19th Hole
Tiger Woods talks 82 wins on Tour, the upcoming Presidents Cup, his record 142 Tour cut-streak and more on The Fred Couples Show
Tiger Woods called into The Fred Couples show on the SiriusXM PGA TOUR channel on Tuesday afternoon and spoke to Couples and co-host George Downing about several hot topics including his recent 82nd win on Tour, the upcoming Presidents Cup, his recovery from a recent procedure on his knee and more.
After claiming his 82nd win on the PGA Tour at the recent Zozo Championship, Woods spoke to Couples and Downing about the consistency and longevity needed to make that number of wins possible.
*All quotes courtesy of The Fred Couples Show on SiriusXM PGA TOUR Radio
“Well I think that if you want to get to that number, one, you’ve got to have consistency, and longevity, and you have to put yourself there a lot of times. You’re not going to win them all but you have to put yourself there a lot, and the majority part of my career I’ve done that.
“To add them up to 82, it’s just a big number. (laughs) I’ve been doing for a little over two decades and to be as consistent as I have been, it hasn’t been easy but it’s been a lot of fun.”
Woods took time off earlier this year to recuperate from arthroscopic surgery on his knee to repair minor cartilage damage and talked in detail to his hosts about his process of recovery.
“The first time I picked up my putter and I started putting with it, my putter felt better. My knee was able to move, it wasn’t locked. So that was already a positive right away. But it did take me probably close to 6-7 weeks to be able to squat all the way down. I had to break through a lot of scar tissue that built up from the procedure.
“I had to get through that. I still had to do all my PT to gain strength around my quad, my hamstring, my calf, all the way up to my glutes, so making sure everything was firing. It’s not quite the size that I would like it to be, but it certainly has range of motion, which is nice, and it has the endurance. And that endurance was really tested on Sunday when we had to play 29 holes that day.”
The 15-time major champion’s consecutive cut-streak record of 142 from 1998-2005 is a record which most golf fans don’t see being broken in the foreseeable future, if at all, and the achievement made its way into the conversation between the three men on Tuesday.
As well as speaking about the pride he has in the record and the toughness it shows, Woods also explained how no tournament victory is out of reach should you make it to the weekend.
“Well the 142, that is, I think, one that shows toughness. It shows an attitude that I never give up, because there are plenty of days when you don’t have the game, you’re hurt, things aren’t going right, you get the bad end of the draw, get the worse weather, wind may kick up. All these different variables that can happen that we see the more your play the TOUR, the more you see it. And for some reason I was able to fight and grind my way around there to make the cut on the number a bunch of times.
“I remember one time in San Diego I made the cut on the number, went out and shot 62-65 on the weekend to beat Billy Ray Brown. So if you make the cut on the number there’s always a chance you can win it, and in order to win a tournament you got to get to the weekend.”
On his upcoming role as captain (possibly playing captain) at the Presidents Cup, Woods discussed the experience of the U.S. side despite some of the players’ relatively young ages, as well as the importance of preparation to be ready from the get-go and to shake off any potential fatigue after taking the long haul trip to Australia.
“As far as the team, the team is very young, and they know each other really well which is great. There’s very little crossover of different generations. I think myself and Kuch (Matt Kuchar) may be the older ones on the team but other than that most of the guys are in their 20s or early 30s so they’ve been around each other for a while and they know each other. There are a couple of rooks on the team but still these guys have won playoff events and World Golf Championships so I don’t really consider them rookies.”
“We have a very solid team going down there. The only thing is we are playing [in] Australia which is a long haul, a long trip. We’ll need to get over the jet lag as fast as we can, get the guys fired up and ready to go and go [for] points and accumulate them as quickly as possible.”
The Fred Couples Show airs monthly on SiriusXM PGA TOUR Radio.
19th Hole
‘Don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight’ – LPGA pro offers candid take following rough AIG Women’s Open finish
An opening round of 77 left LPGA pro Jenny Shin with a mountain to climb at last week’s AIG Women’s Open.
However, fighting back with rounds of 69 and 67, Shin found herself six shots off the lead and just outside the top 10 heading into Sunday as she went in search of her first major victory.
