If you’re not still battling a severe case of Tiger Fatigue, let me recommend a new book I just finished.

 

It’s called Unplayable: An Inside Account of Tiger’s Most Tumultuous Season, and I think most any golf addict or Tiger-ophile will find it to be something of a page-turner.

 

Author Robert Lusetich, golf columnist for FoxSports.com, spent the entire 2009 season tailing Tiger; the result is a mother lode of insights into life on the PGA Tour, the World No. 1 golfer and the small, tight circle of intimates that constitutes Team Tiger.

 

Of course, when he pitched the book to Simon and Schuster, Lusetich had no idea about the whole other secret life Tiger was living in the shadows.  He sold the publisher on a book about Tiger’s incredible return from knee surgery to repair a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament, enabling him to resume his quest of surpassing Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 major titles.

 

Like virtually all other Tiger-watchers in the media, and most of Tiger’s inner circle, Lusetich was oblivious to the infidelities.

 

Indeed, having journeyed to his native Australia, where Tiger won the Australian Masters in November, Lusetich was at home in Los Angeles, putting the finishing touches on his manuscript, when the news broke of that fateful car crash in the wee hours after Thanksgiving that changed everything.

 

As shocking and unseemly as the revelations about Tiger’s "other life" have been, Lusetich did not completely rethink and rewrite the narrative of the book.  He still told the tale of Tiger’s ’09, only with a new final chapter entitled, "The Reckoning."

 

Like most members of the media, Lusetich, who is a colleague and pal of mine, was embarrassed to have to admit that he knew nothing of Tiger’s secret life, nor had he ever seen anything that gave him reason to be suspicious. 

 

"My view of Woods – admittedly from observations made at the distance of press conferences or media scrums after rounds but also interspersed with the occasional brief off-the-record conversation – was that even though he is flawed, he is essentially a good guy," writes Lusetich.

 

Tiger did not cooperate with the book.  Lusetich did seek his cooperation through agent Mark Steinberg, but "Steiny," as Tiger calls him, said, "No."

 

Lusetich has no idea if Steinberg, who routinely rejects similar requests out of hand, ever bothered to discuss the matter with Tiger.  Lusetich now can’t help but wonder if Steinberg perhaps had concerns about what a book of this type might eventually turn up.

 

Official cooperation or not, Lusetich duly notes that over the course of 2009, Tiger was both "kind and generous with me."

 

What I especially enjoyed about Unplayable were some of the details about Tiger’s relationships, with caddie Steve Williams and other players, that Lusetich picked up over the course of the year. A few examples:

 

On Phil Mickelson:

 

-- ...(Steve) Williams confirmed what most inside golf’s highest circles long knew: Woods didn’t like Mickelson.

 

-- After Williams got in hot water for calling Mickelson a "prick" during a trip home to New Zealand, swing coach Butch Harmon, who had been fired by Tiger years before and now works for Mickelson, remarked that golf was a game of "honor" and said he didn’t believe Williams’ comments reflected Tiger’s feelings about Mickelson.

 

Writes Lusetich:

 

Harmon’s nose presumably grew after making that last remark.  He, perhaps more than anyone, knew that Woods had had worse – much worse – to say about Mickelson, who Woods considered to be a phony whose public and private personas didn’t exactly gel.

 

 

On the Masters:

 

After shooting a lackluster 70 in the third round, Tiger was furious, and he headed straight to practice tee at Augusta National, trailed by his small entourage.  First, he chewed out his caddie, Williams, who slipped away to find a sandwich, leaving swing coach Hank Haney alone with Tiger.

 

Writes Lusetich:

 

Haney, however, remained and bore the brunt of a tirade.  "Tiger was just livid and Hank had to sit there and take it," said Williams.

 

Witnessed by a handful writers, Lusetich writes, The incident led to stories that angered the admittedly thin-skinned Haney.  Haney would over the next week send text messages to several writers admonishing them for stories suggesting he was on thin ice with Woods.

 

On Hank Haney:

 

Among top swing gurus, the long knives were often out for Haney.

