The Loop
Missing Links: Tiger returns, 'but where is he going?', and Steve Stricker's 'seemed indifference' to British Open
By John Strege
Stories of interest you might have missed…
"Woods is 38 going on something much older," Doug Ferguson of the Associated Press writes. "He now has more surgeries (five) than green jackets (four). And for all the talk about his swing being slightly shorter or any other technical aspect of his game, what can't be ignored is he no longer makes as many putts as he once did." Ferguson takes a closer look at Woods' comeback. The headline: Tiger Woods is back, but where is he going?
Tiger Woods with Steve Stricker (Getty Images photo)
Steve Stricker is talking about forgoing the British Open, Jason Dufner is talking about retirement and James Corrigan of the Telegraph doesn't understand. "They can do what they want," he writes. "Except their seemed indifference to the trophies which establish golfers as legends would have participants in other professional sports completely bemused."
Scotland is "the the game's cradle," as the Scotsman's Martin Dempster calls it, but you'd be hard pressed to tell that from the performance of the Scots' on the world stage.
"I certainly kind of spot my peers five years," the PGA Tour's Billy Hurley said, talking about his years serving on warships as a Naval Academy graduate. "In a lot of ways, I'm a 27-year-old on the PGA Tour, not a 32-year-old. I suppose I'm probably a 37-year-old in terms of life experience." The Navy Times catches up with Hurley.
Augusta, Ga., is renowned, of course, for the Masters, but who knew it was the LPGA caddie capital of North America? Three LPGA caddies — Benji Thompson (for Lexi Thompson, though no relation), Mercer Leftwich III (for Shanshan Feng) and Kyle Bradley (for Jessica Korda) — are all Augusta residents, David Westin writes in the Augusta Chronicle.