While most of the United States slept, Tiger Woods met the media at St. Andrews, a place where he's dominated and won two Open Championships. Given his improved performance two weeks ago at Greenbrier, this press conference was a bit more pleasant for Tiger than his U.S. Open talk that came two weeks after that career-worst Memorial disaster.
But he still fielded several questions about whether he still has the game to compete at the majors. One interrogator even went so far as to ask whether Tiger considered hanging it up during some of those dark days this year. There were rumors swirling that there was actual retirement talk in Woods' camp when he took that hiatus to recover from those embarrassing chipping yips. But Tiger was obviously not going there with this particular question, and responded with the above terse AARP quip.
Separate and apart from that retirement question is the reality of Tiger's dwindling odds to chase down Jack Nicklaus' majors record. It's been more than seven years since Tiger last won a major, and he needs four just to tie Nicklaus' mark of 18. He was asked:
Do you think much about Jack's record these days or have you accepted in your own mind that it's a dream too far off at this point?
Tiger, of course, was still defiant.
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