Woods and EA Sports Part Ways

          Tiger Woods' long-running golf simulation video game series with EA Sports is coming to an end. The series has carried Woods' name for the past 14 years and EA has been one of the American's biggest and longest-standing sponsors, with the games raking in as much £479m for the US-based publisher over their long history. It's estimated that Woods' share of those profits was around £10m each year. "EA Sports and Tiger Woods have also made a mutual decision to end our partnership, which includes Tiger's named PGA Tour golf game," said Daryl Holt, EA Sports' VP and GM of golf. "We've always been big fans of Tiger and we wish him continued success in all his future endeavours." It's not clear why the partnership has ended. The series remained the best-selling golf video game for EA even during Woods' highly publicised marital troubles and his barren streak on the course.

Poulter Ready to do Battle

           Ian Poulter admits that successfully defending his WGC-HSBC Champions trophy in Shanghai this week will be a tough ask. The Englishman is up against a star-studded field bursting at the seams with international golfing talent.

          Phil Mickelson, Rory McIlroy, Justin Rose, Jason Dufner, Henrik Stenson, Brandt Snedeker, Luke Donald and many more will all be vying for the lucrative first prize. On Tuesday, Poulter, Dufner, Mickelson, Rose and McIlroy were joined by a group of Chinese Opera performers at a ceremony overlooking Shanghai's famous riverfront. The golfers swapped their clubs for traditional swords, spears and halbreds while draped in colourful, flowing cloaks. "HSBC always do something fun for us in the city where we are.

         It's nice to see a bit of the culture of the city we are in. It shows the players commitment to doing different things and enjoy the local culture," said Poulter. "It is going to be a tall order to defend my title this year against such a strong field. Justin, Phil and Jason won the three most recent majors and are obviously the in-form guys at the moment." "I love playing in China and really feed off the enthusiasm and encouragement I get from the fans here, so whatever happens, I know it will be a great week." Rose added: "It's always nice when you come to a country with such a different culture like there is in China to get a feel for it, with the local dance and dress. That is something that you take away with you and it makes the trip really special."

Stenson Back to his Best

             Henrik Stenson is confident of performing at his best at this week's WGC-HSBC Champions after a disappointing BMW Masters. The world number four suffered from a wrist injury during the first event of the European Tour's four-part Final Series and finished in a tie for 33rd.

          The Race to Dubai leader responded well from a third round 79 by closing with a superb 65 at the Lake Malaren Golf Club and he is confident of taking his new-found momentum into the tournament in China. Stenson is currently €443,725 in front of Graeme McDowell in the Race to Dubai standings, but is confident of doing well at the Sheshan International Golf Club this week. "This is obviously a big event on our schedule and one which we always look forward to," Stenson told the European Tour's official website. "It is one of the strongest fields of the season and I have played quite well at Sheshan before, so I'm hoping for a good week. "You are going to have to play some good golf to be up there, we know that much.

           With the preparations leading into last week I wasn't in the shape I wanted to be, but I finished with a good score on Sunday so I feel pretty good about my game. "I would be hoping to be in contention one of these last three weeks. I can't walk around waiting for the right things to play out. I need to have some good results if I am going to finish on top and win The Race to Dubai. I imagine it will still be quite open when we get to Dubai, so if I can have a good result this week it will really help me. If not, I will keep working away. "It certainly helps that I've done quite well around here before and I think it is good golf course. It has a good mix of risk and reward holes. There are a couple of easy holes and a few tougher holes.

             You need to hit the ball pretty well from tee to green to give yourself the chances. It is a course that suits me pretty well. It suits good ball strikers, but there are a few of those here this week!" Stenson won the Accenture Match Play Championship in 2007 and is looking to win his second WGC this week at an even he hasn't qualified for since finishing in a tie for 13th place in 2013. "I've missed this event the last couple of years so it is great to be back in the field," he added. "That was one of my big goals when I started to climb back up the rankings - to get back in the big events, and this is certainly one of those. They put on a great venue for us, a great golf course, and a great tournament, so it should be a fantastic week."

