The better quality, more focused, less all over the place Mr. Royal covers today. Enjoy.
Unrelated Side Note 1: I’m shamelessly abandoning my NBA Finals picks. If OKC has healthy Westbrook who also plays well with MVP Kevin Durant, I got OKC over San Antonio in seven. If the Heat keep the #1 seed in the East, I’ve got the Heat over the Pacers in seven. If it’s Heat vs. OKC, I’ve got the Heat, and if it’s the Spurs vs. anyone from the East, I’ve got the Spurs. Do I expect you to respect those picks or even understand them? No. Filler, I need another flowchart.
Unrelated Side Note 2: Let’s make Filler’s “Once again, the Spurs are better than we thought” into a trending thing on Twitter. #OATSABTWT Oh and don’t forget about #JimmerMania… swing and a miss…
Unrelated Side Note 3: I’m picking against UConn because I’ve picked against them since the Sweet 16 and it seems to make them win and that’s what I really want. Divide by 0, your logic is invalid. Florida over UK for the Championship.
OK. On to the real thing.
I think Tiger Woods should take a year off from golf.
**gasp** “BLASPHEMY Royal! Blasphemy!” Just read the article…
There are three kinds of golf fans:
#1. Guys who love the game of golf and are absolutely mesmerized by the talent of the guys on the PGA tour. These guys will watch the Valero Texas Open starring Steven Bowditch, Matt Kuchar, and Andrew Loupe as if they were watching a battle for first between Tiger, Phil, McIlroy, and Adam Scott in the Masters.
#2. Guys who watch the Grand Slam tournaments: US Open, British Open, The Masters, and the PGA Championship. These guys may or may not play seriously themselves, but thoroughly enjoy kicking back on Sunday and watching the afternoon leaders battle it out for a green jacket.
#3. Guys who turn on Sportscenter on Saturday morning, see that Tiger Woods has a decent chance of winning a major tournament and – all the sudden – love watching golf.
I’ve watched my own golf “fandom” evolve from golf fan #3 to golf fan #1 in about a year’s time. Until I picked up a an old set of rusty golf clubs I found on Craigslist for the first time about a year ago, I was definitely fan #3.
Friend of mine: “Hey Gabe, you watching the Masters this weekend?”
Me: “Uhh, I dunno. How’s Tiger doing?”
Friend: “He’s four shots back from the lead.”
Me: “Yup. Come on over on Sunday. We’ll order a pizza and throw back a six pack.”
At this phase of my life, I was convinced that I would never be one of those guys who got addicted to golf. I would borrow my buddy’s driver, head to the range, and with absolutely no semblance of any decent form, I would set up a tall tee and see just how far I could blast a golf ball with my baseball swing. It was fun, stress-free, cheap, and a great stress reliever.
Then my buddies asked me to actually try golfing. The single-most expensive decision of my life was to actually try golfing for the first time. From that moment on, I was addicted and I couldn’t stop.
Golf confounds us in ways that we don’t understand. You look at John Daly and you’re like, “Come on. If that guy can do that, surely I can.” And then you hit the range with a set of irons and can’t understand why you top 33% of the balls you hit, you slice 33% you hit cleanly, and spend the rest of the time washing dirt off your clubs for the other 33% you dig into the ground. But that 1% you hit well? … Man is that a sweet and satisfying feeling.
Aaaaaand a year later the guy at your local golf range points out it would be cheaper for you to buy a membership than keep paying for individual buckets and you realize you’re hooked.
A year later I’ve spent nearly $1000 on golf equipment and I go to the range at least twice a week. Augusta is a few hours away from where I live and I caught myself googling “2014 Masters tickets” last week. Even Filler had a mini-freakout a couple weeks ago when he thought he accidentally scheduled a business trip during Masters weekend. Thank God he didn’t. Now we can tweet at each other all day Sunday.
Tiger Woods has transcended the game of golf. To steal another line from Filler, I hate making big, blanket, “Bill Walton” statements like that but in Tiger’s case, it is completely accurate. There are guys who can’t tell you what pitching wedge does but know who Tiger Woods is. There are guys who don’t even know who Phil Mickelson is but know who Tiger Woods is.
The powers that be in golf fully recognize this. They’ve seen the power of fan #3. John Feinstein of CBS Sports and the Golf Channel said that when Tiger dropped out of the Masters this week there was “a state of widespread hysteria” that he later went on to describe as “DEFCON 12” on the PGA Tour. He said people were literally in their offices shouting, “Why did Tiger do this to us!?” Appointments were cancelled, and meetings were held in their place to figure out how you promote the first major tournament in 2014 without Tiger Woods.
