Want Woods to play in your tournament? Hire him

	Don't tell TV networks, tourney founders and writers that golf isn't all about Tiger Woods. Robert Beck/SI
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It's funny how quickly the supposedly hard-hitting Washington media forgot about the bad treatment the defunct Booz Allen Classic (formerly the Kemper Open) received from the PGA Tour once the D.C. area became the replacement venue for the International in July.

If you need a reminder that golf is the ultimate selfish game, this is it. Washington has a date on the Tour schedule again and Tiger Woods is involved, so all is well. Nevermind that the tournament is built on the bones of two other events -- the International, whose founder Jack Vickers pulled the plug when he couldn't land a sponsor and blamed Woods for not playing his tournament, and the Booz Allen, whose corporate head had a letter in writing from commissioner Tim Finchem promising the tournament a pre-U.S. Open date three out of four years. When the new Tour schedule came out, of course, the Booz Allen not only didn't have a pre-Open didn't, it didn't have any date. This slight came after the Tour said it would renovate the TPC at Avenel, so the Booz Allen moved to Congressional for a year to allow the work to be done ... and then no work was done.

The big questions no one in Washington is asking now are: How long did the Tour have this event with Woods and his charity as a beneficiary in its hip pocket? And did the Tour intentionally run off the Booz Allen so it could bring what is essentially a Tiger-sponsored event?

Of course, as long as Tiger is part of the future in D.C., and even if the event someday winds up at dreaded old Avenel, no one is going to worry about the answers.

The secret to getting Tiger to play in an event, by the way, is to hire him. Vickers never tumbled onto that fact or wasn't able to get it done. Woods explained his absence from the International, which he played twice and never returned, by saying he simply didn't like the golf course at Castle Rock, Colo.

The smartest operators were Buick, which signed Woods to an endorsement deal, with Tiger subsequently making the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines and the Buick Open in Grand Blanc, Mich., regular stops on his schedule while also also appearing at the Buick Classic at Westchester; and American Express, which guaranteed Tiger's presence in its World Golf Championship events by inking an endorsement deal.

Looking ahead, the fallout from Tiger's commitment to play regularly in the new Washington event means one less tournament he's going to play the rest of the year. Unless he's going to add to his schedule -- which seems unlikely -- adding a Tiger here means taking a Tiger away from somebody else.