Posted by Jason Sobel
You can stop bad-mouthing Tiger Woods, stop griping about his intermittent schedule, stop complaining that he's skipping the Nissan Open just to keep his current PGA Tour win streak intact, rather than lay it on the line at a tournament he's never won.
With the news coming on Tuesday, via Woods' own Web site, that he will forgo the Los Angeles-based event that first gave him a sponsor's exemption as a 16-year-old in 1992, expect the boobirds to be out in full force, decrying the notion that he can still surpass Byron Nelson's record 11 straight tour victories despite dodging so many bullets along the way.
It's not that Tiger isn't expecting the criticism. He is. He just doesn't care.
"People can say whatever they want," he said after winning the Buick Invitational two weeks ago, in regard to speculation that he might pick and choose where to play in order to protect the streak. "That's their opinion. They are entitled to it."
At the time, Woods would not provide an answer as to when we'd next see him compete in the U.S. And it's possible he still hadn't made up his mind.
However, after finishing T-3 at the Dubai Desert Classic on Sunday, he continued maintaining indecision as to when his next start would come. "I'm going to go home and just kind of figure it out," he said. "Hopefully get my putting organized before I compete again."
Perhaps any vitriol directed toward Woods should be less about why he makes his scheduling choices than how. After all, this is becoming a pattern, hardly the first time in which he's eluded questions about his schedule, only to relay his intentions by Internet soon afterward.
When last we saw Woods in 2006, at his own Target World Challenge, he was asked whether he'd compete in the season-opening Mercedes-Benz Championship, just two weeks down the road. "I'm going to sit back here in the next week and start playing out my entire schedule for next year," he said at the time. "I wanted to get this tournament over and done with and get on vacation and enjoy skiing, having a great time, and then I'll get the entire itinerary for next year and start planning the schedule, what I need to do and when I need to do it."
Earlier in the year, after winning the WGC-American Express Championship in what would be his last PGA Tour start of the season, Woods was equally ambiguous when asked about his upcoming schedule, including whether he'd play at the season-ending Tour Championship. Here's the give-and-take:
Q: Next appearance is?
A: Home.
Q: Tournamentwise?
A: Don't know.
Q: Care to guess?
A: No (laughter).
For a man who so often oozes confidence on the golf course, never letting a moment of consternation affect his play, it's interesting to note how often he seems so indecisive about his next move.
Maybe Tiger Woods is a procrastinator, leaving all of these important scheduling resolutions for the 11th hour. Maybe he's so focused on the task at hand, winning a golf tournament, that he really, truly hasn't thought about when and where his next start will take place.
Or maybe he just doesn't want to deal with the criticism, opting instead to elude questions and simply post his upcoming schedule on his Web site, while he's out of the public eye. It's an intriguing quandary, and one which should only continue to gain momentum with Woods' most recent news.
