Jared CohenFor the first time since 2001, Tiger Woods played a practice round at the TPC Scottsdale in preparation for the Waste Management Phoenix Open. Tiger met with the media on Tuesday after the round and addressed his hole-in-one at the 16th, the fan who threw the orange, his focus for this week, the Super Bowl and of course, his once missing tooth.
Memories of the hole-in-one: The hole-in-one in ’97…old school raised the roof, that was the thing in the day. Then on top of that, just smelling and hearing the beer hit behind me on the tee box. It was different, obviously a different set up then to see all this beer flying was crazy. The more eerie part was when we played 17 and 18, everybody didn’t really care.
The potential for low scores: I’d take that right now, but I don’t think that with the weather we are supposed to have…the rain, cold, wind, I don’t see it going to be as low. Plus the changes they have made out here. The number to carry a lot of these bunkers are just barely out of reach for some of these guys, even the big boys. You’ll be playing to the side of them instead of over the top.
The part of his game coming along the quickest: My driving has come along a lot faster. I’m a lot longer than I thought I could ever be again. My speed is way back up, and that’s fun. I am touching numbers that I did 15 years ago, so that’s cool.
Area of work this week: I think I need to work on a little this week is getting the speed of these greens…In your head, you assume hard greens with a lot of spring to them are going to be fas, but they’re not fast. They spring but they putt slow. So I need to do some work to overcome that mental hurdle to make sure that I can hit the puts hard even though I know coming into the greens I have to throw the ball straight up into the air, play for a big hop.
Incident with his tooth: I was looking down and all the camera guys are below me on their knees and moving around (at winners podium where Skier Lindsey Vonn celebration was to take place), trying to get pictures because she is hugging people, saying congratulations to other racers as they were coming down. Some already finished, some were in the changing area. Dude with a video camera on his shoulder right in front of me, kneeling, stood up and turned and caught me right in the mouth. He chipped that one, cracked the other one. And so then, you know, I’m trying to keep this thing (the mask) so the blood is not all over the place and luckily he hit the one I had a root canal on. That’s the one that chipped. But the other one had to be fixed, as well, because it had cracks all the way through it.
Going to the Super Bowl?: I’d like to. Thats the plan. I just with my Raiders were there, but they’re not. I am not happy about that pick we got either. Fell down on that pick.
