Tiger Gets Familiar With Turnberry

With many of the PGA pros slogging their way through a 36 hole final day at the John Deere Classic, Tiger Woods, the pre-tournament favorite and No. 1 world ranked player, took some time Sunday to get familiar with an unfamiliar course.  Turnberry, the site of next week’s British Open, has hosted the championship three times, the last time being 1994.  It is believed that this is the first time in three years that Woods has shown up at a major tournament without ever seeing the course beforehand.  The last time was at Royal Liverpool in 2006, when Tiger captured his third British Open title.

Tiger Woods (Image: Zuma Press)

Remarkably, this is the first time since 2004 that Tiger Woods does not hold one of the four major championship trophies.  Knee surgery knocked him out of last year’s British Open and PGA Championship, and this year Tiger came up short in both the Masters and U.S. Open.  But as is the case with every tournament, especially the major championships, Woods is once again the odds-on favorite to claim his fourth Claret Jug.

His chances at victory next week increased exponentially after Phil Mickelson bowed out of the Open Championship to help his wife recover from breast cancer.  It will be interesting to see how Padraig Harrington, winner of the last two Open Championships, fares at Turnberry.  Despite winning the Irish PGA Championship for the third straight year, Harrington’s play as of late has been poor at best, after missing the cut in the last five tournaments prior to the Irish PGA.