🐅 Tiger’s telling Tuesday

Hey there! Hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving. 

We’re technically in golf’s offseason, but there’s still plenty of news AND a tournament this weekend featuring the one-and-only, Tiger Woods. So, lots to cover! 

If you’ve enjoyed reading the Quick Nine since we started a few months ago, I’d love for you to share it with a golf friend or two. Every reader counts! 

For now, onto the news…

Tiger’s telling Tuesday

For the first time since April, Tiger Woods sat down for an official press conference ahead of this week’s Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas. 

• The tournament isn’t an official PGA Tour event, but it’s hosted by Tiger and includes 20 of the world’s best players including Scottie Scheffler, Viktor Hovland, Max Homa, and others. 

• And, there’s real money on the line — the winner takes home $1 million. 

Anytime Tiger talks (heck, anytime he walks), there’s intrigue. And Tuesday’s 30-minute presser didn’t disappoint. Here were the top six takeaways: 

1. Tiger said his game “feels rusty.” 

• “I’m excited to compete and play and I’m just as curious as all of you are to see what happens because I haven’t done it in awhile,” he said. 

2. He’s optimistic about his health and said his best case scenario for 2024 would be to play in one tournament per month. 

• Tiger said while he’s “a little bit more sore in other areas,” he has no pain in his right ankle — the one he had surgically repaired earlier this year. 

3. Regarding the PGA Tour’s tentative agreement this summer to join forces with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), Tiger said he was “very surprised” and that players were “very frustrated” with the lack of information they received ahead of the announcement.  

• Tiger said the situation prompted him to join the Tour’s policy board to make sure players weren’t left out of the process again. 

4. As for whether the PGA Tour and PIF will reach an agreement by their Dec. 31 deadline, Tiger said he’s “confident that the deal will get done in some way,” but it could be delayed. 

• “Everyone’s working right now with no animosity,” Tiger said. 

5. Still, when asked what the professional golf landscape will look like in a year or two, Tiger said it remains “murky.” 

• “There’s a lot of moving parts,” he said. “Whether it’s here on the PGA Tour or merging or it’s team golf, there’s a lot of different aspects that are being thrown out there all at once.” 

6. Asked whether he thought he could win again, Tiger said: “Absolutely.” 

More news

🏌️‍♂️ Golf’s governing bodies have made up their minds over whether or not to roll back golf ball technology for elite competition, and they’ll will make their decision public by the end of this year, R&A CEO Martin Slumbers told Golf Digest last week. 

• “Unequivocally, the ball is going further than it did 15 years ago,” Slumbers said. “For the good of the game, we need to address this issue.” 

• Catch up quick: The proposed change (announced in March) would likely only apply to the pros in a limited number of tournaments (like the US Open and The Open Championship, which the USGA and R&A run) and could limit distance off the tee by around 15 yards for the average Tour player. 

• The PGA Tour has already said it’s against efforts to cut down on distance, which means (if they don’t adopt the new rule) players would be able to hit their typical ball for most of the year. 

• Thankfully, the modified ball would not apply to weekend warriors.

💰 The PGA Tour recently doled out $100 million to 20 golfers as part of its Player Impact Program (PIP), which started in 2021 as a way to reward those having the greatest impact on the game of golf and more specifically, the Tour’s bottom line. 

• The exact formula (as you might have guessed) is opaque, but generally consists of factors like Google search frequency, media mentions, and golf fan awareness surveys. 

• Rory collected $15 million atop this year’s list, followed by Tiger Woods ($12 million), Jon Rahm ($9 million), Jordan Spieth ($7 million), and Scottie Scheffler ($6 million). 

• Nate Lashley (who finished 97th in FedEx Cup points this past season) initially leaked the PIP results on Instagram last week, calling the program “an absolute kick in the face to the rest of the PGA Tour players.”

👨‍🍳 Min Woo Lee (of “Let him cook” fame) wore a chef’s hat and led a thunderclap on the 17th green on Sunday en route to a three-shot victory at the Australian PGA Championship. 

• Lee’s red hot play has moved him to 38th in the world, ahead of fellow Aussies Cam Davis (43) and Adam Scott (46).

🐯 In more Tiger news, he and son Charlie committed to playing in the PNC Championship — a 36-hole parent-child scramble in mid-December. 

• They’ll try to take down last year’s victors, Vijay and Qass Singh, and 2021 champs, John Daly I and II.

And finally…

This was very relatable for me, sadly.

That’s all for today! Thanks so much for reading y’all and I’ll see you back here on Sunday.

In the meantime, if you have any winter golf tips (namely, how to stay warm out there), please send them my way. As a new addition to the Midwest, I have much to learn.

Talk soon, Nick B. 🥶