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When the question was asked, Tiger Woods laughed.
“It had to be mentioned,” he said grinning.
The question that induced laughter from the 82-time PGA Tour winner was, what if you earned your record-breaking 83rd PGA Tour victory at Riviera Country Club?
The Genesis Invitational begins Thursday at Riviera, a familiar and yet unconquered territory for the 44-year-old Woods.
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In 1992, Woods made his PGA Tour debut at Riviera in the Los Angeles Open as a 16-year-old. Woods has returned to the course several times over his career but always leaves the same way — winless. His best finish on the course was T-2 at the then Nissan Open in 1999, a season in which he led the Tour with eight wins, including back-to-back wins at the National Car Rental Golf Classic Disney and Tour Championship.
Woods’ attraction to Riviera is not only because it’s 40 miles from where he grew up in Cypress, California, or because he now hosts the Genesis Invitational which benefits his TGR Foundation. It’s not even the fact that a win on the course has eluded the 15-time major champion over nearly three decades. The course is meaningful because Woods remembers standing in awe of golf icons from his childhood play on the same course he now plays.
“To come here with my dad and my old pro Rudy (Duran) who took me up here — I remember watching Lanny Wadkins play here and win a lot. Seeing Corey Pavin and Davis Love and Freddy (Fred Couples) go after it,” Woods said at his Genesis Invitational press conference Tuesday. “There’s a lot of history for me to come up here and play. This was the second professional event I ever went to besides San Diego, you know, coming up here and watching the guys play. It was the coolest thing.”
Woods then seemed to lose himself in a memory he said he didn’t think he’d previously shared from one of his first visits to Riviera. He recalled being near the 11th tee as a young spectator and hearing that Tom Watson was coming up the eighth hole.
“Tom hit his ball to the back left pin to the left of the green and I’m basically one of the only ones over there and Bruce (Edwards) was on the bag and I’m standing and looking at the golf ball and he comes over and says, ‘Move out of the way, kid,’ and pushes me out of the way,” Woods said. “And so when I was getting out on Tour and telling him this story he says, ‘Well, you were in the way.’
“So for me to have experiences like that here at Riv (Riviera) and to have now this being my event and hopefully on Sunday, we’ll be having this discussion a little bit more.”
Woods is paired with Justin Thomas and Steve Stricker for the event’s first two rounds and the group will be one of four featured groups on Thursday and Friday.
In his Tuesday press conference, Woods was also asked about the Premier Golf League and confirmed he had been approached about the proposed new golf tour that could rival the PGA and European Tours.
“My team has been aware of it and we’ve delved into the details of it, trying to figure it out, just like everyone else,” Woods said. “We’ve been down this road before. … There’s a lot of information that we’re still looking at and whether it’s reality or not. But we’re looking into it.
“You’re trying to get the top players to play more collectively. That’s one of the reasons why what we initiated with the World Golf Championships because we were only getting together five times a year, the four majors and the Players.”
Woods was tight-lipped about whether he’d play at the World Golf Championships-Mexico Championship in Mexico City following the Genesis Invitational.
“I’ve not answered that,” he said.
Woods has 18 career WGC victories.
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