Lets face it, Tiger Woods is on quite a downhill slide. Whether you blame it the scandal and his public image being destroyed, or the injuries that have seemed to plague his game lately, he’s fallen down in the golf rankings as well as public opinion. According to a recent poll by Ipsos Tiger Woods ranks among one of the most distrusted celebrities. His name was up there with the likes of Charlie Sheen, Paris Hilton, and Mel Gibson. Some pretty scary company indeed.
After being away from golf since the Players Championship in May, Tiger came back for the Bridgestone and finished T37, then followed that up with a MC at the PGA Championship by shooting a 2-day +10 and missing the cut by six strokes.
At first it seemed that President’s Cup Captain Fred Couples didn’t care about Woods’ performance and that he was a lock to be a captain’s pick. Couples is slightly changing his tune now and saying the Tiger needs to play some warmup tournaments if he wants to be picked.
“He can’t just show up the week before in Australia,” Couples said Wednesday at the Senior Players Championship. “I have made it clear that whoever I picked will be playing the Australian tournament the week before. But I need him to play more than just there. There’s quite a few tournaments after the TOUR Championship.”
It will certainly be interesting to see if Tiger obliges to Couples’ request, he usually isn’t someone that likes to be told what he needs to do.
In my opinion I think selecting Woods, as crazy as it may sound, is a bad move for Couples. There are a handful of other much more deserving players that are on the bubble, who have been playing solid consistent golf all year. Some, like Keegan Bradley, are on absolute fire at the moment. Couples has said that Bradley has a good chance to make the team on points alone, but seemed to side step the question of using his pick on him instead of Woods.
Couples was quoted as saying, “I firmly believe that the way he’s playing, he’s going to play his way on the team,” Couples said. “And that would be, for him, the safest way of getting on this team.” Safest way huh? In other words, “make it on points, or I’m not picking you kid.”
If he isn’t playing well enough to earn an automatic spot, he probably isn’t playing well enough to help the team.
completely agree Patrick! I don’t think he’s going to miraculously “turn it on”. Which is why I guess Freddie wants him to play some events beforehand. But my bet is that he’ll pick him regardless.