Snowboarding, golf and FedExCup
It was nice to get off to a good start last week at the Mercedes-Benz Championship. I hadn't played in two weeks.
I'd been in the snow in Idaho. But I always enjoy playing at Kapalua, and you always get a good feeling playing
there, even though the wind was blowing so hard. So I'm excited about the year and excited to get FedExCup points
right off the bat. I'm on the PGA TOUR Policy Board and as much as I've been working on it from that side to
actually see it start rather than just talking about it was great. I think it's going to be an exciting year.
I must say being behind the scenes even before the FedExCup was an idea and then seeing it come to fruition has
been very satisfying. We have a brand — PGA TOUR — with that logo that's so strong that you never want to put
a sponsor in front of it. But to figure out a way to have the PGA TOUR guys playing for the FedExCup was a great
thing for us — and the more you look at it now, after a couple of weeks, what a great deal for FedEx, too.
They've already gotten a ton of publicity over the last six months, and we just started the actual competition.
So it's exciting for everybody and I think it's really going to work well. It's like if you could take the Stanley
Cup and put a brand name on it and you play for it all year long and it's the ultimate goal. It was just a great
job by the TOUR and by all the players who were involved. We have four player directors on the Policy Board, and
there are 16 guys on the Player Advisory Council and those guys put a lot of effort into this, too. I think the
PAC has worked harder than it ever has the last two years, not to mention the board members. So it is great to
see it actually happen.
Once we get maybe, six, eight, 10 tournaments in, people will realize that the FedExCup is going to happen just
like the money list. People will catch on. I've always said it's like when NASCAR switched to their chase
format — I didn't like it. I didn't know how it was going to work. But once you had 10 races left, you figured
it out. Ten guys were in and that was it. So I think once we get close to the PGA Championship, people will have
figured it out. And with the new Ryder Cup points system, they're going to have something else to figure out,
too. If we had the old Ryder Cup qualifying, I would have gotten the most points last week. But you only get
points in the majors this year. So people are going to have to get a handle on that and they're going to have
to get a handle on the FedExCup. It's going to be an exciting year, especially when you get to the middle of
the summer and you see who's up there and what it's going to take to make the playoffs and the top 30 and all that.
We've done a lot of traveling — in a lot of different climates — recently. We went from Mexico and southern
Californa to Idaho for 2 ½ weeks and then to Hawaii for two weeks. Next week we're going back to the cold.
I like to snowboard while I'm there. I enjoy getting away. If I was at home now and my son had golf tournaments,
I'd be around the club all the time. So then you don't really get away. That's why I like going to Idaho or
going hunting for three or four days while I'm at home. You can completely turn it off. Of course, I have to
admit that I have a mirror and a net in the garage at our house in Idaho so I can swing. I didn't get to actually
practice, but I stayed loose, and I think that's why when I got to Maui I was ready to hit it. I wasn't stiff
and rusty. We didn't get to Hawaii until January 1st because New Year's Eve is my wife Robin's birthday. It was
either: get there early and not have all her friends around or stay in Idaho. So we had a fun party there. The
Slumans and a bunch of our friends were there. I wish I had gotten to Maui maybe a few days early because I would
have caught a few days without the wind, but at least I didn't get spoiled. When I got there it was blowing and
it blew every day.
I haven't had quite as much success here at Waialae this week as I did at Kapalua. I made a good birdie putt on
the 18th hole today to finish even par and make the cut. I kept telling myself you don't want to miss the first
cut of the year. None of us were playing well, so it was a frustrating couple of days. When it's windy and you're
not hitting it well and you're not making putts, the course looks pretty difficult. This course is different than
the one on Maui. Kapalua's built where all the really long holes are downwind with big fairways. This course is
narrow and it has rough now. Even though it's not like you have to chip out, you can't get the ball close to the
hole when you miss the fairway. If a guy's driving it straight like Luke Donald or Paul Goydos, and he putts well,
you can shoot a good score. But if you're in the rough or the edge of the rough every hole, it's tough to go low.
I've got an early tee time tomorrow, so I might go fishing afterwards. We go wading out into the water and fish
for bonefish. Mark Rolfing and I tried it out here near the course one time and we about drowned ourselves — and
we didn't catch anything, either. Hopefully, tomorrow I'll have better luck, both on the golf course and off.
Originally featured on PGATOUR.com
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