Woods Playing Cards Right in Sponsor Game

Take it to the bank, Tiger Woods’ favorite place. He is playing this week, but there’s no way he will win the PGA Tour’s MasterCard Colonial in Fort Worth. That’s because Woods is in Germany, where he is trying to win the Deutsche Bank-SAP Open.

Now, for someone gunning for his second consecutive triumph at the U.S. Open, it’s a long way from Heidelberg to Tulsa, Okla., but pay no attention to geography. Tiger’s schedule is carefully constructed to prepare him to clear any major obstacles in his path--and to make his sponsors happy.

Let’s break it down. . . . Woods is receiving a $2-million appearance fee to play the European Tour event in Germany, which is reason enough. But Tiger is also making sponsor American Express happy because he isn’t playing in the rival credit card tournament, the MasterCard event in Texas.

Next Thursday and Friday, he will satisfy another sponsor when he is at Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Ore., for the dedication of a new building named after him.

After that, Woods will play in the Memorial, where he is the defending champion, then take a week off before the Open at Southern Hills, June 14-17, in Tulsa.

There is heavy speculation that Woods will play the following week at the Buick Classic at Westchester Country Club, although he doesn’t have to commit to play for weeks.

Why would he play Westchester?

Buick is a Woods sponsor and, under the terms of his five-year, $25-million deal, he needs to play at least two of the four Buick-named events each year.

He already played the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines in February, so he could fulfill his deal with Buick before the end of June. Last year, he played the Buick Open at Warwick Hills Country Club in Grand Blanc, Mich. The last time he played both Buick Classic and Buick Open was in 1997.

The Buick Open is the week before the PGA Championship, the same situation as last year, when he was 11th at the Buick and then won the PGA.

So if that means anything, if it’s going to be part of the schedule planning, it remains to be seen. In the meantime, please call the minute there’s a Buick U.S. Open.

Don’t Blame the USGA

News item: Nancy Lopez shoots a 78 and fails to qualify for the U.S. Open, prompting the media to rip the USGA for not giving her a special exemption.

Reaction: You have to be kidding.

So Lopez, 44, broke into sobs after failing to qualify last week in Georgia, a circumstance that fit nicely into all those shame-on-the-USGA stories.

But the fact is that the USGA was absolutely correct.

Has everyone forgotten that the USGA had already given Lopez special exemptions into the Open in 1999 and 2000? That she missed the cut in 1998 and missed it again in 1999 and tied for 46th last year?

Besides, there is absolutely no disgrace in having to compete in an Open qualifier. It is called the Open, of course. Players play their way in, that’s the way it works.

For instance, who is bigger than Arnold Palmer? He played in eight sectional qualifiers (without success) when his exempt days for the Open were through.

Greg Norman, Ben Crenshaw, Johnny Miller, they’ve all taken their turns at trying to get into the Open through qualifying.

And remember that Orville Moody went through local and then sectional qualifying on his way to winning the 1969 U.S. Open . . . and that Steve Jones was a sectional qualifier in 1996 before he won the Open at Oakland Hills.

Lopez has won 48 times in her Hall of Fame career, but not since 1997. She hasn’t won an Open, but she was a runner-up four times. Liselotte Neumann, the 1988 U.S. Open champion, was the only player to receive a special exemption this year.

Youth Is Served

Meanwhile, consider the case of Morgan Pressel, 5 feet 3, 12 years old and a seventh-grader in Boca Raton, Fla.

She qualified for the Open with a two-under 70 Monday at Bear Lakes Country Club in North Palm Beach. She is not the youngest qualifier, though. Beverly Klass was 10 in 1967.

Pressel, who will turn 13 Wednesday, said she was nervous on the first tee.

“Sitting there, shaking over my driver, it was like, ‘Yikes!’ ” she said.

“There were no expectations on me to qualify. I just went out there for the experience.”

So a 12-year-old can qualify but a Hall of Famer can’t.

Yikes, indeed.

By the way, young Morgan’s caddie was her uncle, former tennis touring pro Aaron Krickstein.

Money News

There are more rumblings of player discontent on the Senior PGA Tour involving the poor television ratings on CNBC. Some players are worried because their endorsement deals are tied to ratings numbers, which are so low the players fear it’s going to cost them when their deals come up for renewal.

Nothing Strange

You have to hand it to Curtis Strange, who clearly has a handle on this Ryder Cup captain thing.

Said Strange: “If they play good, we all look great. If they don’t, I look dumb.”

Get a Grip, Please

In a press release this week, the European Tour confirmed that Nick Faldo is going to play the Scottish Open at Loch Lomond, Scotland, and quoted Faldo saying this about the course:

” . . . by far and away the best golf course in Great Britain by miles.”

