999.99.

"Tiger's comeback should spell good things for Upper Deck," spokesman Terry Melia said in a statement.

Some work to do

Woods' game, on the other hand, was a bit off Monday. The winner of 71 PGA Tour events, 82 tournaments worldwide and 14 major championships last played when he won the Australian Masters in November.

His first tee shot Monday went far to the left of the first fairway. Woods then drew a loud chuckle from the crowd when he asked to hit another tee shot. His second effort was perfect.

He spent considerable time on each putting surface working to perfect his short game, even more time acknowledging scores of well-wishers on every hole, and had his picture taken by thousands of amateur photographers (cameras are allowed on the grounds during practice rounds).

"I think his game is good. It's not great, but it's Monday," said 1992 Masters champion Couples, Woods' frequent partner for practice rounds at Augusta. "He was a little off. At the same time, he hit a lot of great shots. I'm sure he'll be ready for Thursday. He was happy to be out there.

"We had a good time. He picked on me when I outdrove him; he picked on me when I made a putt; he picked on me when I hit a bad shot. So it was no different. This tournament is better because Tiger is here. ...

"(Fans) are excited to see him play. I think when they see him hit a driver, they're not relating it to some mistake he made whenever it was. I don't think it matters that he shoots 68 or 75, they are going to love to see him."

Orlando retiree Alicia Sorhan certainly was.

"Tiger looks like a changed man to me," she said. "I've never seen him smile so much, never seen him look at the crowds so much, and I've seen him play a ton of times. I like the new Tiger."

Jack Leaden was skeptical after following Woods for every hole.

"I hope he keeps smiling, but I don't see that happening," said the 22-year-old student from Marietta, Ga. "I can't believe all the people out here. And I can't believe no one yelled at him or called him names. I guess they still love him."

CBS, which will televise the third and fourth rounds Saturday and Sunday, expects huge ratings if Woods is in contention for a fifth green jacket over the weekend.

ESPN will televise the first two rounds Thursday and Friday.

On every tee box, through every fairway and on every one of the perfectly manicured greens, Woods received applause. When he walked up the big hill toward the final hole, awaiting him was a standing ovation.

"I didn't know what to expect with regards to the reception. And, I tell you what, the galleries couldn't be nicer. It was just incredible," he said. "The encouragement that I got, it just blew me away to be honest with you. And the people here over the years, I know they are extremely respectful, but today was just something that really touched my heart pretty good."

Woods said he would practice today with Steve Stricker and Mark O'Meara. When Woods was asked whether he can win this week, the old Tiger emerged.

"Going to go out there," he said, "and try to win this thing."
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