 

Writes Lusetich:

 

"My philosophy as a teacher," Haney writes, "is to teach my students to become their own best teacher by getting them to understand the flight of the golf ball and how it relates to the swing, with emphasis on swing the golf club on their own correct swing plane."

 

Innocuous enough, except that virtually every swing guru in golf believed Haney’s ideas were wrong.  (Butch) Harmon became the chief antagonist, telling anyone who’d listen that Woods was ruining his career, though he was hardly alone in that belief.

 

A Tour winner, a disciple of 1980s swing guru Jimmy Ballard, told me that Haney had cost Woods countless majors and "should be strung up for what he’s done to the kid.

 

On Tiger’s awareness of fans around him:

 

Writes Lusetich:

 

One of the misconceptions about him was that he was robotic on the golf course.   The image served him, se he perpetuated it, but it was a myth.  Woods knew precisely what was happening around him and was extremely observant.  When an Asian man with a very effeminate voice called his name several times from outside the ropes at a tournament, I’d assumed Woods was too far away to have heard.  Later, I discovered that he’d not only heard him but described him perfectly.

 

On Tiger’s sexcapades:

 

None of Tiger’s infidelities shocked Lusetich any more than the one that occurred at during the Buick Open, which he won thanks to shooting 63-65 on Friday and Saturday.  As it happened, the whole thing was going on while Lusetich and Tiger were staying just a few doors apart in the same Marriott Courtyard in Flint, Mich.

 

Writes Lusetich:

 

The sometimes pornographic actor, Joslyn James, whose real name is Veronica Daniels, alleged that she had been having a three-year affair with Woods.  Perhaps that was true, perhaps it wasn’t.  But after reading text messages she said were from Woods, I had no doubt that she’d spent Thursday night a few doors down from my room in that Flint Courtyard.

 

Woods was indeed in room 201, as her text messages alleged.  He’d flown her in, as he often did with women during tournament weeks, for a brief rendezvous, most of them lasting two or three nights.  James said Woods warned her he needed to get up at 4:15 a.m. for the following day’s round, yet she said after they’d had sex earlier in the evening, he’d had trouble falling asleep and called her back to his room for another tryst just a few hours before he had to wake up.  She estimated that he’d had perhaps two hours of sleep by the time the unsuspecting Williams drove their car to the hotel’s side entrance.

 

On Fartgate:

 

Contrary to YouTube legend, it was CBS golf analyst/jokester David Feherty, not Tiger, who launched the fart heard millions of times on the internet.  Lusetich knows because he was out on the course at the Buick Open, standing under a shade tree with Feherty, when the whole thing went down.

 

Writes Lusetich:

 

Feherty then gave me the news that he’d eaten beans for lunch and his stomach was grumbling.  "I’ve got one locked and loaded in the chamber," he said, like a proud parent.  Feherty and Woods had long engaged in farting contests on the course...

 

Feherty sensed that it was his moment to pounce.  While Woods bent over to stretch, Feherty launched a sick-sounding fart from nearby, so long and loud that both Woods and Williams immediately looked over to him and began laughing.  Unfortunately, Feherty had forgotten to turn his microphone off...

 

The reckoning:

 

In the days and weeks after Tiger’s car crash that brought his world crashing down around him, Lusetich was busily trying to piece together the story that was being kept largely under wraps by IMG, the golfer’s management group.  Where was Tiger?  Why wouldn’t he talk to the cops?

 

Writes Lusetich:

 

Woods, meanwhile, sank to his lowest ebb.  His wife, whose financial security had been sweetened in the immediate wake of the scandal in a desperate attempt to keep her from leaving then and there, was devastated by his betrayal.  She consulted divorce lawyers and didn’t want him under the same room.  All of her husband’s golf trophies, which had filled the family home, were removed.

 

Woods moved into another home at Isleworth and changed his phone number.  He was in "the fetal position," according to none source, and didn’t want to talk to anyone.  Long-standing friends, including Charles Barkley and Mark O’Meara, publicly lamented the fact that they could not reach Woods.  Steinberg drew much fire from many of Woods’s friends who were unable to get through to him.  "He became very reclusive, he was depressed, devastated, and most of all, I think, embarrassed," said a source close to Woods.

