If this is Firestone, who’s
going to finish second?
AKRON, Ohio – Tiger Woods will win this one on auto pilot. On cruise control. Like a homing pigeon asleep on the wing. Forget the Thanksgiving Night Massacre. Forget the self-imposed exile, forget the mere seven outings this year, with nary a win to show for it. Forget whether Elin’s taking off with 750 mill or so, forget all those putts missed and roughs hit. Just remember where he is this week.
It’s Firestone again. The tournament? Doesn’t matter.
Well, for the record, this is the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational. But the name doesn’t mean much to Woods. If it’s got “Firestone” anywhere on it, it’s his.
There are four of these exclusive World Golf Championships. This one has an international field of 82 golfers, in the comfort of guaranteed-money, no-cut play. The purse is $8.5 million. Second money is really nice -- $850,000.
Tiger Woods owns Firestone. It’s the Good Ship Privacy, only inland.
“Obviously,” someone said in the interview room Wednesday, thinking of no other way to say it, “your record here speaks for itself.” And he wondered whether Woods had any thoughts about having returned, this being only his eighth outing in an unrewarding and sticky year.
“Yeah – looking forward to getting out there,” Woods said. Meaning that a guy who’s been languishing through one huge and immensely tacky soap opera all season didn’t feel the need to get here early and grind through extended practice. He did get nine holes in. Just getting a feel for the greens and the rough, really. Otherwise, nothing was pressing for his attention. Firestone South hasn’t really changed. Firestone is still just 7,400 straight-out and straight-back yards of Robert Trent Jones street-fighting, with a par of 70 just to make any accomplishment seem the less for it.
Woods’ performance this year would hardly recommend him to anyone’s attention here. He finally broke his self-imposed exile – after all the sex scandals and all that – by coming out into the shelter of the sweet controlled atmosphere of the Masters, where he tied for fourth. He missed the cut in the Quail Hollow Championship early in May, and then withdrew after three rounds of the Players Championship with a neck ailment. He tied for 19th at the Memorial, tied for fourth at the U.S. Open, tied for 46th at the AT&T National, and tied for 23rd at the British Open.
Some observers call this a weak performance, given his record and talent. Others say it’s pretty good, given his inactivity.
But this is Firestone. His performance here always summons up thoughts of a python with a bunny.
All told, in 10 appearances, he’s won seven, tied for second, tied for fourth and finished solo fourth, and picked off $9.3 million in winnings. Sunday evening, he’ll pick off another $1.4.
He won his first three NEC Invitationals, 1999 through 2001, and his last three Bridgestones, 2006, ’07 and ’09 (he missed the ’08 tournament, recuperating from knee surgery).
“I love playing here,” Woods was saying.
Well, what more could he say? Golfers have all sorts of gurus, but he’d need a poet laureate to put that sentiment any better. He did expand, however, wondering himself about the eerie simpatico between him and Firestone.
“It fits my eye,” Woods said. “Golf courses like this, where the shape is very simple – it’s not target golf, and I’ve always liked that.”
And then there’s that certain indefinable characteristic that rises for some golfers at some places, as when the golf gods smile warmly and incubate and nourish rising careers. Such as interesting rulings that shed their warmth – line of sight relief from a intruding scoreboard that wasn’t in the way, for example, and a ball hit over the clubhouse into a pieman’s cart, with nary a white stake to be seen, and a return to a blessed drop. That, as the saying goes, is golf.
Woods has never – can’t ever –be far from the Thanksgiving Night Massacre, and of course, it is as much a part of him and his game as Brett Favre’s ankle and jeans sales. The subject was brushed in ever so gently here.
“Do you feel,” he was asked, “that with all the distractions [that’s the current euphemism for the Massacre] that have gone on in your life, that it’s been hardest for you to focus on golf at any point in your career this year?”
“Yeah, it’s been difficult,” Woods said, fielding the clumsy, stumbling statement. “It’s been a trying time for a lot of people who are friends of mine and who know me.”
Whether it’s the aura of the friendly, fertile acreage of Firestone or some other mystery, it was lost on the questioner that Woods didn’t answer his question. Except in terms of other people. But he did allow: “Well, it’s just been a little bit more difficult this year than it has in years past, with all the attention and all the questions and all the demands. So it’s been kind of – altered a few things, and as I said, things are normalizing, and that’s a good sign.”
The focus, the concentration, the frustrations with the putter, and things of that nature – of a playing nature, that is – are improving, he says. Which, taken with everything else in the Wednesday session, leads inexorably to the question that has to be asked. But wasn’t. Some questions, it would seem just aren’t asked.
But there was no need to ask it: Are you going to win this thing?
Is he Tiger Woods? Is this Firestone?
If he doesn't win this one, his magic number is 9-1-1.
Return to Man About Golf archives