By Joel Beall
The spectacle that was the Tiger Woods-Phil Mickelson match is now in the books, and it was … well, it was something. It managed to live up to the hype while manifesting some of the biggest fears into reality. There were numerous awkward moments, yet moments that were genuinely entertaining. Fans were locked out of their pay-per-view purchases, and others got to watch it for free. And Tiger and Phil … well, to paraphrase the immortal Dennis Green, Tiger and Phil “were who we thought they were.”

Here is a look at the best and worst from the Shadow Creek showdown:

Birdie: Phil Mickelson
The cat just won $9 million (minimum, if you’re to believe the two are getting a cut of the PPV earnings). Not bad for a round of golf.

Bogey: The golf
The first 14 holes were “competitive” in the sense that a YMCA Little Tykes’ 0-0 soccer game is competitive. From the tee to second shots to the short game, everything was off. You know it’s bad when Rickie Fowler, a player, ahem, not particularly known for closing, is throwing shade:

Can we get Temper-Pedic to sponsor #TheMatch?? Bit of a pillow fight going right now haha I won’t these boys to play some golffff #letsgooo

— Rickie Fowler (@RickieFowler) November 23, 2018

Nevertheless …

Birdie: Drama
There was much not to like about the match (as you will soon read), and the cheese factor was off the charts, but damned if it still wasn’t a captivating view thanks to its elementary premise: Tiger Woods vs. Phil Mickelson. Judging by web searches and social-media trends, it certainly kept its audience throughout the show. Easier said than done on a holiday.

Bogey: The broadcast
Viewers were promised an innovative approach, a welcomed vow considering the sport’s presentation has become somewhat stale. What viewers received was basically the same song-and-dance seen every weekend. At least, to those that could see it …

Bogey: B/R Live
Viewers took to social media to air their grievances with the app, posting photos of error messages after buying the event. Then, unable to process the amount of traffic, Turner Sports told Golf Digest that some viewers received the pay-per-view for free. Given the experimental nature of this match, to say nothing of the consumer investment, this was an ill-timed bogey.

Birdie: Tiger’s hole-out on the 17th
Watching Big Cat send Mickelson back to 2003 made this entire circus worth it.

Tiger’s chip-in. ?pic.twitter.com/mEJaeJo8ji

— Golf Digest (@GolfDigest) November 24, 2018

Bogey: Tiger’s play after the 17th
Too much adrenaline on his approach at the 18th. A bad drive on the 19th. Couldn’t dial in a wedge from 93 yards multiple times. Safe to say the final hour won’t be on Woods’ Hall-of-Fame highlight reel.

Bogey: The playoff
All that for a 93-yard chip-off? Why not bring the lights to the 17th hole? Where was the windmill? Even the fiercest proponents of the match had to admit this set-up was contrived.

Bogey: Smack talk
For those hoping for jabs and low-blows, we were greeted with talk about kids heading to college and how “great” this opportunity was. Somewhere, Patrick Reed shed a tear.

Bogey: Ernie Johnson and Peter Jacobsen
We love us some Ernie, but a play-by-play man is expected to direct traffic, not cause it. Sometimes less is more.

As for Jacobsen … listen, sports announcing is hard. Really hard. But fans, paying ones at that, deserve better than banality and the obvious.

Birdie: Tom Pernice
There are two types of golfers: Those who were delighted when Pernice’s name fell into the broadcast, and those who live vapid existences.

Bogey: Shot tracer
Let’s just say the fan-favorite illustration was not doing its best William Tell impersonation today.

Birdie: Mark Broadie
The strokes-gained guru was invoked more than Shadow Creek. Banner day for the #BigStats community.

Bogey: Side action
We were told there were going to be side bets, and there were. But many were expecting more, and the ones presented were underwhelming, epitomized by a long-drive challenge on the back nine where both Tiger and Phil missed the fairway. Aside from a $1 million hole-out wager, which neither came close to dunking, this was a disappointment.

Harry How

Birdie: “Side Sauce”
This will become old by tomorrow, but Phil casually dropping “side sauce” was better than anything Urban Dictionary could concoct.

Bogey: Live mics
Phil’s huffing-and-puffing will forever haunt our dreams.

