Greg Norman Says Tiger Is Tough but ‘I Probably Would Have Beat Him’

In an interview with David DeNunzio for the January issue of Golf Magazine, Greg Norman wanted to set the record straight on the heavyweight golf matchup-that-never-was: the Shark vs. the Tiger.

“I never feared anything or anyone on the course, and I wasn’t afraid to fail,” said Norman. “So I think I’d do pretty well against Snead, Hogan, Tiger and Phil — whoever. Tiger’s a tough guy, but I was a tough guy on the course, too. I probably would have beat him.”

Woods’ 661 total weeks atop the World Golf Ranking and 14 major championships dwarfs Norman’s line at 331 and two, but it hasn’t stopped Norman from being critical of Woods. In a 2011 interview with Golf Magazine, Norman predicted that Woods would never win another major.

“Tiger, when he dominated, had a single-shot approach. It was only about the golf. Everything else was taken care of. I mean he was put up on this pedestal, and he enjoyed it, likely so, because he did what he did. But now there are so many other distractions, and people are looking for things that are wrong with Tiger now, so he’s got to deal with that on a day-to-day basis, like every other mortal has to do, right? In our lives, in our business, we all have to be responsible for our actions. It’s very hard for him to have that focus. And the more he shuts people off, the worse it gets.”

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England's Brooks leads in rain-hit Durban with 62

DURBAN, South Africa -- England's Daniel Brooks shot an 8-under 62 to take a one-stroke lead in the Nelson Mandela Championship on Wednesday after heavy rain disrupted the first round.

Play at the Mount Edgecombe Country Club began seven hours late after rain left many of the fairways waterlogged. More than half the field failed to complete their rounds.

Brook is being pursued by a group of French players, led by Francois Calmels with 63 and followed by Edouard Dubois and Romain Wattel two strokes back. Sweden's Joel Sjoholm and Ryan Cairns of Zimbabwe share fifth place after carding 65s.

Brooks, who kept his European Tour card after last month's Qualifying School, produced eight birdies in his bogey-free round. The course was reduced to a par-70 track: The 320-yard par-4 fifth was converted into a 142-yard par-3 because of the waterlogged fairway.

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Tiger says he won't be breaking Arnie's record at the Masters

Tiger Woods said long ago he would give up golf when he felt he could play his best and still not win.

That includes his lifetime invitation to the Masters.

"Let me put it to you this way," Woods said last week at his World Challenge. "I'm not going to beat Arnold's record. I'm not playing that long, that's for sure."

Palmer set a record in 2004 by playing in his 50th consecutive Masters. Woods won his first green jacket when he was 21, and with reasonable health (a big assumption considering his injuries), he would seem to be in the best position to break that record. Even with his injuries, the Masters is the one major Woods has never missed.

He just doesn't appear the least bit interested in that kind of a record.

"For me, I always want to win," he said. "So if I can't win, why tee it up? That's just my own personal belief. And I know what it takes to prepare to win and what it takes to go out there and get the job done, and there's going to become a point in time where I just can't do it anymore. We all as athletes face that moment. I'm a ways from that moment in my sport, but when that day happens, I'll make a decision and that's it."

But for Woods or any golfer, it's tough to know when that day happens.

Palmer never won another PGA Tour event after the Bob Hope Classic in 1973, though he remained competitive for many years. Several players eligible for the Champions Tour are hesitant about moving on.

When is it time?

"In golf, you can still win golf tournaments in your 50s, and guys have done it," Woods said. "Probably the more difficult thing is that you can still finish top 10, top five, but you're probably just not quite as efficient as you need to be to win golf tournaments. But you can still be there."

Might he change his mind about the Masters as he gets older? It doesn't sound like it.

"Mellowing on that? No. I'll be on that first tee starting out the event, I'm sure," he said with a smile and a dose of sarcasm. "So I mean, you hit a good drive and you can't get to where you can see the flag? I don't know why it's even fun."

STENSON AWARD: Henrik Stenson has won the Golf Writers Trophy from the Association of Golf Writers, awarded to the top golfer who was born or lives in Europe, along with European teams. Stenson became the first player this year to win the FedEx Cup on the PGA Tour and the Race to Dubai on the European Tour.

Nearly two-thirds of the AGW members made Stenson their first choice on a ballot that included U.S. Open champion Justin Rose and Europe's Solheim Cup team that won on American soil for the first time.

Stenson was the first Swedish male to win the award. Annika Sorenstam won the award twice.

