Hotdog & Friends

Fig Jam

I guess it probably shouldn’t qualify as “news” that Tiger Woods played a round of golf, but since it was his first complete round since he had knee surgery, it’s getting a lot of ink.  Actually, anything Woods does generally gets a lot of ink, and there have been a few instances in the past few weeks, where some Woods’ publicity has been fairly amusing. 

First, Woods does not like Hockey.  When he was asked about his rooting interest in the Stanley Cup, Woods responded, “I don’t really care. Let’s talk about the Dodgers…I don’t think anybody really watches hockey anymore.” That’s a pretty candid assessment from a big time athlete who is not known for providing to many great soundbytes.  Under normal circumstances, I would expect a superstar to say something diplomatic, but I appreciate that Woods recognizes that it just isn’t necessary for 2 reasons:  1-  He’s Tiger Woods. 2- He’s right.  Nobody in mainstream American sports culture really cares about hockey anymore.  The NHL had a nice run in the early 90’s if I recall, but they over-estimated their star power with that lockout and cost themselves most of the American Sports market.  There are still pockets of Hockey fans, but not too many (although I am VERY intrigued by notion of “puck bunnies“). 

See also : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puck_bunny

Tiger also made a bold statement that while he plans on being 100% for the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, it really doesn’t matter one way or the other. “My leg is stronger, and hopefully it will be close to 100 percent, but if not, it’s no big deal,” Woods said. “I’ve won before like that.”  This statement is just awesome.  Every time Tiger wins a golf tournament the other pros line up to talk about how great he is, but when it comes time for him to assess the talent level on tour his observations are pretty clear:  I should win.  Always.  Whether I’m healthy or hurt… whatever.  I’m that good.

I guess “technically” this is a really arrogant thing to say, but I kind of like it.  It’s like whenever an athlete plays when he/she (he) is sick and everyone makes a big deal out of it.  Like when Jordan made all those 3’s in that one game in which he was Michael Jordan and the other players were not Michael Jordan.  Even with a fever, he was Michael Jordan and Michael Jordan was better than a player who was not Michael Jordan.  So too is it with Tiger Woods.  

See generally:  The commercial with all the kids stating “I’m Tiger Woods” into the Camera until the real Tiger appears and clears up the issue as to who is really Tiger Woods.  Whether he’s limping around Torrey Pines or not, he should win the U.S. Open.  He’s Tiger Woods.

PUCK BUNNY!

a search for “Golf Bunny” only yielded the following:

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 5th, 2008 at 1:33 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.