Bogey: Natalie Gulbis
Fans took to Twitter worried she got lost in the desert. Not that we needed more voices, but after introducing the event, the LPGA personality was conspicuously absent until the 18th hole. It was odd, to say the least.

Birdie: Charles Barkley
While Ernie and company tried their best to sell the product as Tiger and Phil hacked it up, Sir Charles summed up the front-nine eloquently: “This has been some crappy golf.” Long live Chuck.

The post Tiger Woods vs. Phil Mickelson Match: The best and worst from Shadow Creek appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Subsequent rounds of 76 and 68 (the third best on Sunday) left her tied for 42nd in her first start since the Evian Championship last September. It might not seem like much, but for Gulbis, it was more than a little satisfying.

Gulbis’ journey to simply playing four rounds again has been a sequence of surgery, followed by recovery, followed by surgery, recovery and surgery again. It turns out Tiger Woods isn’t the only player who struggles with a bad back. So debilitating was Gulbis’ problems she thought she was going to retire.

In a conversation with Golf World over the weekend, Gulbis explained her experience, beginning with her first back surgery occurred in 2008. It was a discectomy that attempted treat bulging discs. Unfortunately, it wasn’t very successful.

“I struggled with getting re-injured,” said Gulbis, whose lone career win came at the 2007 Evian. “I had to get cortisone shots. I was constantly in ice baths or getting physical therapy. I spent more time in physical therapy than practising.”

Gulbis wasn’t afraid to swing hard last week in L.A., where she made her first start since September 2017 and her first cut since 2015. (Harry How/Getty Images)

Gulbis played golf hurt, but it was more than that. Her quality of life was affected. Only in her 20s, she couldn’t walk up stairs without pain. She couldn’t sit in a car without her back hurting. A career as a competitive golfer no longer made sense. So she sat down with her coach, Butch Harmon, to come up with a plan on how to leave the LPGA on a good note.

But then Gulbis learned that Peter Jacobsen had had the same surgery, but his first had proven successful. Gulbis began contemplating having the procedure done a second time, weighing the options with her doctors and coach. There appeared little downside, with doctors telling her she had an 80-percent chance of success. She might not be able to play professional golf, but she should be able to live pain-free. So she decided to try it again, going Phoenix to have the procedure done at the Laser Spine Institute.

“I had the surgery, and I felt no pain two weeks later,” Gulbis said. “A month later I played on tour. Recovery was easy, we just moved forward from there.”

In the years following, Gulbis played full seasons, her best coming 2012, where she has three top-10 finishes, including a T-4 at the Evian.

Her results didn’t improve after that season, and a bad bunker shot in June 2017 brought the bad days back. Gulbis was playing in the ShopRite Classic and had an odd, one-foot-in-the-bunker, one-foot-out lie. The ball was buried. When she went to hit it, her back went out.

“I was stuck sideways,” Gulbis recalls. “I was bent to the left. I thought I was gonna be done. My back got better just from taking time off. But at the end of the year—I knew I’d have surgery after Evian, just for the quality of life.”

And so Gulbis had a third discectomy, one disc up from the one she had operated on previously. Another option for this type of surgery would be a spinal fusion, but Gulbis didn’t really consider it, thinking that athletes who move rotationally wouldn’t be able to come back and compete after that. Now, of course, she’s seen Tiger Woods’ recent play after spinal fusion.

“It’s been really inspiring to watch his success,” Gulbis said, “not just in how he’s played but how much he’s played. His speed and how far he’s hitting it, it’s made me look at how much golf I could play. He’s played events that have sidehills and rough and I wasn’t sure if I could play those. He’s been one of the best greatest success stories in back injuries.”

She and Woods haven’t spoken about their back surgeries, but she said she has a lot of questions and would like to see a scan of his back. When talking about other golfers who have dealt with bad backs, Gulbis also brings up Stacy Lewis as a success story.

Gulbis’ third discectomy, done in September, went well, but the recovery took a longer than anticipated. Gulbis had hoped to be back playing on tour in January but had to push her return back until the April event in L.A.