"I'm looking forward to getting a few of these trophies I've won into the summer house in Sweden," said Stenson, who primarily lives at Lake Nona in Orlando, Fla. "It has been such a great year that I can have a few in Europe and a few in my house in America. What a great thrill it is going to be over Christmas to sit by the fire with my family and take stock of the season, look at trophies such as this one and reflect on the year of my life."

IN THE BAG: Jack Nicklaus won't have a bouquet of head covers in his bag when he plays the PNC Father-Son Challenge this weekend, though the 14 clubs in his bag have changed from his prime.

Nicklaus said when he played on the PGA Tour he carried a driver and a 3-wood, a 1-iron through a 9-iron, pitching wedge, sand wedge and putter.

"Now I've got a driver, a 3-wood, a 4-wood and a 5-wood," he said last week in a conference call. "I'm not a big hybrid guy, although I'm playing with one right now and I took out the 2-iron. That's pretty much where I am. I'm usually a 3-iron through 9-iron, pitching wedge and sand wedge. I don't know if that's 14 or 15 (clubs), but it'll be 14 when I tee it up."

No other player hit more memorable shots with a 1-iron than Nicklaus, a club that featured in three of his majors -- the 1972 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, the 1975 Masters and the 1967 U.S. Open at Baltusrol.

But there were times when he benched the 1-iron.

"I used to even go to Augusta when I carried a 1-iron a lot, and sometimes I'd put in maybe a 4- or 5-wood, simply because you needed some elevation to stop it on the greens and some of the lies you played," Nicklaus said.

THE HANEY SHOW: Hank Haney has gone from writing a book on his years with Tiger Woods to hosting his own radio show on SiriusXM.

The radio network continues to beef up its programming. It already has shows for Henrik Stenson and Ian Poulter, along with two-time Masters champion, architect and golf savant Ben Crenshaw. Haney will host "Hank Haney Golf Radio," an instructional-based show that will air Saturday and Sunday at 10 a.m. ET starting on Jan. 3.

The program will be geared around Haney's teaching philosophy, and he will take calls from listeners who want help with their games. Haney also will offer his analysis on today's players and take on current topics, which are sure to include Woods.

"This show will be truly interactive and I'm eager to speak with golfers across the country," Haney said.

TWEETING TIGER: Jason Dufner jokingly tweeted to Tiger Woods that the schedule of the World Challenge be changed so Dufner could watch Auburn in the SEC title game last week. Woods replied on Twitter, "Petition denied."

It was a significant only because it was Woods' first tweet in more than a month. It was his 35th tweet in the span of a year, most of them commercially related. And that Dufner tweet was the first of -- get this -- FIVE tweets in two days.

"I'm hot, aren't I?" Woods said.

Woods said girlfriend Lindsey Vonn is trying to persuade him to tweet more. Progress remains slow.

"I grew up in a different era, and it's a little bit different for me," Woods said, who is 9 years older than the downhill ski champion. "I'm still a little bit old-school. I'm kind of getting it, but still not grasping the whole concept yet. But I'll get there eventually."

DIVOTS: K.J. Choi donated his $100,000 from the World Cup to help with relief efforts in the Philippines. "I wanted to represent Korea in sharing the sentiment of my fellow countrymen to our friends in the Philippines," Choi said. "I send my deepest condolences to the people of the Philippines who have lost their families and homes. The donation from the KJ Choi Foundation was sent to the American Red Cross. ... Redstone Golf Club is now called "Golf Club of Houston" under a contractual requirement when it changed ownership. It still is host of the Shell Houston Open, the final PGA Tour event before the Masters. ... Cal coach Steve Desimone has been selected U.S. captain of the Palmer Cup next year. The Palmer Cup, matches between college players from the United States and Europe, will be June 26-28 at Walton Heath.

STAT OF THE WEEK: The 19 tournaments Tiger Woods played this year offered an average of 72.7 world ranking points to the winner.

FINAL WORD: "Driving accuracy far outweighs distance. And I sleep better at night knowing that." -- Zach Johnson. He was No. 8 in driving accuracy on the PGA Tour last year and No. 153 in driving distance.

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Rory McIlroy ready to put season of struggles behind him

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. -- Rory's McIlroy's year began with a coronation. He was the star attraction at what felt like a rock concert, with music blaring and lasers flashing in a room at Abu Dhabi to celebrate the No. 1 player in golf joining Nike's stable.

