Tiger Woods, Thomas, McIlroy and Reed Shut Down after The Masters

Tiger Woods, Justin Thomas, Rory McIlroy and Patrick Reed shut down play for a while after The Masters, all for different reasons. They all thought about what had happened at Augusta National.

Tiger Woods rested his body.

“I threw my clubs in the closet for about 10 days, got away from the game, didn’t touch a club, didn’t make a golf swing,” he said to media before the Wells Fargo.

He was unhappy with the way he hit his irons at The Masters, to the point where he has put new ones in the bag.

“I drove it great on the weekend, but I kept hitting the ball in — and if I did hit a green, I hit it above the hole, I hit it in the wrong spot. I had defensive putts for most of the days,” he explained. “Even on Sunday I shot 4-under par, but I was still in tough spots. You know, I need to be more precise and I wasn’t.”

He hopes the new irons will help out. And while they look the same, there were adjustments because of the materials in the clubhead.

“The back (of the club) is a little bit different. I really don’t care what you put on the back of the club as long as it looks good in the playing position and it flies through the windows that I want and the distances that I want,” he explained.

They kept the same bounce and other configurations.

“The difficulty was, throughout this process, is trying to find — trying to go with the right metal,” he added. “I prefer a different metal than what TaylorMade was using and also a different groove configuration than what TaylorMade was using.”

Added to that was the fact that Woods was not able to hit as many balls as he has in the past.

“We had a testing process basically since December of last year, and we finally got to the point where, yeah, I can put them in the bag and play,” he confirmed.

Woods is a past Wells Fargo champ and knows the course.

Justin Thomas played well at Augusta National, but not well enough. This week he is returning to Quail Hollow, the site of his first major championship victory. First because with his game and attitude, it surely will not be the last.

“Today was my first time on the back nine, and Jimmy and I were kind of going through some of

the shots that we had hit and some of the clubs that we had hit. Yeah, it’s definitely a lot of fun and brings back a lot of great memories,” he said in his pre- tournament interview.

He was asked an interesting question which was what is the hardest thing about golf.

“It’s a deep question,” he began. “It’s just the things that this game can do to you. I think how fine of a line it is, is something that’s not talked about enough I think by outsiders that are looking in. We can go, you know, a month, two months, whatever, a couple weeks, however long it may be, with not very good results, but playing good golf and just not getting anything out of it or getting bad bounces or getting in bad waves, not getting the right tee times and just putts lipping out instead of lipping in. You know, that’s just — it’s unbelievable. You take three or four shots each week that somehow happen like that, that goes from a great finish to no one really caring or knowing you’re there.”

As most any professional golfer will tell you, it is a fine line between having a great week or a victory and missing the cut.

“That’s something that can get hard about this game, is when you do get in those slumps, even though they may not be slumps, people don’t know any better, or some people don’t know any better,” he added.

The most important lesson from his spectacular 2017 season, he said, was patience.

“I harp on that quite a bit just to try to stay in the moment as much as I can, not make any emotional decisions on the golf course or any mistakes that I shouldn’t be making,” he explained.

Rory McIlroy had a hard time for a few days after the Masters.

“Probably about a week. I went back home and sort of decompressed, binge watched a couple of

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shows, read a couple of books, drank a few bottles of wine,” he said in his pre-tournament interview. “That sounds really bad, it wasn’t that bad. But yeah, it got to the point where Erica had to drag me out of the house and say, okay, we’re going to go do something. I said okay. And once I got back in my sort of routine, I was fine.”

Mainly, he said, he was disappointed that he didn’t give a better account of himself on Sunday. So, he binged-watched Billions, read The Chimp Paradox and Essentialism.

Most likely, he will have another six or seven good chances at Augusta National. Six or seven because he turns 29 this week, and typically, after the mid- thirties, golfers are not as prolific winners as they were in their late 20s and early 30s.

“The Masters has now become the biggest golf tournament in the world, and I’m comfortable saying that. I don’t care about the U.S. Open or The Open Championship. It is the biggest tournament in the world, the most amount of eyeballs, the most amount of hype. The most amount of everything is at Augusta,” he said. “I don’t think the Grand Slam, that’s not really what I think about. I just think about trying to win the Masters and what that means and being able to go and use the champions locker room, just all the cool stuff that comes along with it.”

He noted that it was, in his opinion the most special of all tournaments.

“It’s the one that everyone desperately wants to win, but even if I was going for my first major, it’s tough, it’s tough to win,” he said.

He was pleased that he played his way into the final group, just not with his execution on Sunday.

“I gave myself a chance, and that will ultimately make next year easier when I hopefully get myself back in that position,” he noted.

Patrick Reed is this season’s first major champion with his Masters victory, and he’s happy with just about everything in his life right now, as one would expect him to be.

“Last three weeks have been a lot of fun,” he said in his pre-tournament press conference. “Being able to do all the media tour and just being able to hang out with friends and just being able to reflect on the week on what we did at Augusta. I think the biggest thing was just these past two weeks getting back to normalcy, back to playing golf, back to grinding, getting inside the ropes and working. I’m just — it’s just awesome to be back and playing.”

While Reed heard from many people, he said the best message was voice mail from Dave Pelz.

“He was so proud and excited about how I played and everything,” Reed explained. “He just reminded me, hey, work’s not done, it’s just a steppingstone, this is the beginning and now keep that pedal down, go and play golf and let’s get some more.”

Reed noted that completely paralleled his mindset in the past and the one he will need in the future.

“I’m never going to settle,” he insisted. “I’m not the type that just because I won one major means I’m done. I want to go out, compete and get that feeling more and more and try to win as many golf tournaments as I possibly can,” he insisted. “Just to get — to have the guys recognize me for the win and that, hey, all that hard work you’ve been putting in is paying off, it’s satisfying hearing that from other competitors.”

So, anybody who thought he was going to take along vacation or sit back on his laurels has another thing coming.

“Going ahead and closing one off, especially early on like this, just gives you confidence going on throughout the rest of the year and throughout my career that if I get in that position again, well, I’ve done it before, why can’t I do it again,” he added. “I mean, moving forward, it’s just getting back to who I am. That’s playing golf, that’s grinding, that’s going out there and working and trying to work harder than anybody out there and not let up.”

However, the key to his victory might have come almost two weeks before when he couldn’t see the channel guide on his TV set from across the room. After verifying that he was the only one in the room with the problem, he went to an eye doctor. It was the Monday of the Houston Open.

Turns out, he gets fuzzy vision after about 30-40 yards.

A prescription for contacts brought everything into focus at Augusta National. However, it also presented him with an additional problem.

Next: Justin Thomas: New World Number One?

“You know what I’m talking about, trying to put those things in your eye. It would take me 30 minutes to 45 minutes to get them in. Getting them out’s easy, putting them in, I was struggling,” he admitted. “Those wake up 15 minutes before you’ve got to leave that first week at Augusta, no chance. It was wake up an hour and spend 45 minutes on my eyes.”

Millions of people can empathize. Finally a lot of people finally have something in common with a Masters champ.

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