On Thursday, I did a post on how Tiger Woods declined to do an interview with Sports Illustrated for a cover story. Nothing new there, given how Woods rarely grants 1-on-1 interviews.

However, there are exceptions. My post prompted to Jim Owczarski to drop an email. Now with OnMilwaukee.com, Jim wrote about an unexpected encounter he once had with Woods while working as a reporter in suburban Chicago.

It’s too bad Woods doesn’t do this more often.

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(The SI story) got me thinking about the one-on-one I had with Tiger following his win at the 2003 Western Open.

It was the weirdest thing, and I (nor my editors at the Naperville Sun) knew how “big” that get was at the time.

Early in tournament week, I told a PGA Tour media rep that I wanted Tiger for a few questions about his interview style. I was intrigued at how he made eye contact with each questioner, and I felt he offered up more in his answers than he was given credit for. I was curious as to how and why he developed that interview style.

Thankfully, the Tour media rep felt the topic was interesting enough to bring it Tiger, and to my surprise, I was quietly called back to the interview room there at Cog Hill to meet with Tiger. I initially pitched a walk-and-talk, but Tiger remained seated and offered me a chair next to him.

He was engaging, funny, and seemed more than willing to talk longer about the topic than what I was “allowed” – though his security team made their presence known that it would be kept to 10 minutes.

The first time I realized this was a relatively big coup for a 22-year-old reporter from (at the time) a small daily paper was when one of my heroes, Bob Verdi, raised an eyebrow with a “really?” when I told him about it.