It ended Sunday with a bogey on the ninth hole at Sherwood with hardly anyone watching.

An offseason never looked more appealing to him.

"It's been a long season, a long stretch," McIlroy said after signing for a 70 to finish 11th in an 18-man field at the World Challenge. "I'm excited to put the clubs down for a little bit, have a few weeks' rest and get after it at the start of the new year."

He won't have to worry about getting used to new equipment. He spent the better part of nine months doing that.

Expectations are sure to be lower.

A year ago, McIlroy was the clear No. 1 in golf. He was coming off another record win in a major - an eight-shot victory in the PGA Championship -- and threw his game into overdrive with two FedEx Cup playoff wins and money titles on both sides of the Atlantic by closing his season with a win in Dubai.

It looked as if he would stay there for many years.

That lasted three months.

There were equipment issues, a product of changing everything at once instead of slowly working the swoosh into his bag, as Tiger Woods did a decade earlier. He changed management companies, which ordinarily is a seamless transition unless the split is ugly.

McIlroy is scheduled to be in a courtroom in Ireland not long after the Ryder Cup next year. So yes, this is ugly. According to reports in Irish newspapers, he split with girlfriend Caroline Wozniacki at least twice, maybe three times. Except it wasn't true. The tennis star was at Sherwood all week, an ever-present smile as she followed him along, even going across the parking lot to hit balls (tennis, not golf) at Sherwood's stadium court.

All that became as tough an obstacle as anything on the golf course.

McIlroy, for all his brilliance inside the ropes, is refreshingly honest when it comes to his golf and often self-deprecating. He was talking earlier in the week about playing casual rounds with friends, noting that he had more of those days than in previous years.

"Had more weekends (off)," he said.

It wasn't that bad, though his golf certainly was by his standards. He failed to make the cut five times, which is high for a player of his caliber. One was at the British Open. Another was at the Honda Classic, where he walked off the course after 26 holes out of frustration, blaming it on his wisdom tooth.

He didn't win a tournament until his 24th start, two weeks ago at the Australian Open. He ends the year at No. 6 in the world, miles away from Woods at the top.

"It's been the first year I've had to put up with scrutiny and criticism," McIlroy said. "You just have to believe in what you're doing and not let it get to you too much. I let it get to me a few times."

The toothache was one example of that. McIlroy conceded a week later at Doral that all the hype translated into more pressure he put on himself to perform, and he snapped. An honest answer. He said he would never do it again. So far, so good.

More than the golf was the inspection outside the ropes.

"All the other stuff," he said. "I don't care what people say about my golf. It's when people start digging into my personal life, that's where it starts to annoy you. Whether it's Caroline, the management, all that should that should be no consequence to how I play my golf."

That's a part of celebrity he still hasn't mastered.

When you're 24 and already have two majors (setting records in each), when you're dating a former No. 1 tennis player, when you're looked upon as the next great player in golf, there will be prying. He has to learn how to protect what he wants to keep private and ignore the rest.

As for the golf, McIlroy can only hope this year was an aberration.

Woods went through his first "slump" - everything is relative when it comes to Woods - at age 22 in his second full year as a pro. He won only two tournaments. He lost to Nick Price in a playoff at Sun City. He lost to Mark O'Meara in a 36-hole final at the World Match Play Championship. About the only off-course issue he faced was the GQ article that quoted him telling racial jokes.

"As far as battling a slump, that's just part of playing golf," Woods said. "You play golf long enough, you're going to go through it."

The great ones emerge. And the great ones don't stay in slumps for long.

McIlroy headed to his Florida home to start his vacation. He'll eventually wind up in Melbourne to watch Wozniacki in the Australian Open, and then go to Dubai to start preparing for a new season that will begin in Abu Dhabi.

Even at age 24, this is shaping up as important season.

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BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2013: Justin Rose keen to move on from US Open glory

Justin Rose’s victory at the US Open proved a profound experience for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year nominee – but now he is ready to move forward

Justin Rose always believed the major was there; it was just that he thought the special moment was gone. But then the heavens opened.

When he tapped in at Merion, Rose looked and pointed sky-bound and for that second it was just him and his dad. And so Justin and Ken had their time on the green, as the son finally fulfilled the destiny for which his father invested so much before being taken by leukaemia.

“It’s funny because in Rory [McIlroy] and Graeme [McDowell] I’d seen two pals in the years before hugging their fathers on the 18th after winning a US Open and, because dad had passed away in 2002, I thought I would never experience what they felt,” Rose said.

