Bolt Tips His Cap to Woods

Tommy Bolt won the 1958 U.S. Open at Southern Hills but admits he probably would not have won had Tiger Woods been in the field.

Bolt, who returned to Southern Hills this week as a visitor, says he thinks Woods is the best young player he has ever seen.

Better than the young Gary Player?

Better than the young Jack Nicklaus?

“Yeah, I think he’s better than they were,” Bolt said during a Wednesday interview with reporters. “Actually, Tiger’s dominating golf like [Ben] Hogan did in the early ‘50s. Hogan dominated golf from 1950 until 1955, pretty close to that. And Tiger Woods is doing exactly the same thing in his era.”

More on Tommy: Bolt was notorious for his temper, but says he wasn’t the only one. In fact, Bolt said he taught Arnold Palmer the correct way to throw a golf club.

“Arnold didn’t know which way to throw that thing when he first started playing,” Bolt said. “He’d throw it back this way, and then he would be back there picking it up. I told him, ‘Arnold, throw it down the fairway, we’ll pick it up on our way.’ ”

Bolt, on today’s players: “They’re spoiled, they don’t appreciate how good they have it. All the money that they have, flying in these jets all over the place. Every player out there owns a jet. They don’t go to the airport and get on the airplane, they go to the hangar and get in their jet.”

England’s Lee Westwood, who tied for fifth in the 2000 U.S. Open, says he thinks we won’t find out how good Woods really is until he goes through a slump.

“Tiger has never had a bad patch in his career and he may never have a bad patch in his career,” Westwood said. “But only then, more than getting married and having kids, then we’ll find out how good he is, and what kind of person he is, when he does go through a slump--if he should go through a slump--to see how he comes out of that at the other end.”

The United States Golf Assn. announced that the 2006 U.S. Senior Open Championship will be played at Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club near Portland, Ore., and the 2006 U.S. Amateur championship will be played at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minn.

It will be the sixth USGA championship to be held at Pumpkin Ridge. Woods won his third Amateur title there in 1996 when he defeated Steve Scott.

Hazeltine has hosted six previous USGA championships, including two U.S. Opens.