Rocco On Tiger Signing His Photo: "That's just the way he conducts things. That's not him."

I finally got around to watching Rocco Mediate's appearance on Feherty and it was as much fun as you'd expect when you put two maniacs in a room in front of cameras.

Thankfully this clip of Mediate talking about asking Tiger to personalize a photo and pin sheet was posted online.

There's also a seven-minute outtake online where Rocco talks about the state of the game, the First Tee (genius but "where do they go"?), growing up on muni's and the worst rule in golf.

DVR Alert: Rocco On Feherty

I ran into David Feherty strolling his second home--the DFW airport--and asked him how the Rocco show Monday was and he reported that Mediate was in great spirits. Hardly surprising that those two could yammer up storm about the '08 US Open, Arnold Palmer, the long putter and other stuff, as evidenced by the preview clip.

The show first airs Monday, May 13 at 10 pm ET.

Rocco On Tiger's Swing: "It doesn't produce the shots he used to hit"

Steve DiMeglio looks at the state of Tiger's game and also features a nice mini-retrospective of the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines where Woods dueled with Rocco Mediate.

Four-plus years later, Mediate still is in awe of Woods but has questions about the state of his mechanics.

" … "I love what Tiger has done for the game... I've always had a ridiculous amount of respect for what he has done. All the crap on the other side I don't care about. I don't know what happened; only he knows what happened."

Mediate says something else happened – to Woods' swing. While the jury is still out on whether Woods can again become the dominant force in golf, Mediate is a tad skeptical.

"Nothing he did ever surprised me. He's that good. But he can't do it anymore because his golf swing is different. It doesn't produce the shots he used to hit," Mediate says. "Do I think he's finished winning majors? No. Does he have as much desire? Yes. But you could ask him to hit any shot blindfolded back in the day and he could. Now he can't. I know what I'm seeing. I know what I saw before. And it's not the same.

" … I know the things outside of golf hurt him immensely, and the injuries have hurt him ... If he does find the swing again, it's game over.

John Atkinson, RIP

Sad news about the first ever participant in the Golf Digest Challenge passes away nearly a year to the day he played Torrey Pines.

"But the answer is, you don't earn that money back."

In one of those wonderful golfing traditions, David Fay made his annual reiteration that the USGA is committed to an 18-hole playoff. But this year there's a twist. We get to find out just what those 18 holes cost thanks to Doug Ferguson's report:

Fay said the USGA had to spend nearly $120,000 for an extra day of buses, $45,000 for the smaller buses, $30,000 for parking, $60,000 for security to stay an extra night and day. Throw in lunches for bus drivers, media, volunteers, parking for the media and travel costs for the USGA staff.

"When you round it up, and throw in the ever popular 'miscellaneous,' it came out to $513,000," he said. "Sure, we hope to see a few more hot dogs and beers and shirts. But the answer is, you don't earn that money back."

"Torrey Pines became the USGA's finest hour, a slam-dunk triumph with a twist of irony for an organization criticized for its old-world mentality."

I don't know if having been blessed to have seen all but one hole in person or if was John Hawkins doing such a superb job, but I'm leaning toward the latter for the sheer joy I found in reading his Tiger-Rocco-Torrey story for Golf World's Newsmakers issue.

The clippings below are for my little archives here just in case the story were to disappear. But just read the whole thing, I suspect you'll savor it.

In a large part because it stuck to the 18-hole format, Torrey Pines became the USGA's finest hour, a slam-dunk triumph with a twist of irony for an organization criticized for its old-world mentality. Woods-Mediate was an extended-play encore with everything on the line, a fifth round that turned a superb tournament into one for the ages.

"Having done this for 20 years, I can say that it was my favorite broadcasting day," says NBC on-course analyst Mark Rolfing. "I've done a lot of good ones, but that day was special. The playoff had everything. It was unlike anything I've ever experienced." The sharp turns in momentum gave it character and amplified the crescendo effect."

And...