Recent Form Excites McIlroy

              After winning his first tournament of the year, albeit in an 18-hole exhibition event, Rory McIlroy is confident that he is nearing his best form again. The former world number one beat Tiger Woods for the second successive year in their money-spinning event at Mission Hills, carding a 67 to edge out the world's best player by one stroke.

         

             The Ulsterman hasn't won any full tournaments this year after claiming five titles in 2012, which included a second major victory, at the US PGA Championship. McIlroy has shown glimpses of his old self as the year progressed and finished second at the Korea Open a fortnight ago. "It's much better," said the two-time major champion after switching to a new ball and driver. I've seen a lot of promising signs over the past few weeks in practice and also in competitive play. I still have four tournaments left until the end of the season and I would love to finish 2013 strongly and get a little bit of momentum going into next season. "I think as I showed out there, I'm hitting the ball well.

          Tee to green, the game was very solid, and if I can just get the putter going a little bit more and get a few more putts to drop, then in these last four tournaments I can hope to contend and maybe pick up a win or two." He will play in this week's WGC-HSBC Champions before competing in the Turkish Airlines Open in a hope to move up from 62nd on the Race to Dubai rankings to 60th in order to qualify for the DP World Tour Championship next month.

Interview-Golf-Improving McIlroy will Win by End of Year - Woods

            Oct 29 (Reuters) - Tiger Woods believes Rory McIlroy is slowly getting his golf game back on track and predicted on Tuesday that the former world number one would claim a breakthrough first victory of the year by the end of December. McIlroy was on top of the world at the end of 2012, having won the orders of merit on both sides of the Atlantic, but he has had a turbulent season this year on and off the course.

          The Northern Irishman changed his clubs in January, a switch that was criticised by several pundits. He is also in the middle of a bitter court dispute with his former management team and, according to media reports, has split from girlfriend Caroline Wozniacki. "He is playing better and swinging a lot better," 14-times major champion Woods told Reuters in an interview. "You can see that some of the stuff he and his coach are working on are starting to come together. "He's starting to put together a few good rounds, now he just has to make a few more putts. I can definitely see him winning sometime this year because his game has come around." World number one Woods had a close-up view of McIlroy when he lost to the twice major winner in a lucrative head-to-head exhibition match on China's Hainan Island on Monday.

         The two golfers are both based in Florida and the 37-year-old American said he and world number six McIlroy had formed an excellent relationship. "Rory has become a good friend of mine over probably the past year, year and a half," explained Woods. "It seems like every tournament we're paired together, we're also playing practice rounds together and we have really hit it off. "He plays on both tours, U.S. and European, so we see each other at big events and when we do we try and play practice rounds whenever we can." RECORD CHASER Woods has taken full advantage of the 24-year-old McIlroy's form slump, returning to the top of the world rankings with five victories this season. None of his 2013 wins have come in the big four championships but he left little room for doubt that he still yearns to break the 18-major record of compatriot Jack Nicklaus. "It took him until he got to 46 to do it and this year I'll be 38 so there's plenty of time," said Woods. "A lot of guys have won a lot of majors post 40. "The great thing about staying fit is we're able to play at a high level for a long period of time so hopefully I can compete at this level for a very long period of time." Woods said his game was still improving and he could now plot his way around courses better than before. "I don't necessarily have the same whooping power I used to ... but my understanding of how to play, how to manage my game around the golf course has got infinitely better," he added. "I'm still hitting the ball plenty far but there's a next generation of kids out there that are taller, bigger, more athletic who absolutely annihilate it.

