The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Don’t bet on Tiger coming to the Travelers
Nathan Grube and Andy Bessette, whose tireless work turned the Travelers Championship into the 2017 PGA Tour tournament of the year, returned to Connecticut on Wednesday night from the Masters.
OK, OK, Jordan Spieth’s jaw-dropping bunker shot at 18 for the unforgettable W in June played a small role in the award. But let’s not let that minor detail get in the way of the work the two men have done every year to recruit players to TPC River Highlands in Cromwell.
Rory McIlroy, who showed up for the first time last year and loved the place, already has committed for 2018. So has Justin Thomas, the 2017 FedEx Cup champion and Player of the Year. Bubba Watson, Charley Hoffman, Paul Casey and Patrick Reed already are in what figures to a be strong field the week following the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills on Long Island.
Yet with the extraordinary hype and anticipation of a 42-year-old man teeing it up among the azaleas at 10:42 a.m. Thursday, there was this inevitable question in Connecticut.
What about Tiger Woods?
What about the guy whose late father, Earl, said would do more anyone in history to change the course of humanity? Yes, more than Buddha, Gandhi and Mandela? What about the guy who crashed his Escalade and his marriage with an assortment of infidelities? The confused guy who was arrested early last year with five different drugs in his system? The guy who has undergone four spinal surgeries and has found the backbone to confront it all to regain his form as a golfer and most compelling sports figure in the world?
The guy who has 14 major victories, but who hasn’t won a PGA Tour event since 2013, hadn’t played at the Masters in 1,089 days, yet still entered a betting favorite at Augusta National this week? Who led Nike to make a spanking new “Welcome
Back” commercial? Who set the prices of weekly Masters badges soaring?
The guy who has appeared by my count in exactly one public golf event in Connecticut over a quarter century — a clinic at Brooklawn CC in Fairfield in 1995?
No. It doesn’t look like Tiger will be playing the Travelers this year, either.
“We talk to his camp every year,” said Grube, the Travelers Championship tournament director. “We talked with Mark Steinberg’s group in February at the Genesis Open (in Southern California). They were really wait-and-see, how he was going to feel, what was going to happen. We had a lot of conversations.”
Two decades ago, Tiger talked about wanting to play every tournament in his career. That was before he became so big that he realized he wasn’t big enough to give a piece of himself to everybody. He streamlined his schedule, skipping events before majors, usually skipping them after and signing on with events linked to his foundation.
The possibility of Tiger playing in Cromwell peaked and receded. There was talk in 2002 that Tiger would play the GHO, the final year of Canon’s involvement. The U.S. Open was at Bethpage. But there was a clinic in Orlando and yada, yada, no Tiger. Buick took over as title sponsor for three years and, despite Tiger’s Buick endorsement deal, no Tiger.
Everyone settled into Tiger not coming to Cromwell. Eventually as Tiger stopped winning and subsequently not playing, nearly everybody stopped caring. The 2017 Travelers, with 300,000 fans, a record $1.72 million for charity and Spieth’s all-time shot, certainly didn’t need Tiger.
After he’d barely been able to get out of bed for six months, Tiger’s back started feeling better. He returned to the tour in early December after 10 months. He started up again in late January at the Farmers Insurance Open. Tiger’s game improved. He took a 12th at the Honda Classic; nearly won the Valspar Championship, finishing second; and was fifth at the Arnold Palmer.
There is no story like a redemption story. And when you’ve been compared to Gandhi by your own father, there is a world’s worth of redemption in Tiger’s story. His trusted caddie, Joe LaCava, grew up in Newtown, lives in Southbury and stuck with Tiger during his difficult layoff. That is a story in itself.
After begging and pleading and ultimately poohpoohing my way through Tiger annually ignoring Connecticut’s great sporting event, I admit it: It would be pretty cool to see Redemptive Tiger in Cromwell.
With his return, uncertain schedule and health, who knew in the winter where Tiger may go this summer? But no, Travelers on June 21-24 doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. Not when he committed early last week to The National outside of D.C. on June 28-July 1, an event that benefits his foundation.
“I would say that’s evidence … historically that week after a major is never one that he circles to play,” Grube said. “But we had great conversations with the Steinberg group. The gap between the U.S. Open and the British, (Tiger) was kicking some things around.
“They manage Justin Thomas, Justin Rose, a lot of the guys and they reinforced they had been hearing great things about our tournament. I just don’t know. They’re not sure what he’s going to feel like. But once he committed to The National, was he going to play three weeks in a row?”
It sure doesn’t look that way.
“I think that’s a fair statement,” Grube said. “I will say what their group is good about is if it’s a no they will tell you.”
He did not receive a definitive no. So there’s that.
There also is the sensitive nature of approaching players at the Masters.
“It’s very delicate this week,” Grube said. “And we never talk to anybody once a tournament starts. Monday and Tuesday, you’re in the right places, you’re staying in front of guys.”
After a few business meetings Wednesday afternoon, Grube and Bessette headed home. Tiger went on to shoot a 1-over-par Thursday, seven shots off the lead.
“I will say having Rory and Jordan coming for the first time last year, saying such great things about the event, that helps,” Grube said.
Yes, a practice facility is a game-changer, too.
“When Travelers came in ’06, we went around the tour with them and asked the guys ‘What can we do?’ ” Grube said. “The one thing that kept coming up was the practice facility. It was, ‘You’ve got a great golf course, great fans, but, man that practice facility is bad.’
“Travelers pushed the tour hard for that new facility. It absolutely matters. It’s the players’ office. What we found was when the Open is near us, guys miss the cut and we get a lot more in early to work on their game.”
Needless to say, with the narrow fairways and wicked greens of the Open, there are a lot of wounded animals.
One of them, by all accounts, will not be a Tiger.