Maybe this one snuck up on you but it’s five days and counting until Tiger Woods is back in action.
After skipping the U.S. Open so he could get a little more rest/rehab/prep work for the 150th Open Championship at St. Andrews, Tiger will get a nice, relaxing tune-up at the popular J.P. McManus Pro-Am next Monday, which just happens to fall on July 4th here.
This 36-hole festival of sorts is being played at renown Adare Manor in Limerick, Ireland, host site of the 2027 Ryder Cup.
Perfect two day warmup for El Tigre and a LOT of other big names.
World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler is playing. So is Jon Rahm. Of course Rory McIlroy, a personal friend of McManus, will be on hand as will last week’s winner at The Travelers — Xander Schauffele.
Newly-crowned U.S. Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick is in the field as is Shane Lowry. You can also add Collin Morikawa and Cam Smith to the list as well.
Now here’s where it gets real interesting — there’s a bunch of those defectors from the LIV exhibition series playing — Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Ian Poulter, just to name a few. Wonder if they’ll pair any of those guys with Rory?
This will probably be one of the few times “the defectors” and stars from the PGA Tour appear in the same field. It’s also the only chance for “the defectors” to get some prep work the week before the Open Championship as they’ve all been banned from the Scottish Open at the Renaissance Club next week, the event that is co-sanctioned by the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour.
Which brings up another interesting point.
The fat-cat, dirty-money Saudis have gone on the record to say that they will pay the 100,000-pound fine for the DP World Tour players who defected to the LIV exhibition series. Now that the PGA Tour owns a bigger chunk of the DP World Tour, looks like the Saudis will be throwing some of that money at Ponte Vedra Beach.
The DP World Tour hasn’t issued suspensions as the PGA Tour has but now that both tours have gotten a bit more cozy, you wonder if that’s in the works.
What it probably does is guarantee that the DP World execs on the committee that determines who gets Official World Golf Ranking points are highly unlikely to vote to grant such points to Greg’s Renegades, aka LIV Defectors.
One thing that is guaranteed is that there will be a lot of Irish golf fans pouring into Adare Manor on the Fourth Of July, to get one of those rare chances to gander a close look at Tiger Woods. The same Tiger Woods who told the Saudis and their near-billion dollar offer to join LIV that he simply had no interest.
You can buy Bryson, Brooks and D.J. but you can’t buy the guy who drives the needle in the world of golf.
So we’ll start prepping for the 150th Open Championship at The Old Course
On Friday we’ll highlight the Irish Open at Mount Juliet Estate in County Killkenny.
Then next week it’s on to Scotland and the Renaissance Club outside North Berwick.
Time to venture across the pond.
5 Comments
baxter cepeda
Yes it’s exciting Tiger is back. I hope he enjoys the walk on the Old Course. Hard to get the hopes up but certainly not ruling Tiger out. It does help he played 3 majors this year as far as moving forward.
But again Imo Tiger needs to play more than just the majors. Even if he does it doesn’t sound like Tiger is going to be playing much golf outside of the majors,the father son and maybe his events, so he’s not really in the conversation regarding LIv v PGa tour (or pga as 90% of the articles from so called credible newspapers call it).
Tom Edrington
It’s all about time for Tiger and that’s a precious commodity for him….considering the severity of his injuries, it’s amazing he’s getting around as well as he is….I think the weather will have a lot to do with how he performs on the Old Course. Having played there, it’s all about proper lines off the tee, avoid the pots, and the ability to play on the ground around the greens is paramount…..I found I was good at playing the type of game that links courses demand, the only one that really kicked my butt (twice) was Muirfield. Looking forward to the Scottish next week — I’m broken hearted that all your LIV favorites have been banned….
baxter cepeda
Yes. Tiger may have one and a half leg, but he has ton of things in his favor on the Old Course. Still, he is still recovering and frankly not sharp enough competitively. We all know this.
Again T, not you Tom, I call Tiger T also, this isn’t 1952 when a handful of players were clearly above the rest. Or even 2002 when no one was close to you. These it’s hard to find anyone a little above the rest. You need to be sharp to win.
All these tournaments are just hurting themselves not letting star players in, including the Ryder cup. I’ll say it now if the Ryder cup does this silly excluding people thing, I can definitely see myself and many others focusing on other things that week. Not because I or we are so supportive of LIv -I am merely an observer whom can face reality and can stay unbiased and reasonable in all this— but without the actual 12 best from each continent there, then it really would be an exhibition and not-must see tv.
I heard Zack said some things that hopefully aren’t true.
They Ryder cup absolutely needs the 12 best From each side.
Also the European tour could have easily had these European stars 4 or more times a year on their tour, which is what they had to do while playing the pga tour already. Pelley is not looking as night as he once did, even as he is getting these concessions from Monahan for no reason other than LIv knee jerk reactions really.
Meanwhile reports from Liv players get better and better. Reporters are staring to see times are a changing and not coming back. The money is a huge reason but so is listening to the players.
All the while these old tours continue to foolishly act like they are acting, like they still have leverage over this powerhouse that keeps coming at them with more resources and a whole lot more listening skills.
Tom Edrington
Let’s see Baxter, you think the Saudis have “listening skills”? Be careful if you take a stance they don’t like, if someone’s critical of their “regime” not only does said offender get “wacked” that’s not enough, they chop you into little pieces…..I think I stand with Freddie Couples on this issue, more on that coming; Also, asking for anonymity, some LIV insiders are saying they can’t make much of it without a television deal…..especially when they had a whopping 54,000 watches on U-Tube….wow, thousands of viewers!!
baxter cepeda
This whole thing is consuming people like us but in reality is still very much in development. Almost like they haven’t even started.
LIv now reminds me of the Facebook movie where at first it was not about making money but making it cool.
They are going to get a tv deal at some point Tom, it’s inevitable, which is unfortunate, because what they are showing on you tube is a golf geeks dream: nothing but golf shots.
I see and hear and read tons of people absolutely hammering the Saudis track record including you and I. Including LIv players saying some things against the Saudis actions in their own pressers. Most of us aren’t going to get whacked no matter what we say about them.
I don’t know enough about Kashoggis reports that led to what happened to him. But it’s safe to say that man should not have walked through those doors. Of course I know he had to do it for love. It’s a tragic story. I look forward to learning more through a well made movie or documentary sometime.
But at the end of the day all that goes down as part of endless global political drama which many sports fans don’t care to be consumed by.
What sports fans are saying is if Saudi Arabia needs to be held accountable it’s by our government and others, not our golfers. These boys really are just jocks whom spent their entire lives chasing a little white ball and still can’t even remember the most basic rules of their sport, but somehow are supposed to collectively leave billions of dollars on the table over issues the US government lets slide?
That’s just unreasonable.