Once a year, like Christmas, we as golf fans get to see Tiger Woods completely open and talkative to all media outlets. About his video game. That EA Sports one that is named after Tiger. He will talk to anyone about this video game.

Last night Woods continued his Tour De Wii on Conan O'Brien (second part after the jump), where the two chatted about the U.S. Open victory, his knee, baby Sam and, of course, the game. As awkward as these two seemed to be together, a few of the questions thrown at our Golfing Pope brought out some solid emotion.



Asked about his knee currently, Tiger said, "It's Better, better than it was then, that's for sure." When questioned what they actually did in the surgery, Woods told us, "They took my hamstring tendon out of my right leg and put it into my left as my new ACL and repaired some cartilage damage."

No matter what you think about Tiger Woods, the one thing we can all agree on is his intmidation factor on the golf course. Just watching him on the television gets you a little out of your element.

His stare boars through walls, his fist pumps break into more senses than just sight and his build and distance almost blankets what his opponents are donig. I think it's safe to say Tiger bothers his playing partners.

Flash in the 2008 pan Greg Norman thinks even stronger about this. He thinks the opponents, especially the young lads, don't even give themselves a puncher's chance when Woods is lurking.

"This generation of golfers has just been whipped by Tiger. They go out there thinking that they can't beat him, so they don't."

Well, I think it is a little jab at the players but isn't this just fact? When people play with Woods, they're beat before they tee off, right? Who in their right mind was sitting around watching Rocco Mediate playing Tiger and thought, for a second, that Woods was defeated?

Tiger Woods is alive and well, even though he's not scheduled to make his triumphant return to the PGA Tour until sometime next spring. Meanwhile, during an interview on CNBC's Power Lunch this afternoon, Eldrick touched on the typical fare: he's recovering well, loves spending time with his family, can't wait to play tournament golf, blah blah blah.

He also managed to get in a plug for EA Sports AND Gillette, and name-drop both Derek Jeter and Roger Federer. After dispensing with the pleasantries, however, host Bill Griffeth got all journalistic, asking Tiger his thoughts on the whole sordid LPGA mess. Awkwardness ensued:

Griffeth: Let me ask you something before you go, here ... Golfweek broke it on Monday, the New York Times put it on the front page today -- you probably saw that -- the LPGA is now going to require all of their golfers to be conversant in English next year, or face suspension. Good idea, bad idea?

Tiger: I don't know, that's the first time I heard about it. I was just in Dubai and I just got back, so ... um, that's the first time I actually heard about that, so...

Ah, yes, the ol' "I was out of the country" excuse. That used to work really well before the advent of the telegraph, and later, the phone and a little something Al Gore likes to call the internet.

It gets better:

A lot of "experts" talk about Camilo Villegas like he is still one of the next big stars. The thing is, the extremely good looking, muscular, Colombian hero who probably lands more women than a Gynecology waiting room doesn't really ever win. Honestly, he's probably best known for the maneuver he's doing in the picture that is supposed to help him reads putts better (?).

On Tuesday, Villegas fans can take solace in his victory at a skins game event, where he took home the gold with a chip-off against Vijay Singh, Mike Weir, Stewart Cink and Notah Begay III.

The rising Colombian star won a chipoff Tuesday against Singh, Weir, Cink, and Begay III to walk away with top money at the inaugural Notah Begay III Foundation Challenge at Turning Stone Resort's Atunyote Golf Club.

Villegas' winning pitch on the extra hole of the skins game competition boosted his earnings for the day to $220,000. Singh won two holes to finish with $180,000, and Cink finished with one skin worth $100,000 from the total purse of $500,000.

Now I know what you're probably asking yourself, so let me answer all the fuzziness for you. Yes, a chip-off is the lamest thing possible to decide the victor. The only thing worse than that is tossing a tee in the air and seeing who it points to. Yes, like you I was about a month away from totally forgetting who Notah Begay was. Yes, there could be a more random five-some on the PGA Tour, but not by much (I'm picturing a little K.J. Choi, Ian Poulter and Fuzzy Zoeller).

I guess the budding star that is Villegas will have this to hang his hat on. Sure, he's been on tour for three seasons without a victory, but the next time he is in that situation, I'm sure this chip-off victory will be that experience he's needed to finally pull through.

The LPGA has spoken, and if you understand English, the message is clear: the tour will henceforth be a one-language operation, which creates all sorts of ironical hilarity since a good many tour winners are from non-English speaking countries.

No matter. In an effort to improve sponsorships, and presumably ratings, the tour is getting the Stepford Wives treatment: Homogenize everything. In addition to English-only requirements, players will also be encouraged to bleach their hair blond and get breast implants. Because if there's anything LPGA fans love more than watching golfers speak a language we can all understand (and by "we," I mean "lazy Americans"), it's watching golfers speak a language we can all understand while being able to point and gawk in the process.

Perhaps I've overstating things a bit, but the whole idea of require players to learn English is farcical. The theory for the new rule goes something like this: the amateurs who take part in pro-ams can't communicate with the pros because of the language barrier. Apparently, that's a no-no, and a much bigger concern than finding a way to mass-market the tour to a wider audience. Which probably goes a long way in explaining the tour's current run on abysmal ratings.

