The Loop

Missing Links: Tiger 'can forget winning the Open,' and the factory worker who qualified to play in the British Open

July 05, 2014

Stories of interest you might might have missed…

"Tiger Woods was not playing well BEFORE back surgery... so he can forget winning The Open after op, insists Curtis Strange," the headline reads. "If he goes to Hoylake saying, 'I'm here to win and that's the only thing', that would be him telling a lie to himself," Strange tells Reuters Tony Jimenez in this story in the Daily Mail.

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Leaderboard at Hoylake in 2006 (Getty Images photo)

A full-time worker at a resin factory might be the least likely qualifier for the British Open at Hoyloke. "I'm going into work tomorrow morning," John Singleton said. "So I will find out if I can have two weeks off work so that I can play in The Open. I hope I'm given it. It should be fine," he tells Mark Johnson of the Liverpool Echo.

South Carolina football coach Steve Spurrier has never lost a round of golf to one of his players. And they never get a second chance. David M. Hale at ESPN.com has an interesting look at college football coaches and the golf they play in the off season.

"He staggered off the ninth green, exhausted but triumphant. As I helped him into the car he apologized and said, You probably didn't enjoy this at all.' He couldn't have been more wrong," writes Milwaukee Journal Sentinel golf writer Gary D'Amato about his ailing father, who asked to play one more round with him.

Oak Tree National pros Scott Verplank, Willie Wood and Bob Tway all had input into the renovation of the course, which is hosting the U.S. Senior Open next week. "The intent was to take the course back to the way Scott and I and Bob remembered it back when they hosted the U.S. Amateur in '84," Tripp Davis, the architect overseeing the project, tells Michael Baldwin of the Oklahoman. "That meant taking it back to smaller greens."