Tiger Woods inspires Stanford golfer to shoot 59, joins U.S. Ryder Cup task force

If Tiger Woods can inspire the PGA of America panel formed to figure out how the U.S. team can win the Ryder Cup half as much as he galvanized a Stanford student over the weekend then watch out, Europeans!

Just meeting Woods, part of an 11-member task force that will meet somewhere, sometime to dissect the U.S. failures in seven of the last 10 events, was motivation enough for Viraat Badhwar. The Stanford player shook hands with his boyhood idol over the weekend and proceeded to fire a track-record 59 on the Stanford Golf Course.

“It was my first time meeting him,” Badhwar, who said it was “awesome” to “catch up” with Woods, told Golfweek. “It was a dream come true really because I’ve been looking up to him since I was seven years old.”

Maverick McNealy, a teammate of the Cardinal sophomore, posted Badhwar’s scorecard on Twitter.

Badhwar’s score was two shots better than the 61 of Mariah Stackhouse, a Stanford golfer who held the previous course record.

Woods was a busy alum over the weekend, what with dropping in on the golf team, inducting former teammate Notah Begay to the university’s Hall of Fame, and wandering the sidelines at the Stanford and Oakland Raiders football games.

The former world No. 1, who has been rehabbing his surgically repaired back for a planned December return to competition, has now added the Ryder Cup committee to his to-do list.

“This is a great step by the PGA to accomplish what we all want -- to win the Ryder Cup,” Woods said in a PGA-issued statement.

Woods will join a star-studded lineup that includes fellow players Phil Mickelson, Jim Furyk, Rickie Fowler, and Steve Stricker, but excludes the only winning U.S. captains in the past 20 years, Paul Azinger and Ben Crenshaw.

Azinger, whom Mickelson lauded in his notorious post-defeat press conference last month while blasting 2014 captain Tom Watson, opted to stay on the outside of the official group.

“I’m just not ready to sit down and jump on a task force,” Azinger, whom PGA officials invited to join the committee, told ESPN on Monday. “I have a scheduled meeting with the PGA of America in early November and I just think it’s too soon for me to commit to jumping on a task force.”

The group, which also includes past captains Davis Love III (2012), Tom Lehman (2006), and Raymond Floyd (1989), as well as co-chairs PGA CEO Pete Bevacqua and PGA VP Derek Sprague, will dissect everything from the process of choosing players and captains to how to get competitors in form for the biennial tournament.

Those in the Twitter-verse weighed in on what many observers perceived as a Hail Mary for the overmatched Americans desperately seeking a win on their home turf in 2016.

With such negativity surrounding the PGA’s announcement, the wife of 2014 team member Jimmy Walker (1-1-3 in his Ryder Cup debut last month), challenged the cynics to come up with something better.

What earth-shattering moves will come out of the PGA’s efforts remains to be seen. But though Azinger has not ruled out serving another term as captain, perhaps the committee will take note of Woods’ motivation skills and suggest the 14-time major champion with a 13-17-3 Ryder Cup record skipper instead of play at Hazeltine.