The Northern Trust Open kicked off its mid-February staging with a retro media day where the defending champion actually appeared in person and Andy Walker, Pepperdine golfer from the school's 1997 NCAA title winning team, was announced as the winner of the Charlie Sifford Exemption Northern Trust Exemption.
Kudos to Aaron Baddeley for showing up on his way to Torrey Pines, something tour event winners so rarely do these days as part of their tournament winning defense. He was joined on stage by Executive Director Jerry West, who, in year three of his stint, had plenty of interesting things to say.
Asked about Southern California native Tiger Woods not playing the event, he mentioned knowing Tiger for a long time and talking about, among other things, the media...
To me the press is not always going to be complimentary to you, okay, but I think it's important that they're not, to be honest with you. That makes that balance.
I think if somebody writes something negative about you, that doesn't mean that they don't like you. It's part of their job description. But I always felt the press is a balance, and he's going to focus ‑‑ with his stature as a player and everything that goes on in his life, I'm not so sure that any of us know ‑‑ I know a little bit, how many demands you have on your life by people that sometimes you'd like to say, look, I've got three things I've got to do this day, and if you don't, you might be a real horse's behind, okay.
He's really ‑‑ any professional golfer is like their own enterprise. You're running your own business, you're doing things to try and incorporate what your family might want and when you need time away. I'm sure that's exactly what he does.
But to say it's not disappointing, oh, it's always disappointing that he wouldn't show up at any event, particularly here in Los Angeles, because we did give him the first time ‑‑ but I completely understand, I completely do. It would be wonderful to have him because of his Southern California roots and the enormous success he's had in golf right now.
West remains fascinated with Tiger's decision to rebuild his swing more than once.
He's trying to kind of reinvent himself as a golfer. I've always known him ‑‑ talking about this one teacher you had and what you were doing, I've always said to myself, why in the heck would a guy that can putt and chip like this and hit the ball really well want to change what he's doing, and the answer obviously is to get better. There's something there that intrigues you. I think he's had now three swing coaches, and I used to think how in the hell can you improve on perfection.
And I think the greatest swing I've ever seen in golf, and you never saw him in person, Aaron, you're much too young, was Sam Snead. It was the most natural‑looking swing. He never had a teacher. But he was an incredible ball striker, and just to watch him hit the golf ball, I could just go out and ‑‑ I'd rather not watch golfers play to be honest with you except trying to win a tournament. Just to watch him hit golf balls was the most amazing thing I ever seen in my life. It was amazing to watch him hit golf balls. There wasn't that information around, there wasn't all the cameras, all the teaching aids, but I've often felt that a player himself knows as he goes along in time, and he's had a number of injuries, was it time for him to change. But I think it's just his curiosity, and he's brilliantly smart, just wanting to get better and be better as a golfer.
That tells me something, what kind of a competitor he really is. But for us to have him out here would be wonderful. But whether that happens or not, I'm not aware of that. But I would hope he would come here and play someday. He hasn't won here. I'm not sure where he hasn't won, but this would be a great place for him to start, I know that. We'd love to have him, but we wish him the best as he tries to get out there and reestablish his game the way it was in the past.
As for recent attempts to woo Woods back to Riviera...
JERRY WEST: Well, I obviously have. I try never to do anything publicly that would be misconstrued the wrong way. To me there's ways of doing things privately, and particularly people of his stature and his name and everything, that everywhere his life has been here in the last year and a half, injuries, personal things, obviously not playing as well as he would like. I try never to do that because it's not my place. My place is just to tell him he's welcome. I talked to his agent, Mark Steinberg, at length, and we discussed a number of things, but I think he's very aware that we want him to play, there's no question about that.
And he was asked about Jason Gore's successful Twitter campaign to get in the event.
JERRY WEST: Me? Oh, my God. I think I'll pass on that. No, it really is interesting, the enormous amount of excitement, all this media stuff has made out of particularly athletes today and actors and stuff like that, people prominently in the news. I would never do that. I would never have a bodyguard, I wouldn't have anything like that. I would want to try to be normal, be who I am, not change the face of who I am, someone that people would approach and say hello without any barriers being there and/or predetermine what kind of person I was. I'd let them find that out for themselves.
But I think it's remarkable the effect it's had on a lot of people worldwide and their ability to communicate with me, particularly someone that people might think is a little bit different, a little bit more special. But Aaron, I'll leave that to you. In West Virginia we communicate by smoke signals (laughter), but as I say, I don't think I would be very good at that.
As for Badds' awareness of the successful campaign, I smell a Twitter spat in the making!
Q. Aaron, were you familiar with the Twitter campaign that Jason had?
AARON BADDELEY: I wasn't. I don't follow Jason on Twitter. I didn't get any re‑Tweets, so I didn't see it.
It should be noted he laughed as he revealed he was not following Pepperdine's greatest golfer...