The crazy part of it all is that a lot of these people don’t even like Tiger. They claim he’s prickly, not friendly to the media, ultra-focused on money, fame, and success. Furthermore, those who know the game of golf understand that he just hasn’t been the same player since the sex scandal. His swing just seems a bit off at times. He misses putts that confound us. That unshakeable confidence and swagger that we saw at the 16th hole at Augusta in 2005 is lost. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZcpbsoeDZ0
But they recognize his power. They remember that at his best he was the most dominant figure in his sport. More dominant that Lebron or Jordan or even Wilt, more dominant than Federer or Nadal, more dominant than the Williams sisters, more dominant that UConn Women’s Basketball… They remember that at his best, Tiger was unbeatable.
And we keep waiting for that Tiger to come back, and the pressure is mounting. Tiger has 14 major wins and we all know that the magic number for him is Jack Nicklaus’ 18. It’s the last milestone he needs to pull down to become undoubtedly the greatest golfer – and quite possibly the greatest athlete in his respective sport – of all time.
But above and beyond his majors’ quest, golf needs Tiger just because of what he means to the sport. At 6’3″, 200 lbs, I’m a lot closer to a Matt Kuchar than I am a Tiger Woods but Matt Kuchar isn’t the reason I started even feigning interest in a sport as boring as I once saw golf to be. I saw a biracial dude who came from a good family in Tiger Woods and it reminded me a bit of what I see in the mirror every morning when I wake up. I didn’t identify with Matt Kuchar or Adam Scott not because we’re particularly dissimilar but because I didn’t even know who they were.
But I do now. To the PGA Tour, and CBS, and NBC, and the Golf Channel I represent one of many popularity success stories they’ve enjoyed through Tiger Woods. Now, I’m fan #1. Now, I watch the Valero Texas Open no matter who’s playing. Now, I spend hundreds of dollars on Callaway clubs. Now, I would spend twice as much for a Nike red polo than any other polo in the PGA shop. Now, I think golf is a beautiful game with unbelievable historical significance that dates back to putting green Eisenhower had installed on the White House lawn so he could practice chip shots and his short game. But I didn’t care about any of that before Tiger showed up, before I watched him play.
The PGA powers that be will look at the ratings this month and cringe. So our temptation will be to beg Tiger to come back as soon as possible. And Tiger is the type of competitive dude that will force himself to come back probably earlier than he should. But he shouldn’t. And if we were smart, we wouldn’t want him to. Because as great as it would be to see Tiger in red 8 shots back from the lead on Sunday in 2014, I’d rather see a healthy Tiger chasing Jack Nicklaus in first place in 2015.
Tiger’s injuries (credit ESPN.com for the info):
– 1994 benign tumor removed from leg
– 2002 cyst removed
– 2007 ruptured ACL
– 2008 torn Achilles
– 2008 arthroscopic knee surgery and ACL repair
– 2008 stress fracture in tibia
– 2009 re-injured Achilles
– 2011 Achilles strain
– 2012 re-injured Achilles
– 2014 surgery on pinched-nerve in his back
I don’t know a lot about golf but I know enough to say that if my back hurt I wouldn’t play. You spend a lot of time crouched and bent, and if you swing right, you generate your power by rotating that back. When we look at his recovery time we analyze by saying, “OK, well you got hurt on this date, surgery on this date, but the next major is this date so you’ll be good to compete by then.” In there we forget to factor in practice. Lots and lots and lots of practice. That’s what golf is. Repetition is what it’s all about and for Tiger to get his swing and his putter back in addition to his rest time and rehab I think he should take the year off.
There’s a lot to be said about the mental side of this whole thing too. We forget that there is a psychological aspect to every athlete’s performance which is deeply impacted by what goes on in their personal life. And since his well-publicized sex scandal and ensuing divorce, Tiger just hasn’t been the same.
Take a year and get right Tiger. I don’t buy the argument that you’re “running out of time” at age 38. Please. It’s golf. Golf will still be begging for you to come back in 2015. Only then the ratings will be even better when you’re fist-pumping your way to 18 major wins than when you’re “kind of in the conversation” entering Sunday.
As per usual, I will be in the minority for this argument and that’s fine. But as a guy who moved from golf fan #3 to golf fan #1, it’s really painful to watch pseudo-Tiger kill himself to finish half his tournaments and drop out of the other half. I miss Super-Tiger. I want Super-Tiger. And golf needs Super-Tiger clad in his red polo and Nike cap in the final group of its major tournaments on Sundays.
