Thursday, May 11, 2000
A rested Tiger often results
in victory
By DOUG FERGUSON
AP Golf Writer
IRVING, Texas (AP) — Beware a rested
Tiger.
Tiger Woods returns to the PGA Tour after
a post-Masters break that featured a fishing trip to Utah with
Mark O'Meara, a day off from a commercial shoot because of the
Screen Actors Guild strike, and not much else.
“The first three weeks, I touched a
club one time because I had to for a catalog shoot,” Woods
said Wednesday. “Other than that, I didn't touch a club.”
Before anyone wonders about the rust, consider
the record.
Starting with the PGA Championship in August,
Woods has returned from every break of at least two weeks by winning
his first tournament.
He will try to make it six in a row in the
Byron Nelson Classic, which starts Thursday on the remodeled TPC
at Las Colinas and the always easy Cottonwood Valley Golf Course.
“I think you just get rejuvenated,”
Woods said Wednesday. “You come back with a clear mind. When
you're out here playing every week, it's hard to come out after
each and every round and go out there and hit balls for four or
five hours. You just can't do it, unless you're Vijay. For normal
people, we'd wear ourselves out.”
That would be Vijay Singh, the Masters champion
who is among nine tour winners in a strong field at the Nelson
Classic, where the $4 million purse matches Pebble Beach as the
largest for a regular PGA Tour event.
Also in the field are Phil Mickelson and
Hal Sutton, who both have two wins, including a victorious showdown
over Woods. And then there's David Duval, also coming off a four-week
break after the Masters and still searching for his first win
in over a year.
“I would love to win, and I have every
intention of doing that,” Duval said. “I don't think
it's something you forget how to do.”
What Duval would like to forget is the Masters,
where he trailed Singh by only a stroke before dumping a 5-iron
into Rae's Creek on the 13th hole that effectively left unfilled
seven months' of preparation.
The U.S. Open is five weeks away, but Duval
is living in the present.
“This is some great preparation time,
but we're playing some events you hope to win,” he said.
“I need to work on paying better attention to those than
I did at the beginning of the year. I'm very much excited to be
out here again.”
The tournament pumped $3 million into renovations
of the TPC at Las Colinas, which has agreed to hold the Nelson
Classic through 2018. The most significant change was a new tee
box on No. 10, making players carry a canal to the fairway.
They also put in the Peggy Nelson tree,
named for the host's wife. The Live Oak is 32 feet high and 25
feet high, located about 130 yards from the green down the right
side, which should make players think twice about trying to drive
the 385-yard hole.
Loren Roberts won last year in a playoff
over Steve Pate, and he will try this week to join some pretty
exclusive company. Only Sam Snead, Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson
have successfully defended in the Nelson Classic, which dates
to 1944.
Still, most of the attention is focused
around Woods.
Earlier this year, he put together a streak
that made Nelson wonder whether his record of 11 in a row was
in jeopardy. Woods was stopped at six straight tour wins, but
it was only a microcosm of a sensational 12 months in which he
won 12 times and had 20 top-10 finishes in 22 tournaments around
the world.
The remarkable stretch followed an 18-month
period when Woods retooled his swing and won only twice, causing
some to question whether he was in a slump.
“A lot of you guys were bashing me
in the press for not playing well, and I said, 'I'm working on
things, things are getting better.' No one really believed me,”
he said. “And I hope you guys believe me now.”
Despite the need for rest, Woods said there
is a little rust in his game. After four straight tournaments
on the bumpy greens of California, two events in the Bermuda grass
of Florida and the unmatchable conditions of Augusta, Woods ventures
into new turf — rye grass.
“I haven't been practicing in this
kind of grass in a while,” he said. “Balls come out
a little different. You have to get used to it.”
If history is any indication, he'll figure
it out.
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