 

On what might have motivated Tiger to cheat:

 

There is some speculation among Tiger’s circle that, unable to control his sex addiction, he essentially self-destructed, almost deliberately allowing himself to get caught.

 

Writes Lusetich:

 

But the friend also offered another view, one echoed by others I’d spoken with about Woods’s marriage: that it was never the idyllic union it seemed.

 

"He was a late bloomer.  Even when he was at Stanford, he was kind of nerdy.  Then suddenly his body changed and he matured into this confident guy and he made up for lost time.  What I’ve always wondered is, Did he get married too early?  I think he just got caught up in the idea of getting married.  I think he jumped into it too soon."

 

 

Today, MyPhillyGolf launched what I hope will become a popular new feature: Why I Play Where I Play.

 

It is intended to be an occasional essay whose purpose is obvious from the title.  Let me be the first to admit that I totally appropriated the idea from Esquire magazine, which years ago had a similar feature called, "Why I Live Where I Live," featuring essays by some of my favorite writers.

 

To get "Why Play Where I Play" started, I cast out a line to several well-traveled golfing friends.  Steve Shaffer, a semi-retired lawyer and hopeless golf addict, was the first to take the bait.  He dubbed himself The Vagabond Golfer.

 

There are many reasons to favor a certain golf course or courses.  Quality, conditioning, price, proximity, the status of the club or course, difficulty (or ease) of the course, friendly staff and tasty hotdogs are only a few.  For some golfers, "Why I Play Where I Play" no doubt boils down to force or habit or lack of curiosity about what else is out there.  You might have different ideas of your own.

 

While I will seek out "Why I Play Where I Play" columns from golfers I think you might enjoy reading about, the feature will only reach its full potential if ordinary readers of MyPhillyGolf also get into the spirit.  Half the fun of being a golfer is talking about golf and golf courses.

 

All it takes is 500 or so words.  If you can write, terrific.  If you’ve got a good story to tell but you’re not so confident of your writing skills, I can help you with a little editing and ghostwriting.

 

One of my biggest goals for MyPhillyGolf is to help create sort of a virtual golf community in cyberspace.  "Why I Play Where I Play" can help.

 

If you’re game, drop me an  email.

If you ever want to check out how well the local club pros can play, a good place to start would be the Haverford Trust Company Golf Classic, June 1 at Sunnybrook Golf Club in Plymouth Meeting.

 

What makes the Haverford a big deal?  It’s the biggest paycheck the club pros play for all year -- $42,500 this year for first place.

 

By virtue of the prize money alone, the Haverford qualifies as one of three majors for the Philadelphia Section PGA.  The others are the Philadelphia Open Championship in July, a prestigious event run by the Golf Association of Philadelphia, and the three-day, season-ending Section Championship in late September.

 

The Haverford, of course, is mostly, if not all, all about the hard, cold cash.   That’s the way Haverford Trust founder and vice chairman George Connell wanted it when he began the tournament 14 years ago, in 1997.

 

Connell’s idea was to create a tournament in which, say, a young assistant pro could make more money in one day playing golf than he could all year working in a pro shop.

 

Past winners include a Who’s Who of local club pros, including George Forster, head pro at Radnor Valley CC, in 2008; Dave Quinn, head pro at Links Golf Club, in 2001 and 2005; and Dave Roberts, assistant pro at Cedarbrook CC, in 2002.

 

Last year, Travis Deibert, an assistant pro at Commonwealth National GC, won in a play-off against Brian Kelly, head pro at Bucknell GC, collecting $40,000.  What made Deibert’s victory all the more compelling is that he was soon to be married.

 

For golf fans, the Haverford is spectator-friendly.  You can walk the course and follow your favorite pro, or you can do like most people and hang around at the 18^th green, watching guys come away with high hopes or busted dreams.

