Woods feeling the pinch

SO another company, Gatorade, have decided to pull the plug on Tiger Woods.

His corporate sponsors are disappearing almost by the week while the man himself hides away in an addiction clinic, apparently believing that whatever treatment he is receiving will save his marriage.

All the time, you can only imagine what the executives at Nike, the sports giant which has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Woods’s bank account for the past decade and a half or so, are thinking about the whole sorry business.

Their public pronouncements have been to the effect that they will continue to support him and give him time to sort out his problems.

Which in many ways is very noble of them. Loyalty is an ingredient all too conspicuous by its absence these days and they surely wouldn’t have continued to renew contract after contract if they didn’t believe they were getting value for their buck.

Furthermore, Woods remains the world number one player for the 247th successive week and for a total of 589 weeks in his career.

Sports people don’t come a whole lot more successful than that.

However, business is business and sooner or later Nike will inevitably expect to see Tiger swinging their clubs, hitting their golf balls and wearing their apparel.

And that day cannot come soon enough for the US PGA Tour which has clearly struggled to command any great degree of public attention since the new season began.

Take the unfortunately named Waste Management Phoenix Open at the weekend.

The closing stages were fought out by two Americans, Hunter Mahan and Rickie Fowler, with the Chinese YE Yang right on their tails.

In some ways, I suppose, it was absorbing stuff with Mahan shooting two flawless closing rounds to pip the 21 year-old Fowler by a stroke, a win that bumps him up 11 places to 22nd in the world. Yang shot a final round 65 but a bogey at the relatively easy 17th on Sunday cost him the chance of adding this title to the US PGA Championship he stole from Woods last August and the Honda Classic earlier in the year.

However, once a few days have passed by, Phoenix will have become a distant memory even for golfing addicts. There was no Woods or Phil Mickelson challenging for the title and the rest really didn’t really mean a whole lot to the average golf fan.

Woods, of course, will again be an absentee this week when the first tournament of the “Florida Swing”, the $5.6m (€4.1m) Honda Classic, takes place at Palm Beach Gardens. To make matters worse, Mickelson won’t be there either. In fairness, though, this event will be of far greater interest for enthusiasts on this side of the Atlantic and not least in Ireland with our “big three”, Pádraig Harrington, Rory McIlroy and Graeme McDowell, all involved.

Harrington achieved the first of his four US victories at the Honda in 2005 when he shot a brilliant final round of 63 (he was 10 under for the first 13) to finish 14 under par and tie with American Joe Ogilvie and Fiji’s Vijay Singh. Ogilvie dropped out at the first extra hole and Singh missed a short putt at the next as the Irishman displayed remarkable short game dexterity to take full advantage.

Harrington will be glad to have such happy memories to boost him this week given that his campaign so far has been very much of the stop-start variety.

He missed the cut in the Northern Trust Los Angeles Open, tied for 16th in the AT & T Pebble Beach pro-am and lost in the first round of the Accenture WGC-World Match Play Championship to Jeev Milkha Singh. He has spoken of his lack of a competitive edge and with the Masters now only four weeks away, he needs the boost of a few good weeks in the States.

Harrington remains 10th in the world rankings, one place behind McIlroy while McDowell is clinging on to 49th. He needs a good finish this week to remain within the top 50 who qualify for the lucrative WGC-CA Championship over the Blue Monster course at Doral in a couple of weeks time.

Other Europeans in the Honda field include Lee Westwood, Paul Casey, Sergio Garcia and Oliver Wilson which doesn’t leave too many big name players available for the Malaysian Open on the European Tour. The Irish in the field for that €2m event are Darren Clarke, Peter Lawrie and Gary Murphy.