PGA Tour—Where to Go without Tiger Woods

The weirdest thing in PGA Tour Beginning:

•  Hannah Suh of San Jose was named the Junior Golf Association of Northern California's girls player of the year at the organization's year-end tournament at the Links at Spanish Bay.
Kurt Kitayama of Chico was the boys player of the year.

Paige Lee of Folsom and Jonathan de los Reyes of Antioch won their respective divisions at the season-ending Tournament of Champions. Lee shot a 74, de los Reyes a 69.

•  Stanford announced the death of Cardinal golf legend Warren Berl. He died at his home in San Francisco on Nov. 22. He was 89.

Berl was a member of two national championship teams (1939 and 1941) and was the individual runner-up in 1941.

•  The PGA Tour announced recently that the Presidents Cup team competition held in October at Harding Park in San Francisco raised $4.2 million for charity.

What promises to be a very weird year for golf kicks off this week in Maui at the winners-only SBS Championship at Kapalua.

 

It's going to be weird because everybody connected to the PGA Tour — players, tournament directors, media, fans — will be talking about the indefinite leave of Tiger Woods until he decides to return to the tour. And then, when he inevitably returns, things will really get bizarre.

Will Tiger get booed? Will he get heckled? Will he still be universally cheered?

Nobody knows, but everybody will be searching for the answers. You think Tiger was closely scrutinized before? Forget it. The man won't be able to breathe without somebody snapping his picture.

 

At whatever tournament Woods chooses to begin his comeback, the place will be inundated with media, fans and paparazzi and will be written about on the front page of every paper in the nation.

 

And before that even happens, tournament directors around the country have to ask themselves a question that would have seemed like lunacy just six months ago: Do we want Tiger at our tournament?

 

That's no longer a no-brainer question.

 

What is certain is that the biggest PGA Tour event in our area, the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, doesn't have to worry about answering it for once. Weird, huh?

 

For years, the Monterey Peninsula Foundation and tournament chief Ollie Nutt have worked to get Woods back at Pebble Beach. Recently,
they even cut out the less-popular Poppy Hills from the tournament rotation and trimmed the field size in order to speed up rounds.

 

All of this was seen as a way to attract more of the top players to the event, especially Woods.

 

But because of the celebrity factor and the stunning locations, the AT&T can remain blissfully out of the fray. Woods doesn't like playing there, and they have done fine without him in the field. At last, a tournament can say it's Tigerproof and be proud.

 

Of course that doesn't help the rest of the tour schedule. Stops around the country will now be forced to sell their audiences a steady diet of Steve Stricker and Lucas Glover. Or hope that Phil Mickelson plays 35 events this year.

 

Maybe this is the big break that the LPGA has been waiting for; somebody has to make lemonade out of the PGA Tour's lemons.

 

If the long-awaited emergence of Stanford's own Michelle Wie happens this season, she could very easily step in for Woods on a national, and international, stage. That's a lot to ask normally, but never has there been an opening like this one for the "next" Tiger, in whatever forms that person might take.

 

Even if the LPGA takes a step forward though, the story will continue to be Woods' absence, then his return, then his success or lack of success when he returns.

 

It's enough to make a person long for the days before Woods burst on the scene.
 

Looking forward to 2010 Beginning