It was, without need of useless embellishment or extended prose, one of the most impressive athletic achievements in recent memory — if not in the history of American sports. We’ll let others argue about golf’s merit as a sport and whether or not golfers qualify as athletes. Coming off his third knee surgery and after playing only one round in two months — and that from a cart — Tiger Woods put on the greatest performance of his career while fighting through pain so obvious he was often forced to turn $500 drivers into expensive walking sticks. The achievement became even more impressive in the days that followed.
Known to only a trusted few, Tiger played not only with a knee still weak from cartilage surgery but a torn ACL and double stress fracture in his tibia. To do all this while walking a straight line distance of 21.7 miles — and much farther after tracking down sprayed tee shots and the constant circling of the greens — makes Tiger 91-hole performance simply mind boggling.
A person could go broke quickly betting against Tiger, and even though doctors are predicting a full recovery, nothing is guaranteed. If Woods cannot return to his familiar form, the 37-hole battle with journeyman and good friend Rocco Mediate shifts from historical to legendary. Granted, the worst is unlikely to happen.
Tiger has no concerns about proper HMO coverage and his doctors will be talented and wealthy. But to say he’ll be dominant as ever with absolutely no ill effects would ignore the history of such injuries. It is true that many athletes have returned from serious knee injury, but many, if not most, come back forever changed.
Much like Frank Tanana, who once dominated hitters with pure speed only to be forced to learn the art of the breaking ball after injuries took away his strength, Tiger, upon his return, may have to change his swing to limit the massive amount of torque he puts on his newly reconstructed knee. The good news is that no one is more capable of making such a dramatic shift. He did that very thing four years ago to limit the stress on his knee and became an even better golfer.
So, for the time being, the news is relatively positive for the world’s No. 1 golfer. His tour, however, may not be so lucky.
No other sport’s success is so tied into a single person. It’s simple. As goes Tiger, so goes the PGA Tour. According to the New York Times, TV numbers a year ago dropped 29 percent when Woods took the week off. His presence means huge gates and great interest. A lack of Tiger sightings means greater disinterest. The tour must learn how to live without Woods a decade before it ever hoped.
Commissioner Tim Finchem has some selling to do. He needs to find a way to lure in a portion of Tiger’s massive audience. There is no way he’s going to get all of them and that’s going to be a challenge for a sport with a general household recognition of one athlete.
The tour is not without talent or interesting characters, as Rocco proved. It is, however, short of top-ranked Americans — and that’s what matters to the U.S. audience upon which the tour depends. Internationally, it will be easier. Phil Mickelson is immensely popular, but he’s one of only three Americans in the top 10 of the world golf rankings. The other is Jim Furyk.
An additional problem the tour must overcome is trying to convince the public that all future wins this year are not tainted by the absence of the man who will likely retain his top spot in the rankings even if he doesn’t tee it up until the spring of 2009. Mickelson, with three majors, will be able to escape such criticism but any member of the “best-to-have-never-won-a-major” will be doomed to the same second guessing and dismissals that the Houston Rockets received after winning two titles during Michael Jordan’s absence.
Tiger, like him or not, will be missed. No one generates greater buzz or makes more impossible shots than he. It is now the tour’s job to let you know the well is not dry. Good luck with that.
With six wins in his last seven starts, including a perfect three for three for 2008, talk has once again surfaced about Tiger’s place in history. And why not. Fresh off a year where he bagged seven wins and 12 top 10 finishes in 16 events, he’s successfully backed up his 2006 campaign that saw eight wins and two majors in 15 starts. He’s passed the King in victories and Walter Hagen in majors. He’s accomplished more in his 12 years on tour than any who has come before, and barring injury should finish with every record in the book — the Ryder Cup not withstanding. But, right now, is he better than the Golden Bear? To eliminate any unwarranted anticipation, the short answer is no.
For all his dominance, Tiger Woods is much like Kobe Bryant and LaBron James. At this point in their careers, both have accomplished more individually than the guy generally considered the best of all time. But until the tally becomes more complete, deference must be paid to the elders. Just as Bryant and James may some day be considered better than Michael Jordan, Woods may supplant Jack Nicklaus as the greatest to ever swing an iron. It’s just going to take time.
Woods himself called Nicklaus the greatest champion to have ever lived, following his idol’s retirement at the 2005 British Open. Tiger knows the history of his sport and never forgets to honor the past — except when he and others turned their backs on the Byron Nelson Classic upon the great man’s death. But there is a lot of merit behind Woods’ comment. The farther you dig into Nicklaus’ history, the more spectacular it becomes.
We all know of his 18 majors and two U.S. Amateur titles, but he also finished second 19 times and third nine times in the big events. That’s 46 top three finishes, and as we know, in golf, majors are everything. Woods has a total of 20 such finishes with 13 wins, four No. 2s and three No. 3s. If you want to track it even further, Jack had 73 top 10 finishes in majors compared to 27 for Woods. Nicklaus’ dominance gets a further push when considering he once finished among the top 10 in 13 straight majors. On another occasion he did so for nine straight. The best Tiger could manage was top 10 in six straight.
