Proposal Was Nervous Time for Woods

He already has won the PGA Tour player of the year award for the fifth time in a row, so what do you get the guy who has everything? It’s going to be a mystery for a while, because newly engaged Tiger Woods isn’t registered yet and hasn’t set a date to wed Elin Nordegren.

“I’m taking it one step at a time there,” Woods said Tuesday at Sherwood Country Club, where he will serve as host of the 16-player, $5-million Target World Challenge that begins Thursday. “As far as any plans, we’re just enjoying it for a while, because obviously it’s a big step. We’ll set a date sometime in the future, but we haven’t really thought about that yet.”

Woods became engaged last month when he proposed to Nordegren, the former nanny to Jesper Parnevik’s family, while vacationing on a wild-game reserve in South Africa.

As far as nervous moments go, Woods said it was one of his biggest, certainly tougher than the knee-knocking, 15-footer he made on the third playoff hole with Ernie Els with the Presidents Cup at stake on the last day.

“The words [were tougher] because I’ve never had to do that before,” he said. “Even if you say it right, even if you say it absolutely perfectly, those four words, you could always still get denied.

“If you hit a great putt in a tournament, it’s in. It’s not going to lip out. You know you’re not going to be denied. It’s amazing how many different things go through your mind at that moment.”

Kultida Woods, his mother, thinks Tiger made the right choice.

“She’s nice, and smart, very smart,” Woods’ mother said.

Woods said he rehearsed his proposal many times.

“I’ve been very lucky to have met the right person for me,” he said. “You don’t ever want to blow a special moment like that and have it come out totally wrong. In a golf tournament, you just ‘yip’ it. You want to say it just perfect, and it came out good.”

About the only “yip” in the entire proceedings was the manner in which the news of Woods’ engagement became known. Woods and Nordegren posed for pictures at the reserve after his proposal, and Woods says he believed the owner of the property would use the photos. Instead, he said, they were posted on the reserve’s Internet site. Woods hadn’t even told his parents before the news broke.

“We tried to just keep it as private as possible. Obviously that didn’t turn out to be the case,” he said. “Now that it’s basically all behind us, we can just sit back and enjoy it.”

There is also a chance for Woods to be able to reflect on his results in 2003, a five-victory product that might not have been one of his most virtuoso performances, but one that still had no equal.

Four days after his Target tournament last December, Woods had arthroscopic knee surgery and didn’t play again until the second week of February. He wound up winning at Torrey Pines in his return, and twice more in his next three tournaments.

“There was a lot of doubt in my game because I didn’t know how I was going to respond,” he said.

There has been a great deal said about his failure to win a major title for the first time in five years, but Woods had 12 top 10s, was out of the top 20 only twice, won five times and posted the second-lowest scoring average of all time. He also navigated a course through straits involving his equipment and believes he is on the right path with a new Nike Ignite driver after switching from a prototype back to his old Titleist model.

“Now I’m with everybody else off the tees,” he said.

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David Toms, replaced by Robert Allenby, may be out for as many as eight weeks after having wrist surgery.... Woods contributed $5 million to the estimated $25-million Tiger Woods Learning Center in Anaheim and said he expects it to be ready in the late fall of 2005, which is one year later than the original target. Woods said about half of the funds needed for the project have been committed.... Padraig Harrington, who won last year’s tournament, will play the first round with Kenny Perry. Woods is paired with Jay Haas.