"I don't know if it's ever going to become a rule or not. It might."
/Stewart Cink's Traveler's Championship media day press conference was crashed by Chris Berman, U.S. Open lead announcer on ESPN and legendary flip out artist. With such extenuating circumstances, it was tough for the normally wise Cink to do anything but dumb down his comments. After all, isn't that a natural reaction when Berman is in the room?
Anyway, this was interesting:
STEWART CINK: There's a pretty popular proposal right now that's circulating around the players and staff to play one in four, sort of called the one in four thing, where everyone would be required to play every tournament on TOUR at least once out of four years. It's gotten some traction. I don't know if it's ever going to become a rule or not. It might.
There's positives and negatives to it. Obviously the positives are Tiger Woods is going to come to every tournament eventually. That's a great thing for all tournaments. The negatives are, when you start imposing rules on that like independent contractors, they can also choose to not play at all. There would be nothing stopping Tiger Woods from playing the European Tour for a few years or the rest of his career. He's got that kind of power. Unfortunately he could do that. That would be a serious mistake if we did that. Got to look at things from both sides.
Later on, sensing the media questions were making too much sense, Berman chimed in with this dazzler:
CHRIS BERMAN: Being a defending champ, once you tee it up, that and $4.95 will get you a latte at Starbucks. You did it before. You've won other events. Is it important to defend well? I don't know if that's the right question.
No, no Chris, that was wonderful. Keep going.
Then again, as defending champ, you have more obligations. Finally getting to the first tee, you exhale a little bit. Having done it here and a few other places, do you think you'll be better prepared?