Since 2000, Vijay Singh has won more tournaments than anyone on tour not married to a former Swedish model with an identical twin.

The consistency can be attributed to his incredible ability to hit the golf ball as good, if not better, than anyone on tour and not so much to his putting, which has always plagued the Big Fijian. After his playoff win this weekend at the Barclays, his first victory in the short history of the FedEx Cup playoffs, Singh said he's finally decided to approach putting a little different. He's just going to believe he's good at it. Hey, sounds simple enough!

"I think through the past weeks and months and years, with the media talking about my putting and writing about my putting and people talking about my putting and people want to help me, I must have had hundreds of letters and phone calls and all saying that they can fix my putting,'' said Singh, who is now 8-4 in playoffs. "You know, at the end of the day, it kind of gets to your head that you're not a good putter.

"So I made a point after last week that, you know, I'm going to change that attitude, and I believed in myself that I'm the best putter, and I came out here with a different attitude, and I putted great this week. If I keep doing this, I'm going to win a lot more golf tournaments."

The waiting game continues with the world's most famous birdie maker and his return to the sport, with the man himself even confused about the future.

Tiger Woods, on a trip to his $1.1 billion golf development in Dubai, said if there is one certainty in life, it's that he has no clue when we should expect to see him wearing red on Sundays again. Asked if he would be back to defend his title at the Dubai Desert Classic, Woods made it clear that the future is unclear.

"All that's unknown," Woods said. "It's frustrating for me."

Woods said his schedule heading into next year is uncertain, but that he plans to "be hitting golf balls at the beginning of the year."

Since it was first reported that Woods would be out for the season, speculation has run rampant and even the closest people to him have tossed us their two cents. The bottom line is Tiger is too smart to rush back and knows that for the first time in his life, he has no control over his situation. Waiting it out to make sure it's totally and completely healed looks to be the approach Team Woods is taking.

I guess if this knee injury is too serious, he can always stick to blogging or walking on water. After that win at Torrey Pines, I think we can all agree the man has the ability to produce miracles.

Kevin Sutherland, fresh off the 2002 WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship, fired a final round 68 at today's Barclays and found himself in a playoff with Sergio Garcia and Vijay Singh. To be fair, Sutherland has had four top-10s this season, but he's about as far from exciting as you can get on the golf course.

But sometimes it's less about mind-blowing shots than it is about grinding it out, which is exactly what Sutherland was able to do today.

Garcia, on the other hand, shot a 1-under 70, and just missed a 15-foot birdie putt on the 72nd hole that would've given him the outright victory. Instead, in true Sergio fashion, he burned the edge, and after Singh did likewise two groups later, all three reconvened on the 18th tee box for a playoff.

Garcia and Singh both striped their drives, while Sutherland pushed his tee shot into the trees, effectively taking him out of contention. Sergio and Vijay found the green with their second shots, both ending up some 25-30 feet from the hole.

When one thinks of war images, nothing truly translates like that timeless Joe Rosenthal image of Iwo Jima. Six American servicemen took Francis Scott Key to another octave, raising our stars and stripes on Mount Suribachi during a battle that killed nearly 7,000 American soldiers.

So, when talking about the Ryder Cup, a golf event that brings tons of emotion between Europe and the United States, what could really get us Yanks a little hot under the collar? A Portuguese television station, Sport TV, using that fabulous image as a magazine ad, dogging the United States.

Thanks to Copyranter we have the full spread of the statue raising an 18th hole flag in the air with the dates of the tournament in the top left corner. This is disrespectful and ignorant on so many humanitarian levels, but let's just talk about golf.

The Ryder Cup is match play, so a lot of the groupings never even make it to the 18th hole. Also, Portugal, really? There has never been a Ryder Cup ever hosted in the country, not to mention there has never been an individual from the country on the team to represent the Europeans.

The ad is pointless and weak. You don't see the NBA advertising Carmelo Anthony dunking an atomic bomb on Hiroshima because it would be classless and ridiculous, so why in the world would a country so meaningless in an event like the Ryder Cup drop something so brash?

You're Sport TV, stick to soccer highlights and, umm, soccer highlights?

It appears when you win three of six major championships in golf, people start to care what you say.

Irishman and back-to-back major champion Padraig Harrington spoke with everyone's favorite Irish light heavyweight boxer, Kenny Egan, about concentration, motivation and any other term I learned watching "Remember the Titans."

"He came to my house and basically was talking about how to peak, how to go to a big-time event and produce your best performance," Harrington said Tuesday at The Barclays. "He was obviously a very talented competitor himself and knew what to do, but was feeling that he was slightly underachieving at the big events."

The talk apparently helped, as Egan advanced to the medal round on Tuesday in Beijing.

"The only way to learn experience without actually going through it yourself is learn from somebody else," Harrington said. "Kenny was not afraid to ask a couple of people to make the contact with me. And I love to talk, so I was more than obliging."

I love Padraig, but picturing him motivate someone is just humor in my head. I just keep thinking about how many "ehhhs" he'd spit out in a single sentence.

We will see how great it actually pays off on Friday, as Egan pairs up against Britain's Tony Jeffries in the semifinals.