Justin Timberlake on Tiger Woods: ‘We’d love to have him out here’

By Ray Brewer (contact)

Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2011 | 2:05 a.m.

The possibility of Tiger Woods playing in this week's Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospitals for Children Open at TPC Summerlin was briefly floated last month.

It seemed like a logical idea because Woods, who is recovering from a leg injury, needed competition to prepare for the mid-November Presidents Cup and already was out of contention for the FedEx Cup because of the injury-plagued season.

While big-name golfers rarely play in Las Vegas, the possibility of Woods teeing it up here would have been the boost of attention the Fall Series tournament needed. Nothing, however, transpired and the tournament will begin Thursday without Woods.

Here is what Las Vegas is missing: Ticket sales tripled for the Oct. 6 to 9 Frys.Com Open in Northern California after Woods announced last month he would play in the event. Organizers expect a capacity of 15,000 fans each day, easily three times the amount of spectators in Las Vegas. Also, hotel room occupancies have spiked and nearby towns will receive an economic bump.

Woods won his first PGA event in 1996 in Las Vegas and organizers would have been willing to roll out the red carpet for a return. That includes Timberlake, the famous entertainer and the tournament’s host.

“We’d love to have him out here, and I’m sure the crowd would love to see him,” Timberlake said Tuesday. “I’m sure the town would love to see him play out here again.”

The field is typically comprised of up-and-coming golfers scrambling in the last weeks of the season to crack the top 125 on the money list, which means they retain their player privileges the following season. For the top players, the season essentially ended last week in Atlanta during the last stage of the FedEx Cup.

The local tournament is known for its low scores, which could have been the perfect remedy for Woods’ recent struggles.

“I’d love to see him play this course,” Timberlake said. “I’m sure he’d tear it up. And I’m sure I speak for all the fans as well when I say that. So we’d love to have him out here.”

When Timberlake first started working with the event four years ago, he tried using his celebrity to contact several top golfers for commitments to play with aspirations of enhancing the event. “I reached to a lot of golfers,” he said. “You know, you want the field to be as big and bad as possible.”

But with Woods, Timberlake said he didn’t want to bother the world’s most sought-after golfer during his rehabilitation.

“I was just trying to be respectful of that,” Timberlake said. “For someone that’s dealing with an injury I don’t want to make them feel terrible because they can’t make it.”