For as long as I have looked at old photos and news reels from an earlier era of golf, I’ve wondered about the difference between those old hickory-shafted clubs of yesteryear and the high-tech armaments have enjoy today.  Now I have a pretty good idea.

 

On Sunday, to commemorate the centennial anniversary of the 1910 U.S. Open at the Philadelphia Cricket Club’s St. Martin’s course, the club invited members and a handful of guests to play nine holes using authentic equipment from back in the day.

 

Nobody had to rummage through attics or yard sales to come up with the equipment.   It turns out there are companies that rent out the stuff, like Play Hickory in San Diego, which shipped the Cricket Club two crates full of bags, clubs and modern day versions of the old Bramble ball.

 

To make day feel even more authentic, quite a few of the 50 or so members participating went to the trouble to dress up in the garb of the day.

 

How did the old clubs play?  Not nearly as bad as I expected.

 

My feather-light canvas bag came with six clubs:  a brassie, a small-headed fairway wood with about 15 degrees of loft; a long iron with the loft of a 2 or 3 iron; a mid-iron with the loft of about a 6-iron; a mashie niblick, which approximated an 8-iron; a niblick, which was sort of combination PW and SW; and a simple heel-shafted putter.

 

None of the clubs had anything like the heft of today’s equipment, and the grips were simple wraps of leather.  The ball, which had convex dimples, felt like any harder rubber ball.

 

From my first swipe of a tee shot with the brassie, it was obvious this was going to take some getting used to.  The hickory shaft had the whip of, say, today’s senior shafts, only without the consistency.  But the more noticeable difference was the torque.  You could actually feel the club head twisting during the downswing.

 

Surprisingly, it didn’t take long to get a feel for the clubs and adapt my swing.  The key was maintaining an even tempo. 

 

On my first tee shot, I teed the ball too low and hit a bit of a worm-burner foozle.  On my next tee shot, I over-compensated and hit a shallow pop-up.  But by three holes into the nine, the brassie and I were on the same page -- I was nailing tee shots.

 

Of course, "nailing" is a relative term.  I don’t think my best effort went more than 200 yards, even when the shot felt solid.

 

Come to think of it, the short irons took more getting used to.   No shot with the niblick seemed to fly true or consistently, and I never quite got the feel for distances.

 

I came away with two double-bogeys, four bogeys and three pars.  The highlight of the round was definitely the 30-footer I snaked in from the fringe.  I’d definitely do it again.

Needless to say, word that Tiger Woods has only an "inflamed neck joint" and not a more serious injury is good news for the AT&T National at Aronimink.

 

Suddenly, the prospect of him playing in the AT&T National goes from questionable to likely.

 

At Monday’s press conference at Aronimink, Woods promised to defend his AT&T title, if he had returned to action after the neck injury that forced him to pull out of the final round of the Players Championship last week.

 

Now, with a diagnosis that requires only soft tissue massages, rest and anti-inflammatory medications, Woods says he expects to tee it up in the Memorial Tournament, beginning June 3.

 

That’s almost a month before the AT&T National the week of June 28-July 4.

During his press conference for AT&T National, Tiger Woods cleared up one rumored factoid once and for all:  He has never played a round of golf in the Philadelphia area.

 

"I have not," Woods said, when asked directly.  "No, I have not.  This is the first time."

 

"This" being the AT&T National (July 1-4), assuming he is back to playing by then.  Tiger did not play a round of golf during Monday’s media day.

 

Having never played here is curious, almost inexplicable, considering how well-traveled Tiger is and we have two of the Top 10 courses in the world in our back yard, Merion GC in Ardmore and Pine Valley GC in Clementon, N.J.

 

Other great golfers have made time for Merion and Pine Valley when they were in the area.  I remember a few years ago at the McDonald’s LPGA Championship at Bulle Rock, Annika Sorenstam mentioned that in the days following the tournament, she intended to play both.  She couldn’t miss the opportunity while she was in the area.  And she did play both of them, and she loved them.

