Woods Maintains His Cloak of Secrecy

A feature on Tiger Woods that aired on CBS’ “60 Minutes” Sunday night was fairly revealing, considering how guarded he is about his private life.

Rick Schwartz learned firsthand about that privacy when he was working as a reporter on the TV magazine show “Extra” and did a feature on Earl Woods, Tiger’s father, in 1998, a year after Tiger had won his first Masters.

Schwartz and a camera crew visited Earl’s home in Cypress, as well as the home of Woods’ mother, Kultida, in Tustin Ranch. After the crew was done shooting in Tustin, Kultida invited Schwartz in for lemonade and showed him her shrine to her son -- pictures, trophies and lots of memorabilia.

“One picture stood out,” Schwartz said. “It was of Tiger the night he won his first Masters. He was curled up in bed in a rented Augusta house, sound asleep, arms wrapped tightly around his first green jacket.

“I asked if I could bring our cameraman in just to shoot that one picture. Kultida smiled and said there was more of a chance of me winning the Masters.”

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Trivia time: Michelle Wie, who will play in this week’s Kraft Nabisco Championship, competed in her first LPGA major in the 2003 tournament at Mission Hills in Rancho Mirage when she was 13. She played in the final group on the final day with Annika Sorenstam and Patricia Meunier-Lebouc. How did Wie fare?

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Good driving a necessity: Wie told Time magazine’s Jeff Chu that she recently played nine holes of golf with Condoleezza Rice.

“I don’t really remember everything,” Wie said. “It was such a blur, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s the secretary of State.’ They put me in charge of driving her around [in the golf cart]. I was like, ‘If I crash, the secretary of State goes down with me.’ ”

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From bad to worse: Of Memphis’ loss to UCLA in the men’s NCAA basketball tournament Saturday, David Climer of the Tennessean of Nashville wrote:

“Memphis wanted a berth in the Final Four in the worst way. And that’s how they went about their basketball business -- in the worst way. With their worst shooting, their worst ball-handling, their worst decision-making.”

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Looking back: On this day in 1992, Christian Laettner made one of the most famous shots in NCAA tournament history, a 15-foot turnaround jumper at the buzzer to give defending champion Duke a 104-103 overtime victory over Kentucky and a fifth consecutive trip to the Final Four.

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Trivia answer: Wie shot a final-round 76 and finished ninth. Meunier-Lebouc, a native of Dijon, France, won the event, beating Sorenstam by a stroke.

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And finally: David Thomas in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram: “Not to sound like everything is all about me, but these dramatic NCAA tournament finishes would be a lot more enjoyable if they weren’t knocking out the teams I picked to advance.”

He added: “The way this year’s tournament has gone, the only people who still have a chance to win their office pool are the ones who made bad picks.”

Larry Stewart can be reached at larry.stewart@latimes.com.