Just listened to the Arnold Palmer presser at Bay Hill. I say “listened” because for the life of me I can’t get these live video feeds on PGATOUR.com to work. They only play audio. I’ve upgraded my Flash player a million times, and even recited Shakespear backwards in Latin with a lampshade on my head, but still no video… A rant for another day (probably tomorrow).
Arnie answers questions about Tiger Woods, Tiger Woods, Tiger, Mr. Woods, The Masters, Tiger Woods, TW, Bay Hill, Eldrick and of course Tiger Woods
You just have to love the press right? Well, no. 24/27ths of the questions they asked Arnie were about Tiger Woods. Arnie did his best to politically correctly (huh?) dance around the personal stuff to basically say that you can never count Tiger out of the tournament. Translation: Tiger is playing poorly, but may find it.
Wisely, Arnie didn’t bite on any of the Tiger swing change questions.
Bites from Arnie not about Tiger
Of course, Arnie had to get in a Sam Saunders comment or two. Saunders is his grandson who he is doing the best he can to help out with his pro golf career.
Arnie’s comments on the course, Bay Hill, were probably the most useful of the bunch. He mentioned that the greens would be very hard and fast. Putting will be tough. Hitting greens without the ball running off into collection areas or roll-offs will be difficult. Arnie also mentioned that they’ll be penalizing errant drives as well as equally rewarding good drives with the size of the fairways and the depth of the rough. Translation: Arnie doesn’t want it to be just a bomber’s festival.
After two rounds at Bay Hill, Sean O’Hair is looking very solid at -8 and he’s got a three shot lead over Jason Gore. Tiger sits five shots back.
How good would Tiger Woods be if he could hit a fairway?
Tiger sits in 5th place so far. Not bad for somebody who hit is averaging only 50% fairways hit, tied for 65th place. The other parts of Tiger’s game are so good, he can still contend when his driving accuracy is so bad.
Really smoke and mirrors so far – a.k.a. amazing short game
Tiger’s short game has been amazing so far. That’s the only way he could hit 50% of his greens in regulation and still be in 5th place. YES, 50%. He’s hit 18 out of 36 possible greens so far. Miss that many greens and that’s how you can log only 24 and 25 putts per round respectively.
Long weekend
It is a long weekend ahead for Gore and O’Hair. Tiger is well within range on a course he loves and plays so well. It will be interesting to see how things pan out. I’ll be watching closely.
The best play Tiger Woods has made today with his driver at Bay Hill so far (through 12), was when he used it to take two club lengths of relief from an electrical box.
Otherwise people in the gallery should be wearing safety equipment.
I’ve got a good pal named John Kim. John and I have had many a frosty beverage at golf events, chowed down on greasy chicken wings, and talked many hours on the phone and online about the golf industry. John runs a little golf site you may have heard of called PGA.com.
Please go over there now and check out my pal’s interview with The King, Arnold Palmer, host of this weeks Bay Hill Invitational.
Hey buddy, send some King Mojo over here will ya?
Let me take you back to February 15, 2009. Tiger hadn’t played on tour in roughly eight months. I predicted his upcoming schedule exactly:
Accenture Match Play is a good candidate for Tiger’s return…
Doral on March 12 is a strong candidate for Tiger to play, and the Arnold Palmer Inivitational March 26th is a very high probability in my estimation. Then Tiger would rest before the Masters Tournament on April 9th.
Tiger has now been confirmed for the Arnold Palmer Championship at Bay Hill next week. And I’d bet the farm and billions of dollars in bailout money he’ll skip the Houston Open, returning for The Masters…
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