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The Loop

Will Tiger Woods' China project survive country's crackdown on new courses?

April 25, 2015

Stories of interest you might have missed…

Will Tiger Woods' China course project be derailed by Xi Jinping, the president of the People's Republic of China and his crackdown on building new courses there? "Golf's hope is that its reappearance at the Olympics next year will grab the attention of the state and persuade Mr Xi to invest rather than interfere," James Corrigan of the Telegraph writes. "Yet nobody can be sure. In Mr Xi's mission to cleanse, everyone and everything is expendable, including golf and Woods. So good luck, Tiger, although do stay positive. After all, the red shirt might help."

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Du Sha, chairman of Pacific Links International, and Tiger Woods

Kelly Gibson and Tommy Moore, "Bond on the Bayou," the headline says, were boyhood friends and PGA Tour players determined to play the Masters together. "Every Augusta week it almost makes me cry to think that we both had chances to get there,and we both missed out," Gibson said in this story by Brian Allee-Walsh at PGATour.com. Moore died in 1998 of a rare blood disease.


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The decline of Tiger Woods put golf "in a funk," Ron Higgins of the Times-Picayune writes, but Jordan Spieth's Masters victory has lifted it from its funk. "Golf is in safe hands now," said Justin Rose, the world's ninth ranked golfer. "It's not like who's going to take over, it's pretty evident with what Jordan has done, with what Rory [McIlroy] has done."


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It has been a harrowing couple of weeks for Australian Marc Leishman and wife Audrey. The latter nearly died from toxic shock syndrome. "It really put things in perspective," Leishman said in this story by Brian Wacker of PGATour.com. "You have your bad days on the course, or think it's a bad day then you go through something like this. Your life gets turned upside down. Three weeks ago it was looking like I was going to be done with golf."