A seventh season of Feherty begins on Monday with part 1 of an extended episode featuring Phil Mickelson. Not that it happened easily.
At a conference with reporters in NYC on Thursday, host David Feherty said locking in Mickelson was a several-year process that made booking U.S. Presidents look easy. But as happy as the NBC/Golf Channel personality was to get the five-time major winner on his program, there's still one glaring absence in his show's history from a certain 14-time major champ. So the question is obvious.
Have you made a run at Tiger yet?
"No," Feherty responded.
Say what?!
"I just want him to be in the right place, because I don't want to do a show with him where he feels like he has to give pat answers," Feherty explained. "I want him to be the kid that I know. I want him to lose the sort of iron dome."
Feherty feels that protective layer has come with constantly being in the spotlight for two decades.
"He gets followed from the parking lot to the locker room to the putting green to the range to the golf course and then back through the press area. Every time he finished a round they wanted him to stand in front of a microphone for 45 minutes. . . . Every single time that he played! I'm amazed he lasted as long as he did with that."
"It is too suffocating, it is," Feherty added minutes later. "There's nothing equitable about it."
Of course, there was also nothing equitable with Woods' play as he dominated the golf landscape during his peak. And no one outside of Woods' former caddie Steve Williams had as good of a seat to watch it all unfold as TV's funniest on-course reporter.
"I miss him out there. It was pretty freakin' amazing," Feherty said. "I never take for granted that I was there -- I saw him win something like 50-60 times. It was a special time in golf. But I think he can win again, I do."
Maybe by then, Woods will be ready to really tell his story to the media member he's always seemed to get along with best.
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