As for his golf game, Woods, ranked No. 7
in the world, said he took a few days off after his most recent tournament and
has just started cranking up his workouts on the range and in the gym. Since winning
the Arnold Palmer Invitational in March, Woods finished discount golf clubs in a tie for 40th at
the Masters, missed the cut in the Wells Fargo Championship (just the eighth
missed cut of his career) and wound up in another tie for 40th in The Players
Championship this month.
"I love this golf course," Woods
told USA Today Sports during a promotional tour in the Washington, D.C., area
for the June 28-July 1 AT&T National, which benefits theTiger Woods
Foundation. "I think it's a fantastic tee-to-green golf course. You have
to drive the ball well to get into some of these flags, but once you get on the
greens, there's a lot of pitch to these greens, a lot of movement, usually from
back to front.
"I've been through this before,"
Woods said. "I remember I had a pretty good year in 2000. And I didn't win
for a couple months. And the word 'slump' came about. And that's basically the
same thing that just happened here. I just played three events, and "When
are you back?" Well, I just won a tournament (four) tournaments ago.
"I think that's the nature of the new
media business. You've got to be able to stand out somehow to get eyes going to
your site or to your medium, and I think that's one of the reasons why there's
the criticism that there is."
His 7,500-yard buddy, however, took a
beating last year during the U.S. Open. With rains saturating the grounds
before and during the second major of the season, the course never could play
Taylormade Rocketballz Irons fast and firm. As a result, Rory McIlroy set records en route to an eight-shot
romp, finishing what is annually the toughest test in golf at 16-under-par 268.
Nineteen other players broke par.
"I would like to see it difficult. I
always want to have this golf course difficult or any venue that we host the
tournament at," said Woods, who will return to the PGA Tour at theMemorial
Tournament next week in Dublin ,
Ohio
"And placing the ball in the correct
spots is vital to give yourself a chance, because a couple of the holes, if you
put it above the hole, you're not going to make the putt and more likely you're
probably going to end up three-putting unless you make a 6- or 10-footer."
He'll do so in front of the critical eye of
the news media and fans. When he won the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the
consensus was that Woods was back to his pre-scandal form. After three
lackluster starts in succession, the talk now centers on when Woods will be
back. Like his golf game of recent vintage, the talk has been up and down.
"I'm headed in the right
direction," Woods said of his season to date. "You have to understand,
even when I've had some really good years, whether it was in the early 2000s or
mid-2000s, whatever it was, even if I was winning golf tournaments, I still
felt like I could improve and I could still get better each and every day. I
never looked at it and said, 'Wow, that's my peak. I can't get better.' If that
was the case, I would have walked.
"I think that one of the things that I
am proud of is the fact that I do grind it out," he said. "If I would
have TaylorMade R11S Driver packed it in over the course of my career, I would have missed a lot more
cuts over my career, especially of late when I have not been playing well. But
I fight. I grind it out.
没有评论:
发表评论