In all fairness to Woods, however, he did score five victories in those six tournaments. And while Tiger is only nine PGA wins behind Nicklaus, he trails in total career wins by 28 (115 to 87)
Many who argue in Tiger’s favor note, correctly, that he is playing in an era of heightened competition. Golfers today are more athletic and the field is deeper than ever. But while there are more good golfers today than at any time in the game’s history, the top five to 10 players of the Golden Bear’s hey-day were better than their counterparts today. Tiger’s top competitors, Phil Mickelson, Vijay Singh, Ernie Els, Jim Furyk, and maybe Retief Goosen and Sergio Garcia, are all immensely talented and capable of winning on any weekend. But, frankly, they don’t measure up. Jack’s list of Hall of Fame competitors — including Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Lee Trevino, Tom Watson, Seve Ballesteros and Raymond Floyd — account for 39 majors and 185 PGA victories compared to 12 and 104 for Tigers’ pesky pals.
But, some may argue, it is because of Tigers’ dominance that the competition has done comparatively poor. No question Woods may be the most dominant athlete of any era, but others have to take some of that blame.
Although it is not publicly mentioned as often as in years past, there is a large segment of the tour that believe Tiger, when on his game, is all but unbeatable — a belief that Palmer, Player, Trevino and the like would never allow themselves to consider. Tiger wins as much by fear as he does with talent. Also, now that victories are no longer needed for financial stability, there is not much incentive to finish higher. When Palmer piled his wife and kids into a station wagon and headed out on tour, he did so to earn a living. Today, the goal seems to be keeping your tour card. A year ago 99 golfers made at least $1 million on the PGA while nearly the same amount (95) made more than $500,000 on the Nationwide Tour.
One day Tiger will be the best to have ever played the game. For now, the Golden Bear still rules.
There are not many things the LPGA does better than its testosterone-driven counterpart. The men play a better game on better courses, and telecasts are not limited to bleary-eyed time slots traditionally dominated by infomercials for spray-on hair-replacement systems. But there is one lesson the boys could learn from their estrogen-driven counterpart: The need to better support the second line tour stops.
The LPGA requires its members to play in each tournament at least once every four years. By doing this, the Ladies Professional Golf Association helps ensure the financial stability of second-tier events while at the same time ensuring as many fans and tournament hosts and sponsors get exposed to its growing talent base.
Now, before we run off to have LPGA commissioner Carolyn Bivens sanctified for her enlightened approach in reaching out to woe begotten customers, we must acknowledge that the LPGA’s policy is based strictly on business and not for any need to reward those inhabiting the backwaters of golf. Bivens has been just as willing as PGA headman Tim Finchem to dump longtime sponsors in favor of bigger payouts from corporate-sponsored events.
One must acknowledge that the likelihood of the PGA signing up for such an arrangement is as probable as John Daly doing a Slim•Fast commercial. But these are the spaces for pondering the impossible.
The first, and really only, hurdle would be getting the top players — who slavishly or selfishly adhere to self-crafted performance schedules — to agree. Since its inception, professional golf has been a sport contested by — here comes the cliché — independent contractors. Since it’s true that no one is happy unless mama is happy, the PGA is not going to nudge forward any idea that would upset the game’s golden calves. This is the crux of the problem. The tour is so thoroughly dominated by a few top names that any change without their consent is nearly impossible.
The PGA tour is currently divided between the haves and have nots — better known as events with Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson and those without. Tournaments with either or both see packed courses, jammed pro shops and high television ratings. Stops without the only two recognizable names on tour means exactly the opposite and, possibly, even the deathknell for tournaments. For proof real or imagined, one has to look no further than to Jack Vickers, the founder of the International at Castle Pines, who complained that the lack of Tiger’s participation doomed his tournament. Just to add fuel to Vickers’ ire, the International was replaced by Tiger’s tournament, the AT&T National.
These events and the tournaments that bracket the four majors are the lifeblood of the tour, and where pros grinding out a living hope to move up the money list. These are also the tournaments where the future Augusta members paid their dues before the big money became a foregone conclusion.
In 1996, Woods’ rookie year, the soon-to-be-greatest-of-all-time, played in such places as the Greater Milwaukee Open, the Quad City Classic and the LaCantera Texas Open. Sadly, the man who used these stops on his journey to an athletic record $1 billion in career earnings, has not returned to the humble courses of his early career. Mickelson, like his more buffed colleague, took advantage of invites to the Central Western Open and the New England Classic during his rookie campaign and, except for a return to New England the next year (1993), has never looked back.
Tiger and Phil aren’t the only ones guilty of forgetting where they came from, nor it is just confined to the PGA. Annika Sorenstam has been a no-show at the Canadian Open — a tournament she won in 2001 — since bowing out after six holes to sickness two years later. Her back problems last season also meant another miss.