Shin, who won the US Girls’ Junior at just 13, couldn’t back those rounds up on Sunday, though, and after playing her opening nine holes of the final round in level par, she then bogeyed three holes coming home to slip down the leaderboard and eventually finish T23.
Taking to X following the final round, Shin offered a frustrated and honest take on how she was feeling, posting: “Don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight. What a crappy way to finish.”
Don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight. What a crappy way to finish
— Jenny Shin (@JennyShin_LPGA) August 3, 2025
Shin has made 11 cuts in 13 starts on the LPGA Tour this season, but has been plagued by frustrating Sunday finishes throughout the year. Shin ranks 102nd on tour this year out of 155 for Round 4 scoring in 2025.
Miyu Yamashita won the 2025 AIG Women’s Open with a composed final round of 70 to win her first major of her career by two strokes.
Cameron Young won the Wyndham Championship on Sunday for his first victory on the PGA Tour.
Young dominated all weekend at TPC Sedgefield, running away from the pack to win by six strokes and put himself in contention for a Ryder Cup pick in September.
Ahead of the event, the 28-year-old switched to a Pro V1x prototype golf ball for the first time, following recent testing sessions with the Titleist Golf Ball R&D team.
Interestingly, Young played a practice round accompanied by Fordie Pitts, Titleist’s Director of Tour Research & Validation, at TPC Schedule early last week with both his usual Pro V1 Left Dot ball and the new Pro V1x prototype.
Per Titleist, by the second hole Young was exclusively hitting shots with the Pro V1x prototype.
“We weren’t sure if he was going to test it this week, but as he was warming up, he asked to hit a couple on the range,” Pitts said. “He was then curious to see some shots out on the course. Performance-wise, he was hitting tight draws everywhere. His misses were staying more in play. He hit some, what he would call ‘11 o’clock shots,’ where again he’s taking a little something off it. He had great control there.”
According to Titleist, the main validation came on Tuesday on the seventh hole of his practice round. The par 3 that played between 184 and 225 yards during the tournament called for a 5-iron from Young, or so he thought. Believing there was “no way” he could get a 6-iron to the flag with his Left Dot, Young struck a 5-iron with the Pro V1x prototype and was stunned to see the ball land right by the hole.
“He then hits this 6-iron [with the Pro V1x prototype] absolutely dead at the flag, and it lands right next to the pin, ending up just past it,” Pitts said. “And his response was, ‘remarkable.’ He couldn’t believe that he got that club there.”
Following nine holes on Tuesday and a further nine on Wednesday, Young asked the Titleist team to put the ProV1x balls in his locker. The rest, as they say, is history.
Rickie Fowler fired an opening round of one-under par on Thursday at the Wyndham Championship, as the Californian looks to make a FedEx Cup playoff push.
Fowler is currently 61st in the standings, so will need a strong couple of weeks to extend his season until the BMW Championship, where only the top 50 in the standings will tee it up.
Heading into the final stretch of the season, Fowler has made an equipment switch of note, changing into new iron shafts, as well as making a switch to his driver shaft.
The 36-year-old revealed this week that he has switched from his usual KBS Tour C-Taper 125-gram steel shafts to the graphite Aerotech SteelFiber 125cw shafts in his Cobra King Tour irons, a change he first put into play at last month’s Travelers Championship.
Speaking on the change to reporters this week, Fowler made note that the graphite shafts offer “something that’s a little easier on the body.”
“I mean, went to the week of Travelers, so been in for, I guess that’s a little over a month now. Something that’s a little easier on the body and seemed to get very similar numbers to where I was at. Yeah, it’s gone well so far.”
Fowler has also made a driver shaft change, switching out his Mitsubishi Diamana WB 73 TX for a UST Mamiya Lin-Q Proto V1 6 TX driver shaft in his Cobra DS-Adapt X, which he first implemented a couple of weeks ago at the John Deere Classic.
However, according to Fowler himself, the testing and potential changes are not done yet.
“Probably do some more testing in some different weight configurations with them once I get some time. Yeah, I feel like we’re always trying to search, one, to get better but are there ways to make things easier, whether that’s physically, mentally, whatever it may be. So yeah, I thought they were good enough to obviously put into play and looking forward to doing some more testing.”
Fowler gets his second round at TPC Sedgefield underway at 7.23 a.m ET on Friday.
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