Tiger's Practice Round, Rory's NBA Comparison and More From Riviera And The Genesis Invitational

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Cold. It's really the only way to start a piece of content tied to Wednesday at the Genesis Invitational. It was downright frigid, at least by Southern California standards, when Tiger Woods turned up to Riviera Country Club at 5:30 a.m. to begin his preparation for Wednesday's 18-hole pro-am. Woods has insisted on going off in the first group in pro-ams for as long as he's had the leverage to do so. It makes sense—he wants to get there before the crowds get crazy and he doesn't want to wait through a 5.5-hour round. Plus, Tiger's not the best sleeper, so if you're up at 4:00 am regardless, why not just get it out of the way?

But this…this was different. There were no fans to worry about, as tournament organizers decided against selling tickets for practice days. (Los Angeles sports fans are a notoriously fickle bunch). The forecast promised 60 degree weather in the afternoon but it was barely 40 when he teed off, with 20-plus mile per hour winds making it feel much colder. Woods wore multiple layers, a neck warmer and a beanie over his Nike hat. Being a 47-year-old man with a surgically rebuild body, Woods operates best in warmth, and there was none. You couldn't help but wonder: why is he doing this to himself? Why not just…tee off later?

The answer: because he's in competition mode, and he's been rather successful in competition mode, so why change a winning formula?

"I would not have put myself out here if I didn't think I could beat these guys and win the event," Woods said Tuesday. "That's my mentality. If I wasn't ready to win at this level, I am very rusty, but I've come off a rusty situation before and I've done well and I've had to utilize a lot of those tactics in practice in buildup."

Woods played and walked 16 holes at Riviera before deciding to just walk the final two—including the large hill that leads from the 18th teebox to the 18th fairway and the even-larger one that guards the clubhouse. He certainly took his time making those trudges, but Woods' gait in the early part of the round did look significantly better than it did at last year's major championships. His team has been hard at work toward that goal; last year, Woods walked pigeon-toed and put most of his weight on the outside of his right foot. That grew highly painful as days wore on, with discomfort running up his leg. Some old fashioned trial-and-error with treatment and taping methods have him walking a bit more normally. It's still a noticeable limp, but it's smaller than last year. 

Woods likely shot a few over par in the pro-am, but it's hard to draw any conclusions given how difficult conditions were. Apart from a flubbed chip on 1 his short game looked sharp, and he maintains that he has all the shots necessary to win this tournament. On the equipment front, he has a new 3-iron in the bag—the one he used at the Open last summer had too much offset, and he felt that contributed to some over-draws, so TaylorMade chef'd him up one with no offset at all. 

Now comes the true test. He'll tee off at 3:04 p.m. EST alongside his pals Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas. 

Rory's PGA Tour/NBA comparison

There's been a lot of chatter this week about the future, or ongoing, bifurcation of the PGA Tour. This season's schedule is really a dress rehearsal for 2024, which will serve as the true blueprint for the next decade. This week marks the third designated event of year, but all three tournaments have looked almost exactly the same as they did last year, apart from the purses. That won't be the case in '24. The most common rumor is that these designated events will feature 70-man fields with no cut. It's a sweet arrangement for the big boys—they know exactly what their schedule will be, and they only have to turn up for events with $20 million in prize money. 

But it's not ideal for the Nick Taylors of the world. Taylor entered last week's WM Phoenix Open, a designated event, as the No. 223 player in the world. He played his way into the final threesome alongside two of the top three players in the world. He beat Jon Rahm by three and he tied Scottie Scheffler. The question, then, is whether a player like Taylor would get that opportunity next year. 

There's no easy answer here. Rory McIlroy, who spend a lot of time thinking about these sort of things, seems to have landed on a rising-tides-lifts-all-ships stance. When asked about the bifurcation on Wednesday, he compared the PGA Tour to…the NBA?

"The way I've tried to describe it is if you look at like the NBA's trajectory over the last 20 years, they've built that league around their best players and their stars, not around the 12th guy on the team, but because they've built that league up around the stars, the 12th guy on the team does way better than he used to. So that's sort of the way I've been trying to tell it. Does it mean that the Tour's going to get more competitive? Yes. Does it mean that instead of -- even look at the Playoffs, like 125 used to make the Playoffs, now it's 70. It's just become a more competitive product. I think honestly that's a good thing."

It's Full Swing Day

Netflix's much-anticipated behind-the-scenes documentary on professional golf, "Full Swing," officially went live today. It's been roughly 18 months since news of this project began to leak, and producers shot more than 700 hours of original footage, and finally the world will see the eight episodes (roughly six hours total) they distilled all that footage down to. 

"It was an awesome experience," Tony Finau said of the filming process. "I didn't know really what to expect, but I knew I wanted to be a part of it. I think early, I was one of the first guys to commit to doing this and I was really just honored that Netflix wanted to do a show on golf. I thought that that was an avenue that needed to be shown and I thought that there were going to be a lot of great stories and I was just happy that they looked at me and said that I could be a part of it. Honestly, early on I was just honored that I could be one of the guys, so I committed early. Again, I didn't really know what to expect, but I was more than happy to kind of open my doors to Netflix to just allow them some access to off-course stuff."

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The episode featuring Finau is a certified tear-jerker, and his willingness to let the cameras in will hopefully inspire other players to do the same. A number of players were understandably hesitant to open their doors to the crew, but there's now a proof of concept, and Finau's positive review of the process will help ease concerns. And don't underrate the FOMO effect—if this show's at all successful, guys not involved in this season will want to be involved in the next one. That's how human beings work. Even very rich, very talented ones.