Stevie Williams has
advice for anyone planning
to heckle his boss, Tiger
Woods, when he returns to
playing: Don’t! Williams told
Australia’s The Sun-Herald
that he would make it his
mission to ensure Woods
has a “level playing field.”
Williams said he has been
assured his job is secure. “When I go back to
work with Tiger Woods, nothing will change. My
job is to give him the best information I can and
get him around in the fewest strokes possible.”
Steve Williams
gatew
The King has lent his support to a fledgling
U.S.-based men’s professional tour. The Nation-
al Professional Golf Tour presented by Arnold
Palmer Golf Management bills itself as afford-
able and convenient. With a $1,200 membership,
players can play in any of the NPGT’s 22 markets
across the country and earn a chance to qualify
for the $25,000 National Cup match-play event,
a $10,000 Player of the Year award and the
$500,000 Tour Championship with a first-place
prize of $100,000. The season opener is sched-
uled for early April. For more information, calll
Executive Director Larry Lunsford at 949-313-
1005 or write to llunsford@nationalprotour.com.
I doubt Buddha had golf in mind when he
formed his religion eons ago, but darned if his
namesake religion and golf didn’t share sentenc-
es in two stories last weekend. The first garnered
the most attention when Tiger Woods revealed
he would return to his Buddhist upbringing to get
his life in order. Then there’s former Buddhist
priest-turned-philanthropist Dr. Haruhisa Handa,
who has come to the rescue of the Irish Senior
Open and will sponsor the June 11-13 event at
the Montgomerie Course at Carton House.
According to reports, Seve Ballesteros was
looking healthy and cracking jokes last week at
an event in Madrid organized by the sports daily
Marca. Ballesteros, recovering from a cancerous
brain tumor, said, among other things, he would
like to turn his life into a movie and his ideal golf
foursome would include French football great
Zinedine Zidane, current Real Madrid goalkeep-
er Iker Casillas and model Cindy Crawford.
There was a method to Tim Clark’s appar-
ent madness when the South African pulled out
a yellow Srixon ball for his first-round match
against Vijay Singh at the WGC-Accenture Match
Play Championship. The company says its
Z-Star Yellow series that combines yellow and
green is based on science – yellow is the most
visible color – and psychology – green is associ-
ated with stress relief. Clark defeated Singh and
Martin Kaymer before losing to Sergio Garcia.
There were suspicions that last week’s photo
showing Tiger jogging with someone was staged,
but not so, says TMZ. The guy in the blue shirt
is Corey Carroll, 23, an avid golfer whom Tiger
plucked from obscurity to mentor years ago.
Carroll, who hails from Windermere, Fla., near
Tiger’s home, was 17 when he met Woods, and
they’ve been training partners since, practicing
and working out nearly every day. l
PROPERTIES/SPECS STR8-FIT CONFIGURATION
FACE ANGLE:
LIE ANGLE:
+ 1 º upright
EFFECTIVE LOFT:
+ 1 º
LOFTº: 8. 5 9. 5
SHAFT: X S
STRAIGHT