        The game has changed, a lot of guys are 6-foot-3 and above and hit the ball for miles. "It's not too often you see shorter, smaller players who don't have power doing well. You've got to have power in our game now," said Woods. The American is to miss the final World Golf Championship (WGC) event of the season in Shanghai this week but will compete in next week's Turkish Open. (Writing by Tony Jimenez in London, editing by Pritha Sarkar)

Whatever They're Paying These Guys, It's Not Enough

             We love the Asian swing of the golf season. Not necessarily because of the golf and definitely not because of the time difference. But oh, those elaborate pre-tournament promotional photo shoots. They are unintentional comedy at its finest. The Grind: What you need to know and see from the week in golf Last week, Rory McIlroy played Chinese drums and this week, he played dress up with several of the world's top players in advance of the WGC-HSBC World Champions in Shanghai. These guys must be getting a lot of money to play along. Here's a group shot of them posing for what could pass as a scene from a movie that's a cross between "Harry Potter" and "Lord of the Rings":

                

       As usual, Jason Dufner steals the show. He's that guy on the left who looks about as thrilled as a kid sitting through an agronomy lecture. In fact, let's focus a little more on the PGA champ. Here, Dufner has his game face on as he takes direction from someone while Phil Mickelson kneels (Side note: Mickelson looks very convincing as a sorcerer with that all-black outfit):

Then there's Dufner offering a little smirk (Side note: McIlroy looks evil):

Dufner and the gang surround defending champion Ian Poulter, as if they are fanning the reigning WGC-HSBC king or about to attack him for his throne:

Then Dufner ATTACKS! Well, sort of:

And finally, Dufner flashes his trademark ear-to-ear smile:

            The PGA Tour heads back to the boring United States for the McGladrey Classic next week, but some of the big names, including Tiger Woods, will head to Turkey for the Turkish Open. Let's hope the cameras are rolling.

Championship of Questions

            Ian Poulter will have his work cut out defending his WGC-HSBC Champions title at the Sheshan International this week at the Sheshan International Golf Club in Shanghai. With a handful of exceptions.

           The notables being Tiger Woods, and Adam Scott, the reigning Masters champion, almost everybody who is anyone in pro golf - both from the West and the East - will be there including Phil Mickelson, the world number three and current Open Champion, Henrik Stenson, the world number 4 and recent winner of the FedEx Cup, Justin Rose, the world number five and reigning US Open champion, and Rory McIlroy, the world number six and already a two-time major winner at 24. And that's just for starters. The no-cut, 78-man field made up of the winners of the seasons majors, World Golf Championship events, and leading title holders from all of the world's most important tours, also includes USPGA champion Jason Dufner, Francesco Molinari, and Martin Kaymer who, along with Poulter and Mickelson, are former winners of the WGC-HSBC Champions.

          Poulter, who has been having a relatively quite season this year and is not ranked among most of the bookies's top five favourites, also won his WGC-HSBC Champions title in China, but this was at Mission Hills in Dongguan. Kaymer, the 2010 winner, may, on the other hand, be looking his lips at the chance of getting another crack at the course where he shares the tournament record of 20-under 268 with David Howell, the event's inaugural winner in 2005. So might the 2009 champion, Mickelson, one of the USA's best overseas crusaders as he so aptly proved in Scotland earlier this year when he won the Open and the Scottish Open in the course of a week, and Molinari, the wire-to-wire winner here in 2010, who tied for second in last week's BMW Masters which, incidentally, was played down the road at Lake Malaren Golf Club. Molinari's current form and apparent affinity to Eastern courses are clearly some of the key reasons PGATOUR.com columnist Rob Bolton ranked him as his second favourite at Sheshan behind Keegan Bradley.

         But if Bolton 's selection of Bradley's as his favourite is something of a surprise, then so too is the bookies choice. At 12/1 odds, they had posted McIlroy as their favourite on Tuesday morning with Rose, Stenson and Mickelson sharing second place at odds of between 14 and 16/1 Bradley and Molinari are some way further down their lists, Bradley at odds that vary between 22 and 25/1 and Molinari at odds that vary by as much as 28 and 40/1. Compared with the heights McIlroy reached last year when he charged to the top of the world rankings list with a flourish of late-season title grabs, including the US PGA championship, 2013 has been a big comedown for him. Apart from Monday's victory in 'The Match at Mission Hills' over a rusty Tiger Woods in what was little more than a two-man exhibition match that paid them each the tidy sum of $1.5m, McIlroy has yet to win this year. He has sparked on occasions, as he did on Monday, when he shot a six-under-par 67, but he has still to produce the consistency that makes for a winner and a question mark continues to hang over him as to whether or not he is ready to make his big comeback breakthrough.

