Tiger's cheerleading gesture and a Scheffler jail question | Weekend 9

Tiger Woods at the 2024 Open Championship.Getty Images

Welcome! Where are you, you ask. I’m calling this the Weekend 9. Think of it as a spot to warm up for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We’ll have thoughts. We’ll have tips. We’ll have tweets. But just nine in all, though sometimes maybe more and sometimes maybe less. As for who I am? The paragraphs below tell some of the story. I can be reached at nick.piastowski@golf.com.

Tiger Woods is back next week.

Not back back, as his return from injury is still unknown. (Should you be curious, he is listed among the Masters entrants on the Masters website.) But in some capacity, he’ll be around the Genesis Invitational at venerable Riviera CC, where he’s the tournament host. Maybe he’ll be on the grounds all week. Maybe for just a few days. Maybe no days, though you’ll still see and hear his name. Whatever the case may be, you’ll probably be interested. If he talks, you’ll wonder about his opinions, even though his words are by and large carefully measured. If he walks, you’ll study his gait In an attempt to get a read on when he might come back. In short, Woods’ presence is enormous.

And that’s occasionally made me think of Scottie Scheffler, who’ll also be at Riv, and who also is playing this week.

And then I start to think of the NBA, which, notably, is hosting its all-star game on Sunday.

Maybe there’s something here, or maybe it’s just cabin fever, but here goes: The thought deals with mega stars — and following the mega stars. When mega stars leave, mega-star voids are created, and folks almost immediately measure potential mega stars against the mega star they’re replacing, in the process perhaps ignoring that the replacements may be doing something great. Put another way, it’s much easier to follow a non-mega star. The NBA felt that post-Michael Jordan.

And I’ve wondered if that’s why there’s such a conversation around ‘what makes Scottie’ great, when in fact he’s coming directly after Woods. Last week, I asked Dave Berri about it all. He’s an author and teacher on sports economics, and my question was whether Woods’ standing was so enormous that it was diminishing current players.

“There’s a certain audience that came to golf because of Tiger Woods,” Berri started. “You can’t replicate that if you’re not bringing in other people who are similar to him, so that audience may not stay with you. So there’s that. I don’t think you can change that easily. …

“You can’t make a Tiger Woods. That was a pretty unique event, right? A father who desperately wanted his son to be a pro golfer. But how do you get that to happen? In order to get that to happen again, you’ve got to go find somebody. Who wants to go invest in that, right? Who wants to train somebody from a very early age to be a pro golfer, and they have to have the resources to do that.”

Still, Berri said, stars come, stars go and stars come again.

“In sports, there’s always going to be another winner,” he said.

“And therefore the winner attracts the audience. Like Tom Brady leaves the NFL, well, what’s going to replace him? Well, next year there’ll be another Super Bowl winner and there’ll be a quarterback on that team and then they’ll be the Tom Brady.

News

“And you’ll just keep doing this.”

Should Scheffler continue his dominant run, we’ll see if that’s true.

Let’s see if we can find eight more items for the Weekend 9.

2. I also asked Berri if a player being thought of as being ‘nice’ would affect their appeal.

“‘Very nice’ doesn’t work,” he said.

An instruction tip for your weekend

3. I thought the exchange below between Justin Rose and GOLF’s James Colgan was good. It came before this week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, and Colgan’s question is in italics.

Justin, knowing what you know now about your career, I’m just curious what your advice would be to yourself at the very beginning.

“Yeah, well, at the very beginning I think obviously there was definitely — well, let’s call it the moment where I finished fourth in The Open as an amateur and turned pro off the back of that.

“Although I didn’t turn pro off the back of that, there was a decision that had been made quite a long time before the Open to turn pro. But I think off the back of that Open Championship, I think obviously expectations went up and suddenly there was such an importance in my own head of getting a European Tour card, like being on Tour.

“I think that if I look back at it now, 45 years old, didn’t quite appreciate how long a career is. I think at a tender young age of 17, 18, 19, 20, wherever you’re playing your golf, you want to be playing in an environment that’s obviously challenging you to be better. You want to be playing at a level where you’re still being pushed, but you want to play in an environment that maybe is kind of still giving you that freedom to play the game, that freedom to grow.

“I felt like I just maybe put too much emphasis on having to have it right there and now and not really thinking, OK, this is just what’s good for my game, what’s good for my progression, what’s good for my learning, because if you keep stacking the little gains on top of one another over time, like the compounding of that takes you to a pretty good place.

“So just my advice to myself would be a career’s a long time.”

Another instruction tip for your weekend

4. I thought the video below, from GOLF Top 100 Teacher Cameron McCormick, was good.

A golf story that interests me

5. I thought the video below, featuring longtime pro Steve Flesch from a recent episode of the “Second Shot All-American” podcast, was interesting. In the video, Flesch said he played with Woods all four rounds at the 2000 National Car Rental Golf Classic Disney — and they had an exchange on the 72nd hole.

