Not the same without Tiger
For
better or worse, golf is dependent on Tiger Woods' playing
Originally Published: April 4, 2014
By Skip
Bayless | ESPN.com
AP Photo/Dave MartinSince
Tiger Woods won his first Masters as a professional in 1997, the game has
belonged to him. No one has seriously challenged him, and no one has duplicated
his charisma and magnetism.
My jaw dropped and my temperature
rose as I watched Tuesday's 6 p.m. "SportsCenter." One after another,
commentators and analysts delivered solemn eulogies. Tiger Woods was out with back surgery. Golf was
dead.
At least, that's how it sounded to a
guy who has loved, watched and played golf for 48 years -- me. No Tiger, no
interest. It almost felt as if they should just cancel next week's Masters or
at least postpone it until Tiger says he's ready to go again.
Here's what I almost yelled at my
TV:
DOES ANYONE BUT ME REMEMBER TIGER
WOODS HASN'T WON A MAJOR CHAMPIONSHIP IN ALMOST SIX YEARS AND THAT HE HASN'T
WON THE MASTERS IN NINE?
Instead I folded my arms and
thought: Masters Sunday has long been my favorite day in sports -- no event
provides more consistently astonishing closing drama. I will miss Tiger, but I
will still sit in my pew as always, watching my Masters and my U.S. Open and my
British Open and my PGA with or without Tiger.
I was so steamed I thought about
calling my best friend from childhood in Oklahoma City to commiserate -- but
quickly remembered he loves Tiger almost as much as he does his wife and son.
So I settled for calling my mom. She loves Tiger, too, but she loves golf more.
She used to be quite a player.
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"You looking forward to
watching the Masters?" I asked.
"Oh, I guess," she said.
"You guess? You are going to
watch, aren't you?"
"Oh, probably."
"Probably?"
"Well, it's just not the same
without Tiger."
Mother knows best. Those words
pierced my pride like one of Tiger's stingers. I realized I'm going to miss him
far more than I was admitting to myself.
OK, I'll give you this: Since he won
his last major -- on a broken leg at the 2008 U.S. Open -- golf hasn't come
close to replacing Tiger Woods. No Next Tiger has stepped into the vacuum, in
consistent dominance or force-field aura.
So no matter how Tiger deceived us
into thinking he was a model husband and father, no matter how the resulting
scandal and rehab and shame wrecked his confidence, no matter how much he
threatened his Nicklaus-catching health with vanity-fueled power-lifting,
distance-running, wind-sprinting and even "I am invincible" maneuvers
with the Navy Seals, no matter his four knee operations and multiple
Achilles/neck/shoulder/elbow injuries and now microdiscectomy surgery -- Tiger
Woods STILL owns golf at a broken-down 38.
How lucky is he? How spoiled are we?
For 11 years he took us places we'd
never been. His 12-shot, hello-world breakthrough in his first Masters as a pro
in 1997 remains the single most stunning sports performance I've ever
witnessed. I covered many of his greatest triumphs -- the terminal crushing of Sergio Garcia's confidence at the '99 PGA, the
15-shot win that closed the 2000 Open, the trick-shot shootout win over Bob May in the 2000 PGA. I never much cared for
Tiger off the course -- pompous brat -- but never tired of writing and debating
his human thunderstorm of cursing, club-throwing, fist-pumping and
field-slaying.
Beginning in '97, Tiger was the only
golfer in the world who played with Jordan-esque fury. His "rivals"
bowed to him -- even rooted for him -- because he magnetized so many new fans
and helped make even average competitors rich with new endorsement millions.
Yet for me, this was the shocker: I
thought in '97 that Tiger Woods had thrown open the Augusta National gates for
a parade of young African-American golfers to come charging up PGA Tour leader
boards. Remember the Nike ads featuring kids of all colors saying, "I am
Tiger Woods"? Did not happen. I envisioned that by now, the PGA Tour would
be on fire with eight or 10 young African-American stars -- maybe more -- who'd
be taking some of the spotlight off Tiger. Instead, today's Tour has zero
African-American players. Not zero African-American stars. Zero
African-American players. Maybe the game is too expensive for underprivileged
kids. Maybe course proximity is a problem. Maybe minority kids just haven't
been made to feel welcome enough at advanced levels of competition.
