The Rookies

Thanks to the Sports Hernia.

Hello, bitches. This is PiniellasPinata. I am being beamed to you, as always, from the planet Fuck You, I’m Awesome, and I missed the shit out of this fine Internet salon saloon as that dickface Rocawear or whatever his name is did his jacking off on our servers.

But I’m back, and I wanted to share a secret with you: Sportswriters still suck.

Let’s take Jay Mariotti’s column on Tiger Woods heading into the British Open for example. Please. (I promise that shit was funnier than the column.)

Urging Tiger Woods to win a major championship would seem laughably unnecessary, like

You breathing?

telling Albert Pujols to get a big hit or Ari Gold to scorch Lloyd’s earlobes on Entourage.

That’s zeitgeisty and Cub-baiting. Why is Will Leitch writing a Mariotti column?

Still, I would like to see him pocket one this week for the first time in 13 months.

Because what have you fucking done for Jay Mariotti lately, asshole?!

That way, he’ll avoid any ticking-clock syndrome that might set in if, oh, he’s in his mid-30s and remains five majors short of passing Jack Nicklaus.

If that’s anything like the ticking-clock syndrome your ovaries have, it must suck.

He wouldn’t want anyone crying “SLUMP!!!” as a certain someone did earlier this decade, when 10 events and 2 1/2 years passed without a major victory. I even began calling him Eldrick, figuring he wasn’t Tiger anymore.

One, Tiger could not give a shit about other people judging him. The man is my favorite golfer for a reason: His steely will is as hard as my nine-inch dick.

Two, two and a half years passed without a major victory and suddenly Tiger wasn’t Tiger? What about Jack Nicklaus’ droughts? He had a 12-major from 1967 to 1970 (age 27 to 30) and a ten-major “slump” from 1976 to 1978 (age 36 to 38), then a full five years from 1981 to 1985, without a single title. And yet, he was still Jack, still won those 18 majors, and still set up Tiger’s measuring stick, the only you media assholes bludgeon him with if he doesn’t live up to those outlandish standards.

There’s no reason Woods shouldn’t win his fourth Claret Jug at Turnberry, by the Firth of Clyde on Scotland’s west side, where arguably the finest links course in creation awaits the greatest golfer of his time at the British Open.

None. No reason. No excuses. Not in Jay Mariotti’s eyes.

His surgically repaired left knee no longer sabotages his game. The field is shy of reliably strong challengers, with Phil Mickelson tending to the horrific double-whammy of his wife and mother simultaneously fighting breast cancer and two-time defending champion Padraig Harrington struggling through his swing alterations (question: why does a man who won the last two majors of 2008 mess with his swing?).

I dunno, for the same reasons that Tiger, who shattered records with one swing at the 1997 Masters, dominated golf at the turn of the millennium with another, and has slowly rounded into form with a third, has: MAYBE IT’S HARD ON THE BODY TO GENERATE IMMENSE TORQUE ON THE KNEES AND BACK ROUTINELY.

Of course, you’re the sort of corpulent toad who wouldn’t know that, would you?

Tiger is controlling his own swing, striking the ball well and finding markedly better distance and accuracy off the tee. His putter, a puzzling bugaboo at the U.S. Open, was working for him at the AT&T National, where he held off young bucks Hunter Mahan and Anthony Kim by rolling in a late 20-footer.

And it could not work for him at the Open Championship. That’s how golf works.

And he has the added motivation of trying to keep up with his friend and razor-commercial colleague, Roger Federer, who captured his 15th Grand Slam victory at Wimbledon — one more than Woods’ 14 majors. “Great job. Now it’s my turn,” Tiger texted Federer after the epic win over Andy Roddick. As he related the story after his recent win at Congressional, he heard the laughter of media people and knew what they were thinking.

“Great, now Mariotti’s going to write an abortion of a column about Tiger again?”

If Tiger Woods were to need extra motivation from a fellow Gillette spokesperson in his pursuit of his sport’s greatest champion and highest honor, he’s dumber than you look. And he would ask Jeter, not that Swiss miss.

“Not 15. I meant win today,” he said, smiling.

You mean Tiger was focused only on the goal immediately in front of him? Huh.

Even his strategic decision not to show up until Sunday at Turnberry, a course he is seeing for the first time, doesn’t hold water in any Woods-will-lose arguments. Considering the Alisa Course hasn’t hosted the British Open since 1994, few of today’s players have much experience there. And don’t we all remember what happened when Tiger showed up, sight unseen, at Royal Liverpool three summers ago? He shot 18-under and won in the memory of his late father, Earl.

He should’ve shot you, Mariotti. Or at least had Stevie rough you up.

He chose to do his prep work last week in the decidedly un-Scottish like climate of Orlando, where he and swing coach Hank Haney couldn’t replicate the wind, rain and rocks but did work on the creativity conducive to strong links play.

So you’re telling me they couldn’t control the weather, Jay? Good to fucking know.

“The whole idea is to have everything dialed in, feel comfortable with my swing, short putting, everything, then start getting the feel for how to play over there,” he said. “Then I have to do more prep work on the greens and make sure I truly understand how to play the golf course and have a game plan come Thursday.”

That sounds sensible.

Of course, Woods lives for the links.

Of course, Mariotti, you live for the drinks and the hoes. Yeah, I just went ad hominem on your ass, asshole.

He used to pray for rain during his college days at Stanford so he could flee his dorm room and play in the slop. “I used to pretend I was playing at the British Open,” he said. It’s thinking man’s golf, maneuvering through the elements atop the coast.

Mariotti’s columns, by comparison, are mouth-breathers’ sportswriting, meandering from this cliche to that stale talking point, full of bloviation without a hint of nuance.