         A question mark also hangs over the form of Stenson because, while he was clearly the hottest golfer on the Planet when he won the FedEx Cup last month, a recent wrist injury and his see-saw form at last week's BMW Masters might affect the awesome momentum that saw him power from a world ranking in the 200s a year or so ago to the number four spot he occupies today. In truth, seeking out a likely winner in a world class field of this quality in the prevailing circumstances in which the European Tour is in the midst of - a four-tournament "Final Series' countdown that will end with its 2013 Race to Dubai champion being crowned at the DP World Tour Championship next month - while the US PGA Tour is only at the easier-going earlier stages of their new-look, 2013-14 schedule, is going to prove hugely difficult. There can be no certainty that any of the favourites already discussed are going to triumph.

          The winner might just as easily be one of the many other well-established Western stars including Brandt Snedker, Ryan Moore, and Dustin Johnson, of America, Lee Westwood, Paul Casey and Luke Donald of Britain and the Sergio Garcia and Peter Hanson of mainland Europe. It might also be foolish to ignore the likes of the season's standout and merit order leader of the Japan Golf Tour, Hideki Matsuyama, or his Asian Tour equivalent, Kiradech Aphibarnrat, who has been making waves on the European Tour in recent months. And what about some of the exciting young guns who have blazed their way into the limelight this season, two of the most notable of them being the 20-year-old US PGA Tour sensation, Jordan Spieth, who in his rookie year, has already established himself as the world number 20, and fellow American Peter Uihlein, who like Spieth has graduated from an acclaimed amateur career, to quickly establish himself in the upper echelons of top-level professional golf, in Uihlein's case on the European Tour. In fact, the Sheshan possibilities are so great, finding the potential winner could be almost as frightening as some of the gruesome images that come out to haunt the world on Halloween, which just happens to fall on Thursday, when the WGC-HSBC Champions tees off. Quite frankly this week's elite field of champions has the potential to make it just about anybody's race, though I have a faint inkling that at 40/1 Molinari and the Johnny-come-lately Canadian Graham DeLaet might just be good bets.

        THE BOOKMAKERS' TOP 20 Here were the top 20 favourites being quoted by Sky Bet on Tuesday morning. Rory McIlroy 12/1 Justin Rose 16/1 Henrik Stenson 16/1 Phil Mickelson 14/1 Martin Kaymer 18/1 Sergio Garcia 25/1 Keegan Bradley 25/1 Ian Poulter 22/1 Jason Dufner 28/1 Paul Casey 28/1 Lee Westwood 28/1 Luke Donald 28/1 Brandt Snedeker33/1 Jordan Spieth 25/1 Ryan Moore 33/1 Francesco Molinari 28/1 Dustin Johnson 35/1 Peter Uihlein 33/1 Hideki Matsuyama 40/1 Graham Delaet 50/1 Peter Hanson 40/1.

EA Sports Severs Ties with Tiger Woods

 

 

 

          Electronic Arts becomes latest company to end relationship with world No 1 Tiger Woods, a 15-year assocation that has brought in almost $771 million

