Filed Under » Tiger Woods

Joe LaCava won his first golf tournament since caddying Dustin Johnson to a victory seven months ago with a 5-shot victory Sunday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. LaCava was joined in victory by Tiger Woods.

“It’s great to finally get back in the win column,” said LaCava, who was clearly relieved to have his title drought at an end. “I was tired of hearing all the caddy critics out there saying that ‘Joe LaCava is never going to win another golf tournament.’ Well, in your face. I’m a champion again.”

LaCava entered Sunday’s final round with a 1-stroke lead but said he felt confident he was going to win.

“Everything was going great, you know? It was just one of those days,” he said. “The strap of the golf bag felt really good on my shoulder, when I would put the clubs back in the bag, they’d slide right in and not get jammed on the other clubs. I peeled a perfect banana. And one time I said ’7-iron here’ … but then the wind picked up and I said, ‘No, go 8-iron,’ and the eight turned out to be the right club. I was in a zone.”

The PGA Tour announced today that all future tournament courses will be retrofitted with protective nets and a barriers along the fairway and greens to protect patrons from getting hit by wayward Tiger Woods’ shots. The barriers will also allow Woods to keep his ball in play more often, increasing his chances of finding the tournament leaderboard again.

“Back when he was dominating everyone, we ‘Tiger-proofed’ a lot of our courses to prevent him from winning every tournament,” said PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem. “Now that things have changed, I thought it was only fair that we did him a favor and gave him a little bit of help.”

Had courses not been “Tiger-proofed” a decade ago, it is likely Woods would have already passed Jack Nicklaus for the most major victories. But now Finchem says the course changes are “more of an insurance liability thing. We can’t have people getting drilled over and over by hard, golf balls hurtling through the air. Tiger is going to kill someone.”