(Sorry, Rockafuckingstupidname gave me a thesaurus after I did the “ass, asshole” bit up there.)

Early weather reports suggest a surprisingly mild four days, but you sense Woods still wants it sloppy, though he once shot 81 in a monsoon at Muirfield. “It’s just making sure that you can flight your ball and making sure you can maneuver it both ways efficiently, because you don’t know what kind of weather you’re going to get,” he said. “You’re going to get years like we had at St. Andrews (in ‘05) where it’s perfect, or you can get a Muirfield (‘02) day or what they had last year at Birkdale. You just don’t know, and you have to be able to be confident in controlling your golf ball and maneuvering it all around and feel like you can do it efficiently.”

After all, it would be a change for Tiger to play in a major that Mother Nature fucks everyone over in. (He’ll be bitter about that U.S. Open for a while.)

Rather incredibly, Woods used his driver only once at Royal Liverpool, in the first round.

No, no, I believe it: It happened. And it was smart, because HE WON THE DAMN TOURNAMENT.

With two-irons, he preferred to angle and thread rather than blast. “An entirely different game,” marveled Harrington. “If the weather is nice, yeah, Tiger could definitely do that (this week). That performance was remarkable. Nobody else could have played the way he played that course. It was phenomenal — his control, distance control, his ball-striking, to hit it in to those greens from those distances. If Turnberry gets hard, he will be able to do it again.”

Look, a golfer, agreeing with Tiger’s choice!

But let’s change tracks completely!

I speak for the masses — and TV networks — in saying I miss Tiger Woods winning majors.

Really? Because he won one of the last three he entered. You really are a fickle dick. And speaking for TV networks makes you a shallow one, too.

It’s still the most glorious sight in sports, witnessing history in a blood-red shirt on Sunday, and it would be very cool to see a duel down the stretch.

A) No, it’s not the most glorious sight in sports, because IT’S STILL FUCKING GOLF. 2) That dingleberry of an appositive clause, does it apply to Tiger or the viewer? Last, it would be even cooler to see a duel between you and Chuck Norris down the stretch, because he would probably just punch you in the face and snap your hands off to leave you incapable of writing this rubbish.

You’re not worth a roundhouse kick.

But other than two British golfers, third-ranked Paul Casey and Lee Westwood, I’m not seeing anyone who fits the description.

Did Lucas Glover fit the description? Did Angel Cabrera? Golf is funny, in that fucking anyone can get lucky for one week (I’m looking at you, Daly) and beat the best at a big tournament. Actually, sports are funny in that respect: Sometimes, upsets happen. Go figure.

Sergio Garcia would crack under the pressure and is still getting over being dumped by Greg Norman’s daughter.

MySpace burn!

The young Irishman, Rory McIlroy, isn’t quite ready. And even the two Englishmen would face the crippling burden of dueling Woods in their homeland. Usually in sports, playing at home is a benefit; at the British Open, it’s a death sentence. Said Westwood, already sounding wobbly: “It’s an intense week. If you could just go in there and not talk to anybody, it would be a massive result. Unfortunately, it’s the Open Championship. And I’m British.”

On the bright side, Westwood doesn’t have to read this, because Mariotti’s not a glorified blogger for United Kingdom Online.

So why not Tiger? Why not No. 15?

Fate, luck, weather, someone else playing better, a fear of the number 15, a freak whale attack, the Black Eyed Peas: I dunno, name some bad things.

Happily married and thrilled with fatherhood, he’s at a place in his life, nearing 34, where he can slip into a cocoon and rattle off five majors in the next three or four years. The only thorn in his side at the moment is Jim Brown, who continues to rip Woods and Michael Jordan for not being involved in social activism.

Hi, non sequitur, nice to see you.

“There are one or two individuals in this country that are black that have been put in front of us as an example. But they’re basically under a system that says, ‘Hey, they’re not gonna do a certain thing,’” Brown said on HBO. “Yes, that disappoints me because I know they both know better. Yeah, I know they both know better, OK. And I know they both can do better without hurting themselves. You know what’s so interesting about Tiger to me? If it was just a matter of me looking at an individual that’s a monster competitor, this cat is a mamajama; he is a killer. He’ll run over you, he’ll kick your ass. But as an individual for social change, or any of that kind of [stuff]? Terrible. Terrible. Because he can get away with teaching kids to play golf, and that’s his contribution. And in the real world, man, I can’t teach no kids to play golf and that’s my contribution, if I got that kind of power.”

Jim Brown is still a cooler motherfucker than 97% of Earth, and he’s got Tiger pegged. But for Mariotti, who wants desperately for Tiger to be Jesus or suck his dick or something, Brown’s quote proves him wrong: Tiger’s a stone-cold dude, too, and he’s not taking anyone’s shit. Like it or not, Tiger Woods is not going to be doing politics on Brown’s level at least until he’s done with golf.

Yes, Woods could be more involved with the Obama administration, which is embracing sports and athletes like the White House never has before. But at the moment, Tiger doesn’t want to save the world, as his father once suggested he would. He wants to hit the golf ball straight, wear green jackets and hold Claret Jugs.

I just said that, asshole. Though, uh, the Obama administration has better things to do than recruit a golfer to help them do, well, whatever it is Mariotti and/or Brown want him to do.

We haven’t thought about it much

Do you have this tattooed somewhere? If not, could you put it on your forehead?

but when he reaches No. 19, it will be a powerful day for anyone who cares about sport, life and racial progress.

Why, exactly? And are we comparing one person’s triumph in golf to, say, the election of a minority head of state in a country that once enslaved people of his ethnicity, Jay? Really?

(What? I can’t know something about politics? Go shit in a Diebold.)

It’s time to start moving toward that number.

Because those last 14 majors mean nothing.

God, I hate people.

I’ll be here all week.