At some stage in an interview with golfing Channel, after Tiger Woods retired from Southern Hills, the crew Europe chief Paul McGinley shared his thoughts on the Tiger. As we understand, Tiger retired from the PGA Championship after passing the cut (which a number of the top gamers have didn’t do…).
Surely it was not the 79 photographs with which he closed the third lap that caused him to speak to the PGA of the us that he would be retiring. The bad weather conditions and, notably, the worry for his bodily condition in all likelihood led him to desert a chief for the first time in his career.
Paul McGinley, statements
“All we can do is wish him well,” said McGinley “We would like to see him come back, we want to see him come back” “He’s a proud player, he doesn’t want to go back to playing just to be a ceremonial player” “We don’t want to see it that way either” “I experienced a similar thing with Seve, seeing him become, in a way, a ceremonial player on the European Tour in his last four or five years” “It wasn’t a good experience” “We don’t want to see the same thing with Tiger, but fortunately the rehabilitation techniques improve every day, and the paths will also become kinder to him”
Since childhood Paul McGinley played Gaelic football, but after a knee injury, which occurred when he was 18, he devoted himself only to golf. In 1989 came the first success at the Irish Amateur Close Championship; two years later he won the South of Ireland Championship and was selected to participate in the Walker Cup, where Phil Mickelson’s United States beat the British-Irish side 14-10.
At the end of the year he turned pro and the following season took part in the European Tour. He came close to winning the 1993 French Open, when he lost the play-off to Costantino Rocca, and the 1994 Open Mediterrania, where he surrendered to José María Olazábal always at the play-off.
He took his first European Tour title in 1996, at the Hohe Brücke Open, now called the Austrian Open again. Together with Pádraig Harrington he won the World Cup with Ireland.