“One of the easiest, nicest guys in the world to play with because he was a guy who recognized good shots and he would compliment you,” Flesch said. “It isn’t visible so much when you see him on TV — it looks like he’s Mr. Stoic and game face and all that, but you’d be walking down the fairway and he’d be like, ‘Hey, nice shot, Fleschy,’ or ‘Good putt,’ or ‘Good birdie.’ Very subtle.

“But the 2000 Disney tournament, I played great the first two days. It was at the Magnolia course at Disney World and I think I shot a pair of 66s or something starting out and I’m paired with Tiger on Saturday. And I’m like, well, OK — it’s only my third year on tour — I’m like, this is what it’s about. But I figured in my head at night, if I can beat Tiger the next two days, I’ll win the golf tournament. Fair enough assumption, right? Like, OK. Well, the next day I go out and I think I shoot five- or six-under and I’m two ahead of Tiger. So, I mean, he shot probably 67 on Saturday. We’re in the final group again on Sunday. And I’m again, can I beat Tiger? Well, going to the back nine, I played well. I was two or three ahead of him and I get to the last hole and I’m two or three ahead of him.

“Well, this guy Duffy Waldorf, who you’ve all probably heard about, he shot 62 that day. I’m like, son of a — I’m like, you got to be. Here I did what I thought I needed to do — beat Tiger — but Duffy’s a shot ahead of me. So I got to birdie the last hole to get in the playoffs. So I hit a decent drive, hit a good shot in there — I think I hit like a 6 or 7 on there, about 8 feet, 10 feet behind the hole. And I’m big on reading the putts from the other side of the hole. I don’t get as good a read from behind the ball as I do from the other side of the hole. And I’m always reading my putts while other guys are putting so I’m not taking a lot of time.

“Anyway, I walk around the other side of the hole to read my putt. And Tiger’s kind of about 15 feet on the same line as me and he walks around too. So he’s right behind me. He’s kind of right over my shoulder. And I have a picture of this somewhere. But all I’m thinking about is my line, right? And all of a sudden I hear him say, ‘Hey, knock it in, Flesch. You’ve played great. You deserve it.’ And I’m like, ‘What?’ I’m looking like, ‘Did he just say that?’ He knew he wasn’t going to win. And he was just like, ‘Dude, knock it in. You deserve it. You played well.’ And I’m like, ‘Man, that’s pretty freaking cool.’”

Another golf story that interests me

6. I thought the video below, taken from the Bob Does Sports YouTube page, was interesting. In it, host Robby Berger asked about Scheffler’s arrest before the second round of the 2024 PGA Championship and whether Scheffler knew it would be a big story.

“So, when I was sitting in the cell — like they put me in like a holding cell, I think — and so, I’m in a cell by myself and that was the cell that I stretched In,” Scheffler said. “But if you went to the front of the cell and looked out that way [points], I could see a TV and I saw myself on the TV.

“So that’s when I was like, “Holy smokes.’ First, my head’s still spinning. I’m like, ‘How the heck am I in here?” But then I saw myself on the TV and then I saw they delayed it and I was like, ‘Oh, maybe I can get out of here in time and I can still play.’”

Good news for your weekend

7. The video below, taken from the “Good Inside with Dr. Becky” podcast, was good. In it, Tony Finau described an interaction he had with his dad while growing up.

“My dad was tough on us,” Finau said. “He was a drill sergeant. There was no throwing clubs. There was no attitude. That was the first thing — clean up the attitude. So anyway, I’m a freshman in high school and I’m playing in the state championship of golf, high school golf. And I’m in the final group. I’m leading the tournament and I get to the last hole with — I’m a freshman and a senior I’m playing with and we’re neck to neck for the state title. We both hit it in the fairway.

“Anyways, I have a 5-foot par to tie and go to a playoff as a freshman to win state championships. I proceed to miss the putt. I knew the situation. I missed the putt and because I missed the putt, I was extremely disappointed in myself. I tried to backhand the next one in and I missed that. And then I try and tap in the next one and I missed that. So I five-putted the last green of the state championship tournament of my freshman year to win state. And so I finished second place, which for most freshmen, that’d be a really nice finish. For me, I looked at it and said, ‘You’re supposed to win this.’ Everybody was around the green watching and I was just totally embarrassed by how I acted and what I did.

“I’ll never forget the drive home. I got in the car and pretty much silence all the way home. And my dad just said to me, ‘Son, are you OK?’ That’s pretty much all he said. He may have thrown in a couple other things, but I’m getting a little emotional just because I still remember that moment. And it was like, I’m waiting for him to scold me. I’m just waiting for him to lay the law down. And I was embarrassed because of how I acted and feeling like I should have won the tournament. I was defeated. I defeated my own self and I’m expecting this thrashing in the car and just an absolute scolding and it was the opposite.

“And so I think what I learned from that and that I try to take with me as a parent is your kids need you there as someone that can help them recover and heal and strengthen them.”