On the way to her departure gate, Joan Fay ran into a bunch of NBC employees also flying back to New York but on a different airline. "They asked why she wasn't on their flight," David says. "Joan tells them, 'I'm on JetBlue, and they've got TVs in every seat.' All at once, the NBC people jump up and make a mad dash for the JetBlue ticket counter. Her flight went from almost empty to absolutely booked."

The PGA Tour arranged for a charter from San Diego to Hartford, site of the Travelers Championship that week. About 30 players were on the flight, plus their wives, kids and a few caddies. "We all had TVs, and the timing was pretty much perfect," says Lee Janzen. "We took off around 8:30, and a half-hour later, the playoff started. It seemed like everybody on the plane was pulling for Rocco."

And the still astounding numbers...

It was 2:30 p.m. on the East Coast, 11:30 a.m. local time, and the entire country, or so it seemed, had stopped to watch a golf tournament. The USGA offered live streaming video of the playoff on its website -- the full-day audience of 2.3 million viewers and 615,000 concurrent streams are by far the largest numbers ever generated by a sporting event on the Internet.

"The fact that it was a Monday and people had to work obviously helped," Davis says. "We were told it actually slowed down Internet service worldwide in terms of [available] bandwidth."

ESPN's two hours of coverage produced a rating of 4.2, which was 35 percent higher than the previous record for a golf tournament shown on cable. NBC, meanwhile, generated a whopping 7.6/20 share with its telecast of the back nine, a 90-percent increase over the 2001 U.S. Open playoff between Retief Goosen and Mark Brooks.

"The stroke that followed will go down as the greatest final-hole putt in the history of major-championship golf."

This passage from Jaime Diaz's definitive account of the Tiger Woods knee saga would generate some fun debate, and since the news has been so dark lately...

The stroke that followed will go down as the greatest final-hole putt in the history of major-championship golf. There are plenty of candidates: grinding mid-rangers by Bobby Jones at Winged Foot, Payne Stewart at Pinehurst, Gary Player, Mark O'Meara and Phil Mickelson at Augusta, Seve Ballesteros at St. Andrews; no-brainer bombs by Jerry Barber at Olympia Fields, Hale Irwin at Medinah and Costantino Rocca at St. Andrews. But none of them surpassed Woods for the blend of setting, situation and reaction. And only Jones, arguably, had as much disappointment to face by missing. Never in golf has such a dramatically set stage had such a fulfilling resolution. As a final validation of a true stroke at the moment of truth, a close-up, slow-motion replay revealed that the alignment line on Woods' ball never wiggled until it fell into the hole.

I'm biased because I was standing there and thought the whole thing was pretty swell, but does Jaime have it right? Greatest final hole putt?

"Those volunteers ended up making the nonprofits about $7 an hour."

Thanks to reader Mike for Eleanor Yang Su and Brent Schrotenboer's story about the controversy brewing over some San Diego nonprofits providing volunteers to run concession stands at the U.S. Open and receiving far less for their services than they expected.

All I could think when reading this is what a great scam the concession operator (Prom) has here! Get non-profits to staff your operation and make a lowball contribution to charity.

The nonprofits say they hustled for months to line up thousands of volunteers, some of whom took days off work to sell hot dogs, brownies and beer at the tournament at Torrey Pines Golf Course. Those volunteers ended up making the nonprofits about $7 an hour.

That's less than the state minimum wage, and far less than what some nonprofits expected, based on figures they said were provided by the caterer, Minnesota-based Prom Management Group.

Prom, which has contracted with the U.S. Golf Association to run concessions at the past nine U.S. Opens, collected about $3.8 million at the event before expenses. The nonprofits got about $257,400, which Prom called a record payout.

Buried but definitely bizarre...

Some nonprofits said they were further confused when the checks they received bore the name of the Century Club, a nonprofit that puts on the annual Buick Invitational golf tournament at Torrey Pines.

Tom Wilson, Century Club's executive director, said his organization received no benefit from distributing the money, and simply did so because it was asked.

