Woods Talks to Finchem

Tiger Woods is so upset with the PGA Tour, he says he is going to start his own tour.

“The Antarctica Tour,” he said.

Woods was in a joking mood Wednesday at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, where he had met with PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem to discuss Woods’ concerns about his marketing rights. Woods came away satisfied.

Asked what major points had been decided, Woods had a short answer.

“Pretty much everything,” he said.

Woods has been at odds with the PGA Tour over a laundry list of issues, principally the idea of implied endorsements and players’ rights to interactive media.

Woods met with Finchem for at least two hours Monday, a meeting that Woods considered a solid first step toward compromise on both sides.

“Certainly a lot of things we discussed came out a lot better than we thought,” Woods said. “Others, not as well.”

Woods said the tone of his talk with Finchem was the most positive aspect of the meeting and left the door open for further discussions.

There is no real timetable when he can get together again with Finchem, said Woods, who hosts the $3.5-million Williams World Challenge that begins today at Sherwood.

The PGA Tour issued a five-paragraph statement Wednesday that was textbook in its blandness, revealing almost nothing.

Woods was quoted as saying, in part: “I am grateful that Commissioner Finchem and I were able to meet on Monday. . . . It was important for us to meet face-to-face to gain a clearer understanding of each other’s business objectives.”

Also in the statement, Finchem said: “I was pleased with the very positive tone of my meeting with Tiger.”

Earl Woods was present at the Tiger-Finchem summit but couldn’t shed any light on the discussion.

“I haven’t had a chance to talk to Tiger about it,” the elder Woods said. “We simply have had no time to sit down and talk, one on one.”

That left the matter up to Tiger, who used the issue of a player’s Internet rights, a degree of which are controlled by the PGA Tour, to illustrate the depth and complexity of the entire matter.

“The Internet, we’ve never had it before,” Woods said. “The Internet has grown, and there are lot of different ways a player can do a lot for himself on the Internet. [Players] want to do some creative things for themselves.”

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Williams World Challenge

* Course: Sherwood Country Club (7,025 yards, par 72), Thousand Oaks.

* Purse: $3.5 million. Winner’s share: $1 million.

* TV: TNT (Today-Friday, 1-4 p.m.) and Ch. 4 (Saturday-Sunday, noon-3 p.m.).

* Field: Tiger Woods, Tom Lehman, David Duval, Vijay Singh, Fred Couples, Hal Sutton, Davis Love III, Sergio Garcia, Justin Leonard, Jesper Parnevik, Mark O’Meara and Stewart Cink.