 

What makes Tiger’s failure to make the time for Merion and Pine Valley all the more curious is his professed respect and love for classic courses, which certainly describes both.  And considering the history of Merion and the mystique of the cloistered Pine Valley, you’d think his curiosity would have gotten the best of him.

 

Evidently he had other things on his mind.

If the whole Tiger Woods scandal left you disappointed, dismayed and in disbelief, you are not alone.  So was Bob Rotella, the sports shrink to many PGA Tour stars, as well as most of the players themselves.

 

"The guys on Tour were as shocked as the rest of us," Rotella said recently. "I haven’t talked to anybody on Tour who had a clue."

 

Rotella, who was in town to speak to the annual fundraiser for Women Golfers Give Back at Whitemarsh Valley CC, feels bad for golf and the PGA Tour.  But he feels even worse for the millions of youngsters who idolized Woods.

 

"Every time somebody comes along that looks like they are going to be a great role model, too many of them just end up being nothing like who we thought they were," said Rotella.  "ItÔs heartbreaking.  I mean, we need some people to be role models."

 

For Rotella, like many of us, the revelations about Tiger’s infidelities forever changed how he regards at the golfer. 

 

"I have great respect for how he plays golf," he said.  "But I have totally changed my perception of him as a person, or at least as a husband and father."

 

After finishing tied 4^th in his return to golf at the Masters, Tiger missed the cut at his next tournament, the Quail Hollow Championship, where he shot 79 on Friday.  But Rotella doesn’t believe for a moment that Tiger won’t soon be back to his old winning ways.

 

"My guess is, he is going to go on to play great golf," said Rotella.  "He now has the incentive of people like Phil catching him for the top of the World Golf Rankings.  He’s got three majors coming (U.S. Open, British Open, PGA) up that he wants so badly, and he loves those golf courses (Pebble Beach GC, St. Andrews, Whistling Straits)."

 

Even with all the upheaval and distractions in Tiger’s life these days, Rotella wouldn’t be surprised if he pulls off major victory No. 15 this year.  The big reason is Tiger’s amazing capacity for mental self-discipline and self-control on the golf course, if not off the course.

 

"He has always been great at separating what is going on on the golf course from what it going on off it," said Rotella.  "It is the one place in the world where he is totally comfortable.  This has been his thing since he was three years old."

 

Watching Tiger’s now-famous 13-minute apology statement back in February didn’t clear up anything for Rotella.  For starters, once he found out Team Tiger had hired a PR consultant to help with the speech, Rotella decided he wouldn’t believe a word coming out of the golfer’s mouth was actually his.

 

And then there was what he couldn’t help but notice as Tiger delivered the mea culpa.  The whole thing made Rotella think back to his daughter’s wedding a few years ago, when he, a man who speaks regularly to large gatherings, was left speechless by the emotion of the moment, when he stood up to toast his daughter and her new husband.

 

Yet, there was Tiger, admitting to his humiliating transgressions before the world and his sainted mother in the front row, and he was as cool as a cucumber.  "There was no emotion," said Rotella, amazed.

 

Rotella shook his head, reflecting on that moment and on what we all thought we knew Tiger.

 

"All I know is I bought the whole Tiger image hook, line and sinker," he said.  "I bragged about him and his family, about how it was just so wonderful that we have this role model that we have.  And I loved what he was doing with the Tiger Woods Foundation.  To me, he just ruined that."

 

How will Tiger’s career fare going forward?  Rotella fully expects he will win again, and win big, because he is that confident in himself and his golfing ability.  He came to that conclusion watching the way Tiger handled himself at the Masters, especially his post-round interview on Sunday with CBS’s Peter Kostis, in which he registered disappointment in his own performance, never congratulating Phil Mickelson.

 

"A lot of people had trouble with Tiger’s interview, and I understand that," said Rotella.  "But the other side is, he can’t believe he wasn’t going to win that tournament.  What it really tells you is that the absolutely believed he was going to go there and shock the world and win that tournament.  And he couldn’t believe that he didn’t.  That probably means he hasn’t changed a whole lot."