Johnson, Prom's controller, said the company hopes to be awarded a Buick contract in the future, and allowed the Century Club to disperse the money with a letter soliciting fundraising volunteers.

The idea, she said, was “to show (the community and the Century Club that) Prom gave $257,000 back to the San Diego community. Look what they did for the U.S Open, look what they could do for the Buick and San Diego community.”

Rosie On Rocco

Tim Rosaforte files a very enjoyable profile of Rocco Mediate's whirlwind run and finally, someone catches up on the incredible trevails he's gone through in the midst of a couple of other great runs that you likely forgot about.

I did wonder about this:His legs rested on a chair, exposing bare ankles and clean-shaven legs. (That's right—Mediate shaves his legs. "A lot of women are jealous," he says.) On the wall a flat-screen TV replayed the afternoon action, Rocco's name still on the first page of the leader board.

Two hours after his second round ended with a birdie, he was relaxing in black drawstring sweatpants, a black Callaway sweater and black Nike Frees.

Uh, what brand were those drawstring sweats Tim? Sloppy, sloppy! Please, we need to know.

This, borders on TMI...

His legs rested on a chair, exposing bare ankles and clean-shaven legs. (That's right—Mediate shaves his legs. "A lot of women are jealous," he says.)

"Tiger's drives were worse than Phil's, yet finished in better spots."

James Corrigan talks to Dave Pelz about Phil Mickelson's performance at Torrey Pines and the short game guru offers an interesting theory on the difference between Phil and Tiger's, uh, luck.

"I give Tiger all the credit in the world but I'm a stats guy," Pelz said at the opening of one of his renowned short-game schools at Killeen Castle in Co Meath. "I look at Mickelson's worst three drives and he made two doubles and a bogey and then I look at Tiger's worst three drives and he made eagle, birdie, par. Tiger's three-under, Phil's five-over. Tiger's drives were worse than Phil's, yet finished in better spots.

"When Phil hit his bad three woods they went in the deep six-inch rough; when Tiger hit his bad ones they went into the next fairway or the trampled-down dry dirt. So if you're going to miss, miss big and have a unique set of circumstances when your knee hurts so bad before the tournament that all you do in the build-up is putt all day, every day and go on to make 75 footers, 50 footers, 40 footers...

"That actually might not be a bad way to do it," he adds. "I mentioned it to Phil. Of course, it's not just luck. It is lucky when a 75-footer hits the hole and goes in, but it's not lucky that he hits it so near to the hole. It might have gone eight foot past but he probably wouldn't have three-putted as he was putting so fine.

"Both Opens need to introduce a multi-tiered entry-fee system whereby tour players are charged a sum they may think twice about relinquishing so easily."

John Huggan talks to agent Brian Marchbank, who helps explain the WD disease that keeps hitting the U.S. Open and Open Championship international qualifiers.

I'm not quite buying this from David Fay in year three of the WD shenanigans.

"I want to know what the players are thinking," said Fay. "Why are they entering in the first place? Has something happened? Or are we doing something wrong?"

"It took DeBock five tries; the reporter finally found it on his 15th."

Not to dwell excessively on the U.S. Open with THE Open lurking, but several moments keep flashing before my eyes and none sticks out more than Tiger's putt on 18 Sunday. I remember looking at downhill putts here after learning that front right would be the likely location, and it just never looked like an easy putt to read with the slope coming off the bunker.

Well, Ed Zieralski reports that others have had that putt in mind and tried it out.

 A student of U.S. Open history with a terrific collection of memorabilia from past events, Torrey Pines head pro Joe DeBock was prodded by a reporter to return to the South's 18th green on June 18, two days after Woods beat Rocco Mediate in a thrilling 19-hole playoff.

Of all the putts Woods made during the Open, the reporter told DeBock he was most impressed with a 15-footer that had about eight inches of right-to-left break, which Woods gingerly jarred for birdie to tie Mediate after 72 holes of regulation. DeBock found the hole placement used for Sunday's final round, and he and the reporter took turns trying to make it.

It took DeBock five tries; the reporter finally found it on his 15th.