“But I was wrong, I did and I was surprised how wonderful it felt. Honestly, I could feel him there with me that day.”

With that tale the reminiscing stops for Rose. There will be a rocking chair, a pair of slippers perhaps and almost certainly a few grandchildren with whom to share the nostalgia.

“All that’s for the veranda now,” Rose said.

“I don’t want to get too caught up in harking back all the time. For first two months after winning, you’re talking about Merion, you’re in the past, you’re talking about what happened last week, a month ago, two months ago ... I want to win more And I think you can only do that by looking forwards not backwards.”

Except there have been times since when he could not fail to reflect on the achievement. For instance, every time the glint of silver has stopped him in his tracks as he has chased his children or fulfilled his household chores.

“Sometimes, if I pass by the trophy in the house, I catch myself cutting off from what I’m doing and taking a second look. And out of the blue it makes me smile. Not only is it still sinking in, but I’m still in the period where I’m in possession of the real US Open trophy, not just a replica.

"So it is the actual trophy that [Jack] Nicklaus and Hogan and Tiger [Woods] have all held; that’s what make it is very special. Just think, Nicklaus, Hogan and Woods and other great, great names in golf had that trophy in their house. When you win the US Open you realise that you’ll go down in the history books, but that notion just confirms the magnitude of it, the history of it. It’s very surreal.”

Yes, Rose has taken his place with the legends, but he is adamant to continue teeing it up with the boys. In October, he returned to Merion with 11 friends he has known since primary school in what has become the annual “JR Challenge”.

First they played the revered New Jersey track of Pine Valley, then Aronimink, another Pennsylvania course where he tasted glory in the 2010 AT&T National – and then they arrived at the scene of Rose’s breakthrough.

“I was waiting for them all in the foyer of the hotel where we were staying and they came down dressed exactly as I was dressed on that Sunday,” Rose said. “They had the same outfit for me, too.”

When they reached the 18th, Rose was predictably asked to recreate the winning four-iron. When he stood over the ball, he was asked by one of his friends what he recalled about that shot.

“I just remember thinking I’m glad I’ll never have to play this again,” Rose replied. As the group was still united in laughter, Rose hit it long and left. “It’s playing short today!” Rose shouted as whistled over the putting surface.

It did not matter. After all, his mates insisted that he played off a ridiculous handicap of plus-10, so there was little chance of him prevailing. Four months before he had stood in that exact spot, 229 yards out and a few yards ahead of the Ben Hogan plaque – from where the American legend had played his fabled one-iron – and struck one of the greatest shots in British golfing history.

With Phil Mickelson in behind there was no margin for error and so Rose took none, catching the sweet spot and seeing it skirt hole before trickling to the back of the green.

And so, England hailed its first US Open champion in 43 years; maybe not the 77-year wait of a British winner of Wimbledon, but still, enough to earn Rose a berth on the BBC Sports Personality of the Year shortlist alongside Andy Murray.

Like Murray, Rose cannot be in Leeds on Sunday as he is playing the Thailand Golf Championship to close out his season. He will then take off four weeks before beginning his 2014 campaign in Abu Dhabi.

Rose is not too concerned about any enduring hangover. The slumps which followed his fourth place at the 1998 Open as a 17-year-old amateur, his four titles in 2002 and his Order of Merit in 2007 were, he believes, somewhere inevitable. “All those successes were in a way, anomalies,” he said. “This year was built on solid foundations.”

Yet while there can be no doubting the greatness of a swing sculptured by Sean Foley, the improvement of a putting stroke fashioned by David Orr, or the strength of a mind chiselled by Gio Valiante, there is always the “what next?” conundrum to overcome.

“Yeah, it’s definitely been a ‘dream-come-true’ type season,” Rose said. “I’d fantasised about winning a major for years. Ever since I’ve started the game that was the benchmark, that was the goal. Obviously there’s been a lot of great players throughout history who have never won a major, so I’m grateful to have that monkey off my back.

“But you never want it to be, ‘OK, that’s my career, I’m done’. I feel I’ve got to the point now where I’ve got a clean slate, where it’s behind me. I have renewed focus and renewed goals. I feel like I’m working my way into the prime of my career. I always thought that my time, if ever, would come between the ages of 30 and 40.

“You take a lot of encouragement from guys like Phil, who didn’t start winning his majors until he was a year older than I was. So you begin to believe that a great career is possible. That has to be the aim.”

In truth, it always was. For son and father.

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