          Tiger Woods lost one of the most lucrative and long-standing endorsement deals in sport on Tuesday as EA Sports dropped him as the face of its computer golf game after a 90 per cent decline in sales in five years. The company’s move to end the 15-year association, which has yielded Woods £480 million – almost seven times the world No 1’s on-course earnings over the same period – is a symbolic one for the American, who has retained only two of his original sponsors since his 2009 sex scandal. While both Nike and Netjets, a private jet company, have remained unstinting in their loyalty, EA Sports has become the seventh major corporation to jettison Woods after Gillette, Gatorade, AT&T, Accenture, Buick and Tag Heuer all abandoned him in the aftermath of his adultery. But this time the trigger was not the perceived damage inflicted by his cheating but a sharp decline in his marketability, with the 2013 version of Tiger Woods PGA Tour having sold just over 300,000 copies so far, compared to 3.39 million in 2008. Woods’s agent, Mark Steinberg, who confirmed that he was already looking for a replacement video game platform for Woods, tried to put a positive spin on being jettisoned by such a long-term partner. “We had an incredible run,” he said. “Outside of John Madden, you would be hard-pressed to find a sports figure that meant as much to a game company as Tiger did to EA. But times are changing: EA had to re-evaluate the partnership and frankly, so did we.” It all sounded like the cold language of divorce, as EA vice-president Daryl Holt dispassionately announced that he “wished Tiger well”. But Steinberg was right in one sense, in that the trends among a younger golfing fan base are moving quicker than even Woods, at 37, appears able to keep up with. Tellingly, Woods has not been the main selling point for EA’s golf franchise since 2011, when he had to share the cover of the game with young rival Rory McIlroy. Last year Rickie Fowler, the sport’s other emblem of youth, also joined the publicity images. EA has consistently stressed that it would stick by Woods in light of his multiple extramarital affairs. But now that EA is advancing to a ‘next-generation’ release of the game, Woods has been left behind entirely, even though it is unlikely he will suffer much financially. With five titles this season he has reinforced his status as the highest-earning sportsman in the world, with an estimated net worth of £367  million. Nike continues to pay him £12.5 million a year as he toasts his success in winning the US money list for a 10th time. The man who became the first athlete to earn a billion dollars before tax is not exactly destitute. Still, the timing of EA’s move was far from ideal, given Steinberg’s insistence this season that a host of international blue-chip companies were ready to open their chequebooks for his star client. Woods has profited from his return to form by recovering at least part of his denuded portfolio, signing deals with Rolex, sports nutrition firm Fuse and, more implausibly, a Japanese company which makes a back rub called Kowa. There has also been an upturn in his course design business after projects in Dubai and North Carolina were halted by the global credit crisis. The first course with Woods as architect is due to be opened next year in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. In the day job, however, Woods is conspicuous by his absence here at Sheshan International in Shanghai, venue of the one World Golf Championship that he has never won. Somehow he has still found time to collect a £2 million appearance fee for his exhibition match against McIlroy in Haikou, in the knowledge that he will be pocketing the same again by turning up at the Turkish Airlines Open in seven days’ time. Woods has issued a veiled threat, too, to the Golf Channel, that he expects it to run a televised apology for a column written by American analyst Brandel Chamblee, which argued that his series of rules violations this year amounted to cheating. Otherwise, Woods is holding true to his promise to “move forward” from the row with Chamblee, whom he has accused of reigniting controversy by failing to apologise properly. Proving Ernie Els’s wisdom that autumn is the time to “get the wheelbarrow out”, he is understood to be spending the rest of his Far East excursion at a variety of meet-and-greets in the casino resort of Macau. Again the HSBC Champions, which he skipped last year on the premise of conducting “corporate work” in Singapore, finds no place. Giles Morgan, head of sponsorship for backers HSBC, has described Woods’s two-year-long snub of the event, widely dubbed ‘Asia’s major’, as “disappointing”.

Caroline Wozniacki Distracts Rory McIlroy’s Fans Wearing Very Little on the Sidelines of the World Golf Finals

Caroline Wozniacki distracts proceedings at the World Golf Finals

       A scantily clad, tennis champion Caroline Wozniacki was really distracting fans on the sidelines at the World Golf Finals in Turkey on Tuesday. Rory McIlroy also didn’t play his best round, getting beaten by American, Matt Kuchar. Maybe this is because Wozniacki was distracting him. Or maybe this is just payback for the Ryder Cup results last week. Really did you need to pull that pose in that outfit Caroline!!? As the lads in Joe.ie said Wozniacki was wearing “a get-up that left quite a lot to the imagination.” We just love the photo Joe.ie grabbed from the TV. All eyes are on Wozniacki. Is anyone actually watching the golf at all!