Gulbis intends to play a ‘mini-season’ in 2018, competing through the summer to keep her back as strong as she can. (Harry How/Getty Images)

“There’s a lot of things I can’t do,” Gulbis said. “I can’t practice as much. I’ve never seen a range ball I didn’t wanna hit, but now I have to have different discipline. My workouts are different. I have to be smarter. Everything I do has to have a purpose.”

Instead of playing a few events spread out over the season like she’s been doing, she and Harmon decided to organize her schedule as a “mini-season.” This was the first event, and in the coming weeks, she will continue to play consecutive events. After her impressive final round at Wilshire, there are a lot of positives Gulbis can take away from the first weekend of her mini-season. For one, her back doesn’t hurt. That opens her up to think seriously about her goals.

“Win a tournament, that’s my only goal,” Gulbis says. “I love to compete, that’s the only reason I do it. It’s my only motivation.”

The post Natalie Gulbis goes from considering retirement to making first cut in three years appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Her resolve didn’t make it beyond her obligatory media conference on Monday morning let alone the first tee Wednesday but the tears she shared will have a far greater impact than any shot she hits in this week’s season-ending Ladies European Tour (LET) event. Perhaps any shot she ever hits again.

Golf’s undisputed social media queen broke down when she recalled the online abuse she encountered after her professional debut at last year’s Dubai Ladies Masters where she missed the cut and finished tied last on 15 over par.

The Scottsdale, Arizona 23-year-old admitted she had struggled with depression and anxiety as faceless online trolls went to work on her rounds of 77-79 on the Emirates Golf Club’s Majlis layout after she had been granted a sponsor’s invite.

Probed by Golf Digest Middle East for the extent of the cyber bullying that followed, Spiranac needed time to compose herself as she recalled how online abusers called her a “disgrace to golf” and even questioned her sexual habits.

“I think it’s really important…people need to see how much it actually does affect me, and the things they call me,” Spiranac started.

“I feel like I was raised right from my parents, and for them to attack my parents and attack what I’m doing, it’s really difficult. I struggled with a lot of depression after it, because as a 22-year-old, you feel like you’re not worth anything.

To have all these people say that I’m not a good golfer, I’m not a good person, you know, I’m promiscuous or make these judgments about me that are not true, it’s really hard, just because I like to wear Spandex on the golf course. – Paige Spiranac

Spiranac avoided social media for three weeks afterwards and even considered quitting the game as the “extremely cruel” abuse from “the hardest experience of my life” amplified.

She admitted it was difficult talking about the abuse even now but feels compelled to speak out with teenage suicide rates rising.

“And they think it’s because of cyber bullying. And so if I can share my story, and I’m okay with being emotional about it and I’m okay with kind of expressing what happened to me, because people don’t realise how hard it was on me…people saying the world is better off without me.

“Cyber bullying is a huge problem and no one ever discusses it. It’s no longer funny. It’s not the cool thing to do to make fun of other people, and you need to be supportive and I think that’s really important.”

SEE ALSO:
Spiranac eyes Omega Dubai Ladies Masters return
Paige Spiranac and her crazy professional debut

Spiranac credited tour LPGA Tour stars Natalie Gulbis and Christina Kim, the latter having courageously emerged from her own mental health issues, for reaching out during the darkest post Dubai days.

As well as switching swing coaches (Tyler Hall has worked on simplifying her swing and controlling her ball flight leading into this week), she also enlisted the guidance of a mental coach. Dr Nick Molinaro has enabled her to navigate the demons of Dubai and the inevitable pitfalls of being “liked” by in excess of one million followers across her Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.

The early signs are encouraging. Spiranac won her first professional title on the Cactus Tour in Phoenix earlier this year and was thrilled to make the weekend at the Ladies Scottish Open despite opening up with bogey, double bogey, par, bogey at Dundonald Links.

Still, she refuses to set goals beyond trying to enjoy herself in Dubai, raise awareness of cyber bullying and continuing to grow the game via her social media following.

“It doesn’t matter how I play this week, it really doesn’t. But the fact that I’m here and I’m sharing my story, hopefully can save someone’s life, I think that’s so much more important than if I make the cut or miss the cut,” she said.

The post VIDEO: Spiranac hopes to ‘save someone’s life’ by speaking out on cyber bullies appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.