Pumped-up Tiger has something to prove
By SUSAN FORNOFF / San Francisco Examiner
Yes, Tiger Woods has heard that he's not the experts' pick
to win the U.S. Open. Tuesday, he served them notice.
"I like the challenge," Woods said. "I like
when people say that. It definitely gets me a little revved up."
Woods is so revved up, in fact, that he has stepped up his
conditioning routine in recent weeks to include more running and
lifting. That, he said, explained the back injury that knocked
him out of the Kemper.
"The back is fine, it's 100 percent now," he said.
"What happened was that I was playing a lot of golf at the
time, and I was doing a lot of roadwork. What I mean by that,
I was running. All of a sudden I went from no miles to running
four, five, six miles every day, and that kind of puts a little
stress on your back, and I felt a little twinging, a little tightening
and a couple of spasms here and there.
"I said know what, I'd rather have my body ready for the
U.S. Open. And so I decided to pull out of the Kemper and get
everything ready."
Ready, he seems to be. Woods seemed entirely at ease after
his practice round Tuesday, even tickled at having to cough up
a few bucks to his friend and practice partner Casey Martin. He
seemed almost as if he couldn't wait for Thursday.
"This year's different," Woods said. "I feel
great about my swing. It has come along. I have shot some pretty
good numbers lately, and I am anxious to get out there."
And if proving the critics wrong isn't motivation enough, Woods
can find more at home. He won his first tournament of the year
on Mother's Day and is shopping for a Father's Day present for
Sunday.
WHICH ROUTE TO SUCCESS?: Lee Westwood has been tabbed as a
future phenom of the PGA Tour; he won his first tournament in
New Orleans earlier this year.
Only problem is, Westwood, 25, is English. He's having a hard
time ditching the European Tour for the U.S. -- even though it
appears that he would like to.
"It's nice, you know, to play in front of a lot of people,"
Westwood said. "The courses are always in excellent condition
with fast greens, a lot faster than we play in Europe. And next
year the money is going to be a lot better, yeah. Not that money
is ever a motivator, but if there is a tournament in one place
for $1 million and there is another over here for $3 million,
might as well play here."
He knows his math.
BEARING DOWN: Jack Nicklaus, all of 58 and riding a streak
of 154 consecutive majors, walked through his practice round with
a fairly pronounced limp at times. The Golden Bear has a bum hip,
but he's also nursing a pulled groin muscle.
Nicklaus said he reaggravated the groin injury on Saturday,
but that a change in his stance has helped him avoid any pain
over the course of the last couple of days.
"My hip has been pretty good, the rest of me is pretty
good," Nicklaus said. "I just think what I did was when
I was on my bear hunt in early May, I was walking through the
mountains with hiking boots. I was going through some high grass,
and I think I just strained it."
Nicklaus said part of the problem with aging is that he can't
quite work his way through injuries like he used to.
"When I was 35, I could do anything I wanted," he
said, referring to exercise. "I can't do that anymore. .
. .My wife just looks at me and says, 'Suck it up and go play.'
And she's right."
PAR FOR THE COURSE: Here's a couple interesting takes on what
it will take to win:
"I think anything around par will be an excellent score,"
said Phil Mickelson. "This is the ultimate test of golf.
It seems like we only get this kind of opportunity once a year."
Said Tom Watson: "I think it's going to be over par. I
don't know how much over par it's going to be, but I think this
year we are going to see over par win the tournament. The reason
I say this is because we are due for some wind."
JUICED UP: David Eger of Ponte Vedre Beach, Fla., deserves
special note because he's a 48-year-old amateur who qualified
for his first Open, but he's also notable/notorious for having
been the PGA Tour official who decided to cancel the AT&T
Pebble Beach National ProAm in 1996.
Eger said he has no regrets, and no solutions to the weather
problems the tournament has had.
"The decision was made with the tournament sponsor in
conjunction with what they wanted to do, and now you see they're
coming back Aug. 17and there's a lot of speculation that's wrong
too," he said. "Unfortunately there wasn't a good result
from that or this year. There's just no good solution for what
happened to them, in '96or '98."
Eger was more candid in speaking of his Open. "The guys
on the PGA and European tour are so good . . .you're just comparing
apples and oranges. You're comparing apples and rotten oranges,
with the qualifiers being the rotten oranges."
ETC.: A USGA media poll found that the scribes like Colin Montgomerie
to bust out of his majors rut and win this U.S. Open. It would
also be Montgomerie's first win on the U.S. tour. . . Watson likes
Westwood's chances here. . . . Atlanta's Danny Yates has been
named captain of the 1999 U.S. Walker Cup team that will play
in Scotland next year.
(Mark Fainaru-Wada of The Examiner staff contributed to this
story.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)
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