Or maybe what has happened to
baseball has happened to golf: Maybe kids of color just find football and
basketball more fun to play. Golf is just so damned hard. So despite First Tee
programs providing instruction, encouragement, equipment and course privileges
in cities across America: zero. I've done my small part for the First Tee site
in Oklahoma City. First-class facility. I've seen lots of black kids hitting
lots of balls on its practice range. Zero. Tiger wins again.After 17 years on
Tour, part of Tiger's appeal remains the perception that he, and he alone, is
beating White Country-Club America at its own game. This subplot has drawn in
Tiger supporters of all colors who wouldn't know a five iron from a branding
iron. The only reason they watch what to them is a slow, silly game is to root
for Tiger. If he's out, they tune out. Stephen A. Smith, my "First
Take" debate partner, readily acknowledges he isn't much of a golf fan,
but he sure is a golfer. Jim Watson/AFP/Getty ImagesWoods departure from
golf for a few months is a bleak prospect for the sport. This occasionally
offends the lifelong golf fan in me.I did not grow up around a country club. I
paid some dues. My first clubs were bought at a pawn shop. I played a lot at a
public course called Lincoln Park, off what's now
Martin Luther King Blvd. in a
predominantly black neighborhood. I often saw black people playing golf at
Lincoln in the 1960s, and I see them there every summer when I play what remains
my favorite course in the world.Yet what still baffles me is that through my
childhood and early sports-writing days, more black golfers were having more
impact on pro golf than they are now. Lee Elder. Charlie Sifford. Jim Thorpe. Calvin Peete. Look 'em up.What frustrates me now
is that through my childhood and early sports-writing days, golf was far more
week-to-week captivating because Jack Nicklaus had far more hungry challengers who
could sometimes match him in talent, desire and backbone and who sometimes
surpassed him in popularity and leading-man charisma. Arnold Palmer. Gary Player. Julius Boros. Johnny Miller. Tom Watson. Ben Crenshaw. Seve Ballesteros. Look 'em up.That era also had
its gate-crashing, establishment-rocking outsider, Lee Trevino, known as the "Merry Mex,"
who was so offended by the way Augusta National members ran their Masters that
he refused to dress in the club's locker room, instead lacing up his spikes in
the parking lot like any public-course hacker.How I miss those days. Now it's
Tiger or bust.Sure, there's Phil, as in Mickelson. He'll do when Tiger can't.
But Phil's 43 now, still trails Tiger by nine majors and too often has left his
fans dumbfounded just when they thought they could trust him. Ireland's Rory McIlroy is a nice, curly-haired kid with
rare talent but no Eye of the Tiger -- no killer will, drive to dominate. Bubba Watson is a delightfully uncomplicated
lefty who looks like he might just be content with his one major, the 2012
Masters.So Tiger has kept us hanging on the past six years by, incredibly,
winning eight times in his last tournament before a major. Now he's ready!
April fools: He has become a bigger tease than the annually 8-8 Dallas Cowboys.Tiger
Woods keeps showing up at majors with the slump-shouldered, long-faced
confidence of an imposter. Now he's gone again, and it almost feels like he's
becoming a sympathetic figure again. I just feel sorry for golf.
One of the biggest social media
buzzes for golfers as of late has been Tiger Woods dropping out of the
masters. The media creates the feeling
that without Tiger golf isn’t golf. They
make is seem like people only watch golf to see him compete. I am a huge Tiger woods fan but that
certainly doesn’t mean I will not be watching the Masters. After all it is the biggest golf event of the
year. If you look at The PGA website or
ESPN golf it is headlines that golf is not the same without tiger. To me this uses the context of psychological
effects. Basically by the media telling
everyone the Masters just won’t be the same it’s not. Where as in all reality it is still the same. Tiger Woods has not won the Masters in 9
years. I am a huge fan of his and what
he has done to the sport but it makes no difference on how the masters will be
played. The culture of the event does
not change. The masters as a tournament
has been around way before Tiger Woods time.
A Contextual
Impact
The Masters Golf tournament is
coming up and I can’t believe how all they seem to talk about is Tiger Woods missing
it. In the media to day I feel sports put
a negative psychological role on games when the star athletes do not play.
Tiger woods not playing the Masters this year has a huge negative role on all
the TV stations airing it. I believe
this all because of how the media portrays it.
Above I showed you one of many articles only listing all of the
negatives about Tiger Woods not competing.
If they would change up their attitudes towards the events and talk
about other start players competing it could save the TV stations ratings. This would also keep the viewer’s more interested. In golf there are so many different athletes
that the media would have plenty of options to create exciting stories going
into the Masters.
The media can ruin people’s cultural
beliefs also in sports. In this
particular event of Tiger Woods not playing the media slammed the cultural
sides of things. They said the Masters
did not hasn’t the same feel as past years with him in it. The crazy thing to look into though is that tiger
woods have actually won the masters since 2003.
And all the winners since then are currently competing in it. This event also supports a young Jordan
Spieth who has been on fire lately. The
media needs to talk more about the exciting things. It does not change the course at all and the
history of the masters by not having one player.
This reminds
me a lot of the social buzz that was going on when NBA players were choosing to
sit out because they need rest. The
stars would not go to away games and compete against the worst teams. This helped prevent injure and rested them
up. People began getting very mad
because they would buy tickets to watch these stars play. If the media would have changed how they
talked about it and only mentioned how excited they were to see some of these
back up players compete people may have been more interested. Instead they just acted like it was a waste
of time and not worth watching.
In the Tiger Woods articles talking
about the masters it is all negative. The
media managed to evolve the masters into just another event. This is a true tragedy for all golfers. We love our sport and love watching everyone
compete. For me personally this year’s
masters will be just as important and fun as all the others. Tiger Woods not playing in it does not make a
difference on the excitement level.
Tiger Woods does amazing things but so do all the other players. He will be missed in this tournament greatly
but it certainly doesn’t change the culture of the event. The media needs to quit using psychological
tactics to make people think it will be less entertaining.
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