Yeah, that Old Course layout at St. Andrews can’t measure up, can it? And Muirfield and Turnberry are pretty ratty too.

The Daly News

For what it’s worth, John Daly says he has lost about 50 pounds in the last year and hasn’t had a drink in at least nine months.

Numbers Game

Also for what it’s worth, attendance for Sunday’s fourth round of the Byron Nelson Classic was 85,000.

Even though Woods hasn’t officially committed to play at Westchester, tournament director Peter Mele says he’ll cut off ticket sales at about 35,000 because the course simply can’t hold more.

How Low Can You Go?

The shocking part isn’t that Seve Ballesteros is 1,114th in the official world rankings, it’s that they keep track that far down. What do they use? Sonar?

Monty, Monty, Monty

This just in: The early leader in the Worst-Shot-of-the-Year Category, Major Player Division, is (envelope, please) . . . Colin Montgomerie.

Last Friday at the Belfry, he topped his tee shot on the par-five third hole, delivering the ball about 125 yards down the fairway at the height of about, oh, three feet. Good thing no squirrels got in the way.

Montgomerie, who is not having a good year, immediately blamed some poor guy pushing a cart with a scoreboard on it at the next hole, about 150 yards away, for distracting him.

Hey, it’s possible. Anyway, few can figure out what’s wrong with Monty and, apparently, neither can he. It has gotten so bad that he has actually started practicing a ton, a revealing fact in light of his well-known allergic reactions to both the putting green and the range.

Montgomerie is still ranked No. 7 in the world, but in the last few weeks he missed the cut at the Masters and at the Portuguese Open, pulled out of the French Open, where he was the defending champion, and tied for 12th on Sunday at the Benson & Hedges at the Belfry.

As it stands now, he is No. 11 in the European Ryder Cup point standings, which means he has to pull into the top 10 or force Sam Torrance to use a captain’s pick on him--something Torrance surely never considered even a remote possibility.

Montgomerie is in the midst of a busy schedule, playing six consecutive weeks, through the U.S. Open.

Tiger Update

Through April 1, NBC’s ratings for tournaments with Woods in contention were 52% higher than ratings for tournaments in which he either didn’t play or didn’t contend. And those at CBS were 26% higher, not counting the Masters.

Then It’s Halitosis

News item: Peter Thomson delivers a paper at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews international golf conference on the declining standards of etiquette, urging all professional and amateur world governing bodies to help stamp out spitting on the golf course.

Reaction: Scratching is next.

Oh, Sure

Remember this quote from Sergio Garcia, about playing last week at the Nelson and this week at the Colonial instead of returning to Europe and collecting appearance fees: “Money is not a thought to me.”

That would make you totally unique, Sergio.

Tune In, Turn On

Also, don’t expect to see a rematch between Garcia and Woods in the prime time television special event, the Battle of Bighorn. Garcia defeated Woods last year and insiders say Woods put his foot down and said no to another one-on-one match because he won’t tolerate losing his mental edge against a peer, even if it’s in nothing more than a made-for-TV event.

No dates have been set for Bighorn II, but ABC sources leaked a potential July 30 date, which is a Monday.

And if it’s not going to be a one-on-one format, chances are Bighorn II will be some sort of team thing, such as Woods and David Duval or possibly Mark O’Meara, maybe even playing against Annika Sorenstam and Karrie Webb--every single one an IMG client.

The Big Three

They are extremely happy at Royal County Down in Northern Ireland, where Jack Nicklaus, Palmer and Gary Player will play the Senior British Open for the first time, July 26-29. Neither Nicklaus nor Palmer has played the course.

Seniors: A Leaky Boat

Bruce Lietzke turns 50 on July 20, at which time he will dive headlong into the Senior Tour.

This is downright stunning.

Lietzke says he may play as many as 28 tournaments a year as a senior. If so, then somebody may have to prop him up because he hasn’t played even 20 PGA Tour events a year in the last 12.

His devotion to inactivity is legendary. During the off-season, he doesn’t touch a golf club, a fact that his caddie decided to test a few years ago by placing a banana peel under the head cover of one of Lietzke’s clubs at the end of the year. Yes, the thing was still there in the spring when the head cover came off.

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The Top 5

The five PGA Tour pros who are the most under par in 2001 and the number of rounds they have played:

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Player - Par Rounds 1. Tiger Woods 114 36 2. Joe Durant 109 49 3. Vijay Singh 108 44 4. Hal Sutton 105 53 5. Mark Calcavecchia 101 40

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