DUBLIN, Ohio – Peyton Manning enjoyed his Wednesday. The former superstar quarterback teed it up alongside Tiger Woods in the Memorial pro-am and fared pretty well, too: the team finished at a respectable 11 under par.
“Play with Tiger Woods, see Jack Nicklaus, meet Hale Irwin, pretty good day if you’re a golf fan and a sports fan like me,” he said afterwards.
But the biggest reveal of Manning’s day was when he shared the story behind his old golf-related snap counts.
“All those years in Indy we had a snap count, we had different words for the snap count, to snap it on one or on two,” Manning explained. “And for several years (due to their world ranking) ‘Tiger’ was on one and ‘Phil’ was on two. Tiger always liked that, he could hear it. He’d say, ‘Heard Tiger, is Tiger still on one?'”
Manning added that during no-huddle counts, opposing defenses would be confused by the calls, mistaking them for references to plays going right or left.
“Nobody could figure out what we were saying. We’d say it a lot: ‘Tiger, Tiger, Phil, Phil,’ but they could never figure it out.”
Manning was impressed with Woods’s game, and added that he thought the 14-time major winner was ready to win again. He was more self-deprecating when it came to his own game. “I played okay,” he said. “Y’know, there’s a lot of people out here; I only hit one guy I think. He said I could just get him a couple Super Bowl tickets and we’d call it even, so, nothing legal I don’t think.”
Woods is currently No. 83 in the world, and Manning is retired, so it’s unlikely the snap count will be revived. But Woods continues his quest to climb back to the top of the game at 8:26 a.m. Thursday.
