The Canadian Open

The Canadian Open
By Jeremy Church

It’s been an off year for me, so I don’t have a problem mentioning that I won again with Tiger Woods, and mentioning again that my game plan coming into the year was to go with him every tournament he played in, thinking that if he had another monster year, he’d win half his tournaments. The strategy was to put it all on him in any head-to-head, and to put it all on him in the outright each week. Well, the monster year didn’t happen, until about a month ago.

He’s got two more Tour events---the WGC American Express Championship and the Tour Championship---and three international events, one of them the Ryder Cup in three weeks, left on his schedule. It’s not inconceivable that he could win out the season.

Fatigue may catch up with him, though. He’s already been to and fro the UK twice in a little more than a month (first to the British Open in Liverpool, then to the K Club in Ireland for a two-day jaunt after he won the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, returning for last week’s Deutsche Bank, which he said he couldn’t have done if the tournament started on Thursday instead of Friday). He goes to England for the HSBC World Match Play Championship in England next week, plays the Ryder Cup the following week in Ireland, then plays the WGC-American Express Championship the following week in England. He’ll have a month off after that before the season-ending Tour Championship. Then it’s overseas again, this time to Shanghai, for the HSBC Champions Tournament.

It’s a similar schedule to year’s past for him, but with two extra trips for the Ryder Cup surveying session and the tournament itself (last year the President’s Cup, which is played off years of the Ryder Cup, was in Virginia), even his stunning momentum might get lagged.