Here’s a new spin on a well-worn TV theme.
You have just matched the second-longest winning streak in the august history of PGA Tour competition, seemingly are playing better than at any point in your career and again have cemented your reputation as the greatest player in golf, bar none.
So the question is posed as the camera rolls: “Tiger Woods, you’ve just won for the ninth time worldwide in 2006. What are you going to do next?”
Hollywood scripting aside, it doesn’t look like the forthcoming answer will be, “I’m going to Disney World.”
Trouble is, nobody knows the real answer, including Woods, he says. When it comes to his next appearance in spikes, the world’s top player has volunteered not an inkling as to where he’ll next seek to pad one of the most memorable runs of his 10-year career.
After an emotional season capped by three exhausting weeks in Europe, Woods isn’t committing to anything except his own pillow — much less to playing in the Lake Buena Vista event where he won his second tour title as a scrawny 21-year-old a decade ago.
Starting with that foreshadowing fall of 1996, Woods has rolled up 54 victories, which he frequently calls “W’s” for short. When a player has won six consecutive tournaments in a single season, however, the W’s from the public denote something else entirely with regard to his next event.
When? Where? Why?
The Funai Classic at Disney World starts Oct. 19, and for a guy who lives approximately five miles from the theme park’s back entrance, playing would be as easy as falling out of bed. Yet early evidence suggests he might not make the daily commute, despite his success at the site and some prime motivation in the form of an annual award he can’t win unless he adds another play date.
With regard to his oft-discussed attributes as a player, stubbornness is clearly an offshoot of tenacity. Woods can be annoyingly cagey when pressed for answers on subjects he isn’t interested in discussing, like his schedule. Here is the verbatim text from Woods’ confounding confab with a room full of international press on Sunday night after he won the American Express Championship in suburban London. As with his many final-round foes, he surrendered nothing.
Q. Your next appearance is?
Woods: “Home.”
Q. Tournament-wise?
Woods: “Don’t know.”
Q. Care to guess?
Woods: “No.”
Three questions elicited a total of four words in response, but as far as playing at Disney goes, just reading between the lines, it doesn’t look promising. Woods on Sunday throttled back comments he made early last week about the importance of winning the prestigious Vardon Trophy, given annually to the player with the best stroke average on tour. Woods is winning the award in runaway fashion with the second-best average of his career, but needs to play in two more tournaments to satisfy the trophy’s 60-round minimum.
He is expected to play in the season-ending Tour Championship next month, so adding Disney, where he is a two-time champion, seems the most obvious and easy answer. However, Woods might have won the Vardon in six of the past seven years, but it doesn’t rank atop his gotta-do list.
“Not much,” he said of the Vardon’s relative importance. “I’ve had a good year, but if you don’t play enough rounds, you don’t play enough rounds.”
Sadly, if Woods elects not to play, it likely will mark the end of an era in Orlando, since this month probably marks the last shot Disney has at landing Woods. Next year, the event will be moved to November and the final week on the schedule as part of the tour’s less-lucrative Fall Series, by which time Woods probably will be floating to a distant island on his yacht. Moreover, at some point, Woods will be relocating to his new abode in Jupiter, and playing in a Disney event wherein players must shoot 66 daily to contend is something he never has much enjoyed.
Then there are the other variables, which is a kindly euphemism for the financial particulars. Woods’ lengthy contract with Disney-owned ABC Sports to appear in made-for-TV events such as the Skins Game or Battle at Bighorn expired last year. Disney World previously has hosted his annual charity foundation clinic four times, usually in the weekend before the Disney tournament, but that event has been moved permanently to the new Tiger Woods Foundation headquarters in Southern California. Then there’s the matter of Woods’ record at Disney. He last won the title in 1999 and since has added three top-three finishes, but missed the cut last year with one of his most sloppy performances in years.
“People asked me on the 18th, ‘How do you consider this year?’ ” Woods said Sunday night. “I consider it as a loss. In the grand scheme of things, golf, it doesn’t even compare to losing a parent.”
Perhaps, after two weeks of R&R;, Woods will elect to throw his name in the hat at Disney and essentially secure the Vardon Trophy for a record-extending seventh time. By the way, the honor is named after English golf trailblazer Harry Vardon, who invented the overlapping grip.
Before Woods lets go of his hometown Orlando stranglehold — he’s won at Disney and Bay Hill a combined six times — it would be nice to see him take another at Disney. The way he’s been scoring of late, with 24 of his past 27 rounds in the 60s, he might just blow up the joint.
Besides, if he wins, then he has to defend the title in ’07.
