Tiger cubs fought for the Green Jacket
TIGER WOODS has revealed his favourite memory of last year’s Masters triumph was seeing his children fight over the Green Jacket.
He famously embraced his late father Earl after winning his first Masters in 1997 but 22 years later he was the proud parent celebrating a 15th Major title with daughter Sam and son Charlie at Augusta.
Charlie wasn’t born when Woods had last tasted victory in a Major in the 2008 US Open and Tiger said: “What made it so special is that they saw me fail the year before at the British Open.
“I had gotten the lead there (in the final round) and made bogey, double, and ended up losing to Francesco (Molinari).
“So to have them experience what it feels like to be part of a Major and watch their dad fail, then to be a part of it when I did get it done, it’s two memories they will never forget. That’s because they know what it felt like when I lost at Carnoustie.
“To have the complete flip with them in less than a year, it was very fresh in their minds.
“Just watching them fight over the Green Jacket on the airplane was pretty funny. ‘I want to wear it; no, I want to wear it,’ and that’s something I’ll never forget.”
Speaking to promote his defence of the title from April 9-12, Woods also revealed the majority of his menu for the traditional Champions Dinner.
He said: “I’m going back to what I had in 2006, steak and chicken fajitas, and we’ll have sushi and sashimi out on the deck.
“I hope the guys will enjoy it.”
MARTIN SLUMBERS last night claimed key talks are required with the Scottish Government over Turnberry’s future hopes of staging The Open.
The chief executive of the Royal and Ancient laid bare the problems facing Donald Trump’s Ayrshire venue in the modern era of golf ’s biggest event.
Slumbers and his team are determined to push The Open as one of global sport’s biggest events with attendance records continually smashed in recent years and the magnitude of the event making logistical demands ever stiffer.
Although St Andrews holds the crowd record of 239,000 from the Millennium Open of 2000, Portrush attracted 237,000 last summer and Royal Birkdale had 235,000 through the gates in 2017.
Royal St George’s ticket sales for this year’s Championship are already through the 200,000 mark, which is in stark contrast to the 123,000 who attended the last Open at Turnberry in 2009 when Stewart Cink won.
Slumbers said: “As you start to build out the scale of The Open
BY CRAIG SWAN and position it, infrastructure becomes really important.
“We need to have much more detailed conversations with the Scottish Government about infrastructure for Turnberry because it’s difficult to get people there. It’s one of the key issues we need to solve.
“The real difficulty is getting the infrastructure down. It is a single carriage road to get down to Turnberry but it is a fantastic golf course.
“We will be through 200,000 come July so we are looking where we can get larger crowds.”
Slumbers confessed Muirfield is also facing challenges of a similar nature. The East Lothian venue dropped almost 20,000 spectators from their 2002 staging when hosting Phil Mickelson’s victory in 2013.
Muirfield has made progress on past issues of diversity but size is again a concern.
Slumbers said: “Actually what we’re spending a lot of our time on is how do we get 200,000 people around Muirfield?
“How do we get Muirfield to be Edinburgh’s Open? How do we get Edinburgh city to embrace it and do that? That’s a much more important problem to solve.”
The Open has changed. Turning up on the day and paying your money is a thing of the past with pre-paid tickets the only way to enter nowadays.
Naturally, bigger venues such as St Andrews, Birkdale and