SantaFeToday.com Santa Fe’s Hometown News
By Arnie Leshin
Tiger Woods sightings are rare these days?
No so, for as he enters semiretirement at the annual Genesis Golf Invitational played at the Riviera Country Club in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles, he still has the crowds follow him, and he still provides a show.
On Sunday as the invitational wound down, he positioned himself behind a stationary TV camera as he halfway made his way to the 13th tee. He was talking, he was loud, he wouldn’t stop. He was so into it, at one point golfer Christiaan Bezuidenhout had to back off his own shot.
With all this going on to the delight of the Woods supporters, a man was asked to show his credentials and he slowly raised a can of beer. He then came down from the tower, went back inside the ropes and two Los Angeles County sherrif’s deputies escorted him off the course.
Was he a Tiger fan? Who knows, but it probably will not happen at Augusta National in Georgia, which made very well be the next time golf gets to see its biggest star. Then again, Woods might well make his way to the TPC Sawgrass in three weeks for the Players Championship.
Woods did say he wants to play the four majors and a few other events. What those tournaments are, no one knows. And if Woods does, he isn’t saying.
“Here’s the deal,” he says on Sunday after finishing his first tournament since the Masters last year. “I’m not going to play anymore than probably the majors and maybe a couple more. That’s it. That’s all my body will allow me to do.”
He still refers to his back injuries, the many surgeries, and his leg problems.
“Yes,” he adds, “that’s going to be my future.”
As for his golf, some of it was pedestrian, none of it was boring. That explains why thousands were waiting for him around the first tee Thursday morning for his initial tournament in seven months, and chanted his name when he finished on Sunday.
That has to be expected no matter where he goes because Woods plays so infrequently. Part of the pandemonium is that he is playing at all.
Off the course, he has battled several of his own SUV accidents, and he spent the summer in a makeshift hospital bed in his Florida home. He has also been found asleep in his SUV on the side of roads.
But his name remains what it brings to the sport and still does when he steps on the course.
