Tragic story. Jeff Maggert withdrew from The Players Championship because his brother died in a plane crash in Colorado.

More here.

Man this doesn’t seem right. TPC week came up on me like an unexpected dead pull hook OB, just like the one I had in my men’s league today.

I love TPC week, the great golf, the TPC Sawgrass course and all the excitement around golf’s “5th Major.” In his career Tiger Woods hasn’t dominated the TPC like you’d expect him to. He’s only won there once. But that nugget doesn’t even matter since he won’t be playing due to his knee surgery.

A lot of great history is made at the TPC, much of it on the “2nd most famous par-3 in golf,” the #17th hole island green (pictured below). Many announcers will call the 17th THE most famous par-3 in golf, but most of us golf addicts know that honor belongs to the 12th hole at Augusta National…

To wet your whistle, here are some pictures of the TPC Sawgrass course.

Tiger Woods running from green to tee!

Ernie Els on #17

17th Green TPC

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My pal Dan Smith sent me a CD full of about 350 pictures from the Wednesday practice round at the 2008 Masters! I’ve just added of the photos to the Hooked On Golf Blog Masters Gallery.

There are some great player and course shots from hole #11 and some very cool pictures from the Masters Wednesday Par-3 tournament. There is even a shot of Fred Couples when he got a hole in one during the Masters par-3 contest.

With the addition of these photos, the HOG Photo Gallery is now at over 8000 golf images!

John Daly’s rehab (for the surgery, not the booze) is going well apparently. He’s playing in levis, no shoes and no shirt in this video below. I couldn’t help noticing how the guy interviewing John couldn’t seem to keep his hands off him. Down boy!

Tiger Woods is now off the crutches and wearing a knee brace. He hopes to start rehabbing soon, but has no definite date scheduled for him to return to competition.

Apparently Tiger has been playing in pain and knew he’d have the knee surgery for a couple of months. He was going to have the surgery after Augusta whether or not he won at The Masters. Tiger did not attribute his loss at The Masters to his knee:

“I’ve definitely been playing in pain, but that’s not why I didn’t win at Augusta.”

John Daly had stomach surgery. I thought perhaps it was a tummy tuck, but it wasn’t. Daly had a torn rotator cuff, dislocated ribs and torn ligaments around the ribs. These injuries are said to be the cause of John’s poor play over the last couple of years.

Um, yeah. I’m relatively sure his poor play wasn’t because of lack of practice, drinking too much and hanging out with strippers…

Tiger Woods underwent successful arthroscopic surgery on his previously troubled left knee. This marks the 3rd time he’s had this knee worked on (1994, 2002).

He had the surgery at the Healthsouth Surgery Center in Park City, Utah. Hey that’s about 35 minutes from my place.

Tiger is expected to be out for 4-6 weeks and back in time for the U.S. OPEN, so take him off your fantasy teams!

Special note to Tiger

Tiger, I wish you the best of luck on your recovery. I’m a short drive from you if you are rehabbing in your place in DV. If you need some company, let me know. I’d be happy grab my DVD of Caddyshack, some popcorn, and make the short drive up there to help out a fellow golfer on the injured reserve list.

I look forward to the Masters more than any tournament. I practically schedule the entire week off from my business and personal life to watch it. Now that it is over, and Trevor Immelman is the champ, I need to reset.

I’ll come up with my Masters final thoughts in the next day or two, when I recover from this week.

Tiger and the grand slam

One thought that comes to mind is that Tiger should do what he himself said and what he quoted his father as saying: “Let your clubs do the talking.” Tiger should NEVER have mentioned the grand slam or anything about winning all four majors this year. He should have just gone out and won the damn things. Then he could do the talking….