OverDrive - Weeks on McIlroy's climb at the Players Championship, Pendrith leading the Canadians and Woods' injury trajectory

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

TSN Golf Analyst Bob Weeks joined OverDrive to discuss the headlines around the Players Championship, Rory McIlroy in the hunt for the victory in the leadership, the Canadian spotlight in the tournament, Tiger Woods' injury impact to return to play and more.

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Visit a Virgin Plus store or virginplus.ca for details. Here's our TSN Golf reporter, Bob Weeks. How's it going down there, Weeksy? Terrible, you know? This is an awful job. It's sunny and warm. We got some golf going on and they got free food. Oh yeah, it's beautiful. Loving everyone I read online anywhere that has the luxury of going there every year says this is it's tough to top the players

Because like you said the weather's great. The course is cool You can get around everywhere like the clubhouse is amazing. It's a great field Like this is a spectator's dream going to the players It is and then you know you can hang out at the 17th hole they've made it really easy to kind of get a good view of what's going on there you got 16 just over at one side so that's kind of their you know it's like their waist management hole doesn't get as rowdy or as obnoxious let's say but it's it's pretty pretty good place to be a

lot of fun going on there and there's lots of and it's an easy course to walk and there's lots of good viewing spots so it is a pretty good if people can't get into a major you know this is this is as close as you'll come to seeing some great golf there's a good field here absolutely the week see uh... speaking of rowdy and obnoxious there is you know what was your take on the whole rory with the young college golfer who chirps him?

It was a practice round. It was kind of a bizarre scenario to me. I still want to know more about it because it doesn't add up that Rory pulls one into the water. The kid who plays at the University of Texas, he's an aspiring player, maybe on the PGA tour soon, he says to Rory, just like at Augusta in 2011, and Rory walks up to him and takes his phone bizarrely really returned it later but what did you make of all that in the fact that this guy got under Rory's skin so easily? Yeah I was kind of mystified by that whole thing it almost looked like a setup but

I mean he walked over and just said hey can I see your phone and and you know and took it and sort of walked down the fairway. I guess if you're Rory, you probably hear a lot of comments and you probably hear a lot of different things. But most of it, I would have to think is pretty positive. I was kind of surprised and he came in afterwards, the next time we got a chance at him and one of the British reporters said,

can I ask you about the incident yesterday? He goes, no, thank you, I don't really wanna talk about it. So I think they're both kind of a little embarrassed. I think the kid who had to write apology letters and I think he got some kind of a suspension or something. Yeah, he got kicked out of Sawgrass. Yeah, he got kicked out of Sawgrass, but I think his college coach was there too, right?

Uh-oh. And I think he suspended him or something, there was some kind of retribution. And I think Rory was probably a little bit, you know, going over the top. I don't know what led to it. Why one comment like that? Because you hear stuff all the time from guys out here, especially when they get a little juice in them.

So I was kind of shocked at that, to be perfectly honest. It was very sort of non-Rory. So unless he's willing to talk to us down the road I'm not sure what's happened. Yeah it's weird I have to think there was more chirping going on that like the one comment about reminds you of 2011 and Augusta leads to a reaction like that I find that hard to believe. I would think this guy may have been on him for a while and like you said he's written letters to McIlroy, to Monahan, maybe to TPC trying to get back in there.

But in a year in which the Ryder Cup is gonna be at Beth Page in New York, like McElroy is gonna get destroyed. Yeah. Like people, they're gonna be chanting like just like in 2011, just like in 2011, Augustin, like he has set himself up now to this is gonna follow him. This is the chirp to use on McElroy. Well and listen he's gonna be target number one you you said and at Bethpage I've been to a couple of US Open's there and the crowd is I mean it's it's off the hook you know it was pretty rough last year at Montreal I'll tell you that there was uh there

was a couple of incidents where some of the american players were walking down a hole in people were screaming some from pretty good imagine it was this summer bob imagine it was this september there is a lot on the world uh... yeah i know yeah i mean it's it's gonna be off the hook there i just don't know what what do you think about the anticipation of that but yeah rory's gotta get a little thicker skin because that uh... and you need pretty good with that kind of stuff but

i guess if you said, I think there's probably more to the story than we've heard. So Bob, earlier in the week we're talking about Connors, we're talking about Nick Taylor, and how has Pendrith jumped into the leaderboard currently tied at 17th? Yeah, so Taylorlor pandra last year finished third in strokes game putting he was in a tremendous part of the dog so he gets a mile so when you got those two and going for you it's pretty good this year

he still hit in a mile but his putting was like he was a hundred and almost dead last strokes game putting and on thursday is part of it up and is driving unfortunately left him but but he still managed to put a good score together and then the same thing but opposite happened today on Friday he he drove the ball really well put it in a fairway a ton and he just couldn't think apart so he's still he's still pretty good he's got he's got some some good mojo going I think he seems to feel good about his game right now which is always a big step a lot of a lot of the guys who grew up in Ontario Connors and guys like that they're not big on the West Coast so when you see guys struggling at

the start of the year on those West Coast greens which are different grass I don't read a lot into it it's when they get here if they're still struggling then I'm worried and I'm not really worried about Taylor Pendrath but we'll see we'll see what happens tomorrow. Hopefully he can put them both together. With Bob Weeks, earlier this week, we also heard Tiger Woods had surgery for a ruptured Achilles.

How much has the presence of Tiger kind of hovered over this week, and the news that came out earlier this week, how is it affecting all the PGA live talks and where the PGA Tour is going with media and all these different things that seem to be at the forefront of what Monahan was talking about earlier this week and other players how does that all kind of mesh together when you consider Tiger we may not see him play again on the PGA Tour? Well I don't know that, if his Achilles is the bigger news or the rumor that he's

dating Donald Trump Jr.'s ex-wife. Is that making the rounds down there? Yeah, we got some note on that. Yeah, I think that Achilles' injury is, it's not, I talked to a really good podiatrist about it. He said it's not career ending, but he said he might have a hard time walking up the hills at Augusta National now. And you know, he's got now got two bad legs basically.

And he won't be doing anything until, you know, maybe the father son in December, because it's gonna take 12 weeks, according to this doctor, 12 weeks before he's gonna put any weight on it and probably six to seven months before he can even swing a golf club. This guy is 48 years old, he's got more bolts and nuts in him than Frankenstein Monster

being held together by all this stuff and I just don't see if there's any real value in him playing because I don't think anybody really wants to see him be kind of an exhibition golfer right? I mean you don't want him to see there, You want to be able to at least hit some good shot to the finish middle of the pack or something. And I don't know if he's got that in him anymore. So we'll see. He's, listen, he's proved me wrong.

I don't know what, 15, 20 times with these injuries that he's got over the years. So hopefully there's one more embarrassment for me rather than him. Yeah, we'll see what comes of it. Again, some guys still on the course, it looks like the cut line will be one under. Enjoy the coverage down there, enjoy the weekend.

Bob will do it again soon. Okay, take care guys, bye bye. There's Bob Weeks, our TSN golf reporter. All new, all Canadian. The best of our great nation, one song at a time. This is Justin Bieber. Hi, this is Terry Clark. We are Nickelback.

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