Tiger Woods Gives Cold Shoulder To NBC U.S. Open Request

This time next week the first round of the 2021 U.S. Open will be well underway at Torrey Pines — the site of Tiger Woods’ dramatic 2008 victory over Rocco Mediate.

So naturally, you can bet you’ll be seeing highlights from that win over and over and over.  What’s the over/under on showing Tiger holing a birdie putt on the 72nd hole that forced the playoff?

With Tiger sidelined, facing a long rehab process for his fractured right leg, it’s not like his calendar is jam-packed.  So the powers that be at NBC reached out to The Great Stiney (aka Tiger Woods agent Mark Steinberg) to see if they could ask (beg) for Woods to be involved in next week’s broadcast.

“We were all thinking how good that would be, who better, if he couldn’t be there to play it, to voice it and have him a part of the show, but we were rebuffed,” said NBC talking-head Dan Hicks.   . “He (Tiger) didn’t want to do it, and I totally understand his situation. There is a lot going on in his world right now and there’s also a part of Tiger that doesn’t want to become this, I don’t want to, for lack of a better word, a sideshow at an event where we should be concentrating on what’s happening.”

Tiger, who won his 14th major at that 2008 championship, has kept a pretty low profile since his accident.

“Also, I really believe that if you said yes to something, it would just be a non-stop parade of asks, and he would have to just, you know, start telling everybody no,” Hicks continued. “So, yeah, it would have been fantastic to have Tiger a part of it in that sense, but I understand that what’s going on in his world that he wanted to kind of keep it low key and stay out of the limelight for this one and just hopefully he’ll enjoy it at home watching it on TV and be inspired when we talk about what he did 13 years ago, and that’s the best we can hope for.”

Leona Maguire In A Class By Herself At Lake Merced:

When you look at the first round scoreboard at the LPGA Tour’s Mediheal championship at Lake Merced, you might wonder if Ireland’s Leona Maguire played all 18 holes on Thursday.

She did and there was no one close to the seven-under par 65 that Maguire put on the scoreboard early in the day.  It was until late that Jasmine Suwannapura turned in a six-under par 66 to get within a shot of Macguire.

“It’s a tough golf course,” Maguire said. “You really have to hit a lot of fairways, a lot of greens. I’ve been playing nice as of late. Things just haven’t been quite clicking, and they clicked nicely this morning.  I suppose the weather is similar to home, even the golf course is similar to home (Ireland),” said the rookie from Duke University.  “It’s very green and sort of tree lined a little bit like what we get at home. Northern California’s been good to me and I won my first Symetra event not too far from here, so these kind of golf courses suit my eye.”

Maguire didn’t make it into last week’s U.S. Open field and finished tied for 26th at the match play two weeks ago.  Prior to the match play, she missed the cut at the Pure Silk in Williamsburg — so there was no indication that she’d have a breakout day on the difficult Lake Merced Golf Club.

In all, Maguire, ranked 92nd in the Rolex World Rankings, put nine birdies on her scorecard.

Albane Valenzuela and Allison Lee carded four-under par 68s.  Three players who shot three-under par 69s — Da Yeon Lee, Mariajo Uribe and Jane Park.

U.S. Open champ Yuka Saso wasn’t in the field.  She took the trophy and went home.

Mediheal Scoreboard: