Woods goes from red carpet to TPC Sawgrass

Woods said it took him a week to get over his tie for fourth at the Masters. Next up is The Players Championship, where he has won only once in 15 years and has just one top 10 since that victory in 2001.

"If you're not playing well, you're going to get exposed," Woods said.

Woods was at full exposure Monday night at the Met with girlfriend Lindsey Vonn. For someone who has demanded so much privacy off the golf course, he attended the Costume Institute Gala. Vonn was a guest of Vogue. He posed on the red carpet wearing a black suit, while the Olympic ski champion wore a long white dress with see-through slits. The theme of the gala was "PUNK: Chaos to Coutre."

"It was certainly different," Woods said. "Lindsey wanted to try and grow her brand. She's come out with a new perfume and makeup line, so that was a big thing for her and I'm supporting it. As you know, I'm not really big into fashion stuff. The theme was pretty interesting, because obviously I remember some of that stuff when I was a kid. But I certainly didn't wear that stuff."

Woods is used to the attention as the primary focus of golf since he won the 1997 Masters. He was reminded of how much fans pay attention to him at the Masters, where he was involved in an unusual rules situation that won't seem to go away.

It started with Woods' third shot hitting the flag on the 15th hole and bouncing back into the water on the opening hole. Woods unknowingly took an illegal drop, but he wasn't told about the possible infraction until after he signed his card. Augusta National took the blame, with competitions chairman Fred Ridley saying it didn't initially notice the violation and chose not to ask Woods about it before he signed his plastic card.

Eventually, he was given a two-shot penalty but allowed to stay in the tournament - instead of being disqualified for signing an incorrect scorecard - under Rule 33-7 that gives a committee discretion to waive the disqualification penalty.

The U.S. Golf Association and Royal & Ancient last week said the Masters was within its right not to disqualify Woods. He wound up four shots out of the lead in a tie for fourth, his 15th consecutive major without winning.

Woods said he if saw a violation on television, he would not call it in. Television viewers - in the case of the Masters, it was David Eger, a respected rules expert - have been calling in what they think are rules violations for years.

"I don't ever see myself calling in and saying that Kobe (Bryant) traveled or things like that, or an offensive lineman held," he said. "But it's our sport. And that's what we've done and we've accepted. Certain groups are going to get more heat than others just because they're on TV. It is what it is."

Woods, who now has gone eight appearances without winning the Masters, said he didn't stop thinking about it until he resumed practice a week later. He reserved his comments to the shot where all the debate began - a wedge that turned out to be too good. Woods was tied for the lead on the 15th hole in the opening round, and if the ball did not hit the flag, he likely would have had no more than about 5 feet for birdie.

"Unfortunately, I hit a good shot and got a bad break," Woods said. "But I still had an opportunity over the next 36 holes to get it back ... and I just didn't do it."

He has failed to crack the top 20 eight times, the most of any tournament he has played. He is the No. 1 player in the year, and looks like it. In his last three events, he has won twice and tied for fourth. How that translates to the TPC Sawgrass is unpredictable.

Earl is an exceptional lyricist and more recently, a capable producer. He makes beats under the sobriquet RandomBlackDude and credits his Samoan sojourn with the decision to learn when he got back. “It was a confidence thing,” he says. He made one two days ago at his apartment, on Logic, on a laptop set up on a folding plastic card table. He listens to it constantly. The gestating track is referred to as “Fookie.” Until a song is complete, it carries a bullshit name that’s the first thing that Earl thinks of when he hears it. The melody is blue and the tempo unhurried. There’s distorted electric guitar, wobbly keyboard chords and snare drums that add an antsy military-funeral vibe. This song will likely be the finale on the album. “There was a moment a month ago when I was mentally 100 percent finished with the record,” he says. “I just wanted it out, like, hurry up.” A bum hard drive corrupted the sole copy of a different track, and Earl elected to scrap it instead of salvaging it.  “It’s not evolving,” he says of the album. “It’s writhing on the floor, and I’m in the house looking for something to bludgeon it.”

Completing “Fookie” is a priority with the album’s delivery date nearing, and to do that Earl needs studio time. On the poured-concrete back patio of Earl’s apartment, the rapper gets on the phone while pulling on a Camel. Wiry, college-aged kids in mirrored shades and microscopic swimsuits walk by towards the pool. Earl calls Mac Miller, the Pittsburgh rapper whose debut Blue Slide Park, topped the Billboard 200 album charts in late 2011. The two met through friends and work together frequently. “Scary Movie 5?” Earl says into the phone, laughing. “I don’t know if that’s cool.” Apparently, there’s a scheduling conflict, because Earl wanted to record at Mac’s, but Mac is filming a lampoon horror scene with Snoop Lion. You can hear Mac’s laughter through the phone. They agree to meet in an hour, and Earl offers to bring food.

Miller’s digs are considerably flashier than Earl’s. A stark, white Entourage McMansion in the Hollywood Hills, it features a pool, two recording studios and an automated gate. It can be seen with some frequency on MTV2 as a part of Mac’s reality television show which he jokingly drags into conversation every chance he gets. Miller meets us at the foot of his driveway, bows deeply as he introduces himself as Malcolm and then immediately backs into a parked car on the walk up.

The studio Earl uses is Mac’s converted pool house. It’s ensconced in ambient red light and features a gigantic Buddha head. There’s a large keyboard, a wall-mounted flatscreen TV and professional studio monitors. According to Forbes, Mac made $6.5 million last year. He released five mix tapes before his first studio album while grappling with a promethazine addiction that he’s since kicked. The trajectory makes you wonder what might have happened had Earl stayed his course—whether or not he would be a millionaire, if he’d have squandered his spoils succumbing to escalated drug use, or if by now he’d be a colorless rapper with a flabby viewpoint and nothing to prove. It also reminds you that despite Samoa, Earl is still young enough to be corruptible. There’s a moment when Earl and Mac rap silly jokes to each other in a huddle, whispering gleefully, and they look like college kids cutting class. They plow through styrofoam containers of Korean-Hawaiian grilled chicken and watch a rerun of Tyler’s recent appearance on Fallon, debuting “Treehome95.” Tyler’s grinning, sunglassed face moves across the screen from behind a shiny black piano that he plays beautifully. “We’ve been waiting so long for America to see this,” Earl says. “To see his appeal. Tyler’s so good I hate it.”