It was a quiet week on the PGA Tour, which now hits two big back-to-back events at Firestone and Valhalla. The LPGA experimented with their new International Crown event. But much of the talk still revolved around Rory and Tiger, whose position for September's Ryder Cup is tenuous. Here's your Monday morning golf roundup.
Unsociable Tiger Woods dumps Charles Barkley
Tiger Woods changed his cell phone number the day after his infamous 2009 car accident and, as of last week apparently, had yet to share his updated contact information with Charles Barkley.
"We’re not friends anymore," NBA Hall of Famer Barkley told a caller to Philadelphia’s Mike Missanelli Show on 97.5 FM The Fanatic.
Barkley said back in 2011 that he and Woods chatted weekly for 15 years until communications abruptly ceased after Tiger’s sex scandal went public. Over the intervening years, the 1993 league MVP has commented about the 14-time major champion who was "like a brother" to him, at one point suggesting Woods grow a pair to defend himself against criticism.
Barkley, who channeled Tiger-hater Rick Reilly on Conan earlier this year when he called Woods "cheap," offered additional insight on Friday into what made his former friend tick.
"Well, I think that when you’re as great as he has been, and this probably is a negative at some point, like he was so consumed with being the greatest golfer ever, he wasn’t a very sociable guy," Barkley said. "Even when he was a friend of mine, he wasn’t a very sociable guy. He just had a one-track mind. He just wanted to break Jack Nicklaus’ record.
"Golf is just a game. Your life don't suck," said Barkley, who, unlike Woods’ good pal Michael Jordan never won a championship. "But I think when you put yourself in that situation where your whole life revolves around how you're doing on a golf course, you're gonna develop a negative attitude to a certain degree, instead of saying, 'I've actually got it pretty good.’ It's like people who say I never won a championship. I understand that. I accept that. But it ain't like I'm sitting around saying, 'Oh my God, my life sucks. This is so miserable.’"
Rory makes the cover of SI, trails Tiger by double digits
Tiger could definitely say, "Been there, done that," but we’re guessing the former world No. 1 harbors just a little bit of jealousy over Rory McIlroy once again gracing the cover of Sports Illustrated as the latest winner of a grand slam event.
(Photo: Sports Illustrated)
The three-time major winner, after his wire-to-wire British Open victory, opens SI for the third time by our count. And while McIlroy’s arduous workout routine may rival that of Woods, Michael Bamberger writes in his cover story that comparisons between the two superstars are inevitable but likely off base given Rory’s far more mellow approach to the game.
Still, while Woods may hold a 14-3 advantage over McIlroy when it comes to major Ws, he has an even greater edge when it comes to SI covers, unofficially leading his heir apparent 22 (23, if you count SI for Kids) to 3.
Colbert on Wozilroy split: "Breakups are the ultimate PED"
McIlroy and his ex have been doing rather well since he broke off his engagement to Caroline Wozniacki in May, as Stephen Colbert noted last week. After Rory lifted his first Claret Jug on the same day that his ex earned her first W of the year, Colbert determined that "breakups are the ultimate performance-enhancing drug."
Ground control to Captain Tom: Pick Tiger
Tiger wants on the team and while U.S. Ryder Cup skipper Tom Watson may be taking a wait-and-see attitude about whether Woods has anything to offer the squad, Jack Nicklaus would "absolutely" use one of three wild-card picks on the closest challenger to his majors record.
"I couldn't imagine [Woods] not being on a Ryder Cup team," Nicklaus said during a recent teleconference ahead of next week’s PGA Championship, "unless he does absolutely nothing in recovering from his game between now and then."
Woods, with a less-than-spiffy 13-17-3 record in Ryder Cup play and ranking 70th in Cup points, has shown little in his two post-back surgery starts, missing the cut at Congressional and answering critics’ questions to kick off the British Open only to raise additional ones with his 69th-place finish at Hoylake. Scheduled to play in the Bridgestone later this week and the PGA, Tiger would need top-three finishes in both tourneys to qualify for one of the nine automatic spots, according to PGA.com.
Nicklaus would hand Tiger a berth even before the results from Firestone and Valhalla are tabulated.
"I don't care what he does between now and then. If Tiger wants to play, I would certainly choose him," Nicklaus said. "My guess is that Tom feels pretty much the same way. Tom would certainly like to have Tiger on his team and I think anybody in their right mind, unless he just doesn't want to play or doesn't think he could play, would choose him."
U.S. players bounced early from International Crown, seek format changes
After her top-seeded U.S. team failed to make it to the final day of the inaugural International Crown event last week, world No. 1 Stacy Lewis offered a critique of the current format and defended her decision to remain on the sidelines for Saturday’s deciding match.
"It’s disappointing. We wanted to be out here today, we wanted to be playing," Lewis told Golf Channel on Sunday from Caves Valley Golf Club in Owings Mills, Md., as she watched the remaining teams contend for the title after South Korea upset her team in a sudden-death playoff for a wild-card spot a day earlier. "We all kind of look back over the last few days and say ‘what if, what if,’ and it came down to one putt from any one of us … and that’s what’s disappointing."
On Sunday, before Spain won the trophy, LPGA commissioner Michael Whan told Golf Channel he would entertain feedback about changing the format, which Lewis suggested would be a good idea.
"It’s hard to say; is the format right or is it wrong? There’s a lot of opinions you can have on it," said Lewis, who noted her squad was just two points off the lead when South Korea sent her and her mates packing. "The points were just so close … That’s what was so disappointing to us is we were so close.
"Is it right, is it wrong, who knows?" she repeated. "There will be some tweaks for the next one, but what it comes down to is you’ve got to play better golf and that’s it."
Lewis had no second thoughts about the lineup for Saturday’s playoff, noting that Lexi Thompson and Cristie Kerr were playing well together and had the momentum heading to the par-5 16th hole for the chance to move on to Sunday.
"They [Thompson and Kerr] won both their matches early the last two days, Paula [Creamer] and I were struggling, we were going all the way to 18, we were tired, we had just lost a really hard match," Lewis said, rattling off the reasons why she chose to cheer rather than play.
"I’m not going to insist, because I’m the No. 1 player in the world, that I have to be out there; that’s just not me," Lewis said. "I wanted to do what was best for the team … There’s no regrets there."
In any case, it was certainly not the outcome the home team was hoping for, in the match-play format that involves four golfers from each of eight countries, after losing last year’s Solheim Cup by a whopping 18-10 margin.
The Americans, without the services of U.S. Women’s Open winner Michelle Wie or Women’s British Open victor Mo Martin, who were ineligible due to roster deadlines, dug themselves a deep hole early, when Taiwan took the opening two matches on Thursday. A split with Thailand meant a sudden-death playoff on Saturday with the Koreans for the hosts, who will have until the second International Crown in 2016 to lick their wounds.