From left, Dan Hicks, Tiger Woods and Smylie Kaufman on Sunday on NBC.
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Maybe the PNC Championship tease interested you, as you’ve both enjoyed when he and his son have participated in the major winner-family member affair, and you wonder when he’ll play again, period. But Tiger Woods was coy on Sunday. He offered just two words as to whether he’ll appear in two weeks’ time.
“We’ll see.”
Hey, it wasn’t a no, though it wasn’t a yes.
Then there were the 15-time major winner’s thoughts on the dude currently presenting a helluva imitation of him, and yes, even Woods was wowed by Scottie Scheffler, his words seemingly plucked from one-time odes said about him. Consider:
“His consistency each and every week, he doesn’t really do anything wrong.”
“You see his footwork and all these different things, contortions he gets into, but if you stand behind him and you watch ball flight, it’s very tight either way, left to right, right to left, and he moves it up and down easily either way.”
“His iron game is probably the best on tour, and he hits it pin-high whenever he chooses to be pin-high.”
“Yes, he’s making a significant amount of birdies, but he’s not making any mistakes. No doubles. No loose bogeys here and there. Sometimes he goes entire tournaments without three-putts, maybe one three-putt. These are all just simple, simple mistakes he can just clean up, and if you do that over the course of time, you’ll put yourself in a lot of positions, and if you’re able to put yourself in a lot of positions, you can [win] a couple.”
Interesting, for sure. The musings came during Woods’ appearance on NBC, during its broadcast of the final round of the Hero World Challenge, the end-of-year event he hosts. The back-and-forths in these forums are typically lighter — Woods probably wouldn’t agree to come on live TV to be grilled — but because they are, he’s arguably a little looser, and you get the occasional nugget, such as the PNC update, or the Scheffler opinion.
Or the revelation that his game once contained something you’d hear from high-handicappers, or the non-Tiger Woodses.
Yeah, Woods said he once had a bit of a baseball swing.
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The insight came after Woods was shown a video of the footwork of Scheffler and Justin Thomas. Scheffler, as you might’ve seen by now, employs a so-called Scheffler shuffle upon contact, where his right foot kicks back and his left foot twists. Thomas, meanwhile, engages ground forces as much as anyone.
Said announcer Dan Hicks: “Well, there are different ways to approach this game. This is kind of been the modern look at footwork, Tiger. We’re going to show you a split screen here of Scottie Scheffler on the left, Justin Thomas on the right. This was not your style, but these guys are doing it a different way. There’s a lot of moonwalking going on here.”
Woods, though, admitted he once played a bit like Thomas.
“No, I was like JT earlier in my career,” he said on the broadcast. “You know, I was one of the first ones to jump like that off the ground. That was in that generation where it was the reverse ‘C’ — well, the ‘K’ and then the ‘C.’ I didn’t do that.
“I mean, I had a lot of baseball in me. My baseball swing got into my golf swing, and I had that natural foot movement like JT. I was always small and skinny. So I needed to use the ground to get speed and power.”
Later, after a Thomas tee shot, Woods was shown another video of his feet.
“Yeah, stand on that right toe, move, wheel on that left heel, extend the left knee — and that’s how you get speed.”
Good to know.
