Another year, another day of clock-watching and phone-guarding for the folks at the PGA Tour offices.
With the FedEx Cup Playoffs set to begin in only two days, the folks at tour headquarters are anxiously waiting to see if you-know-who will pick up the phone by the 5 p.m. Friday deadline and decide if he wants to play in the first event or not. For those of us in the Garden State, we’re also on the watch. The first event — The Barclays — will be held at Liberty National Golf Club in Jersey City. And Tiger Woods has once again ratcheted up the suspense meter and has metropolitan area golf fans wondering if they’ll be graced by his presence as we wait for the deadline for players to notify the tour if they are coming. Two years ago, during the first year of the FedEx Cup, Woods said “Thanks, but no thanks” to famed Westchester Country Club outside of New York City. Rumors were that he hated the tight layout and the tricked-out greens at the course and simply didn’t want to waste his time even traveling to the Big Apple to play. Not coincidentally, the next year the PGA abruptly pulled out of Westchester and moved across the Hudson to Ridgewood in Paramus. Woods was expected to be in the field last August at the famed A.W. Tillinghast layout — this is, until his season came to a screeching halt after the U.S. Open with season-ending knee surgery. Strike two for the tri-state area against the world’s No. 1 golfer. So here we are again — watching and waiting to see if Woods will eschew tradition and play for a bulk of the summer. Usually for Tiger, his season consists of the majors, the second-tier tournaments and sprinkle in a couple of random appearances at places like the Buick Open in Michigan.
It’s hard to tell if he puts much stock in the PGA Tour’s playoff system or not (we only have one year to go off of, remember), so for all we know Woods might be keeping next week’s plans a secret to boost interest. But we all known better than that.