For
years golf fans have speculated about the day when the sport would have to
carry on without Tiger Woods to carry it. It seems that day has come, before
most expected.
They played the PGA Championship last week—the
fourth and last of the game’s annual “majors”—and Tiger wasn’t around for the
weekend, having missed the 36-hole cut. His game, once a source of awe, has
become an object of derision. “He’s not even limping properly,” quipped TV
analyst David Feherty, as the sore-backed golfer hobbled off after yet another
poor shot in the tournament.
Between 1997 and 2008 Woods won 14 majors. After the last, at age 32, he was deemed a
sure bet to break Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 in that august category. He
hasn’t won one since in what should have been his most-productive years, and
the line on his chart is pointing down.
If you follow this space you know
that I’ve written about Tiger before. It’s hard not to because the arc of his
career has been so spectacular. He was a golfing prodigy whose early deeds
exceeded even inflated expectations; similarly, his decline has had elements of
Greek tragedy. I’ve never rooted for him
because, from close up during my working-press days, I found him arrogant,
mercenary and controlling, but it’s still hard to see him as he is today.
His initial successes only made the
reversal more startling. His first major
victory—at the 1997 Masters-- was jarring, with a record-setting score and 12-stroke
margin that caused the moss-backed custodians of Augusta National to lengthen
and reconfigure their course to the point where comparing recent and past
performances there have little relevance. Three years later he topped that by
blowing away the U.S. Open field at venerable Pebble Beach by 15 strokes, a
performance that caused a collective shudder among his links foes. For the next
several years no touring pro would tee up in a tournament in which he
participated without feeling his shadow looming over him. Not even Nicklaus in
his prime inspired such fear.
I’ve long held that a main reason
for Woods’ dominance was the simple fact that he was a better athlete than any
of his foes, and they knew it. Unlike sports that prize speed, strength and
agility, golf is about rhythm and timing, and some unlikely looking types have
excelled at it, but golfers still are jocks at heart and worship the
traditional athletic virtues. I recall that when the powerful slugger Dick
Allen was with the Chicago White Sox in the 1970s he broke every clubhouse
rule, often showing up for games late, hung over or both, and disappearing between
innings to cop smokes. No Sox teammate was heard to criticize him, however, tickled
as all of them were to have him on their side.
Tiger’s
physical edge began to slip with knee surgeries in 2007 and ’08, the price he
paid for the effort he put into his dynamic swing. Worse yet was the blow to
his psyche that resulted from the 2009 revelations that he’d been a serial
adulterer with a taste for bimbos that put Bill Clinton’s in the shade. That
came out in the most-humiliating way, when the golfer wound up in a hospital
emergency room with injuries suffered after backing his car into a fire hydrant
while being chased from his home by his wrathful, golf-club-wielding wife.
From a
carefully honed image for discipline and rectitude, Woods became a long-running
gag for the Internet and late-night-TV comedians. Sample joke: Did you hear
that Tiger wrote a book called “My Favorite 18 Holes”? A lot of people returned
it after they found out it was about golf.
That would have been tough for
anyone to take, but especially for Tiger, a prototypical ducks-in-a-row kind of
guy. Thanks to the mythmakers at Nike and IMG who’d packaged him from the time
he turned pro, and abetted by Sports Illustrated, he’d been presented as
someone with gifts that transcended sports. His father and mentor Earl
described him for the magazine’s profile written when he was 21 as “The Chosen
One.” Said dad: “He’ll have the power to impact nations. Not people. Nations.
The world is just getting a taste of his power.” If the golfer questioned that
assessment he kept it to himself, as he did everything else that didn’t permit
him to turn a buck.
Tiger scurried off for
“sex-addiction treatment” after his fall from grace, and while he’s won some
tournaments since his return-- five of them in 2013 alone-- he’s rarely been in
the running in the Masters, U.S. Open, British Open or PGA, the only events he
really cares about. This year he was sidelined for four months with back
surgery to repair a pinched nerve. He returned (probably too soon) to play in
the British Open, where he finished 69th, and in the PGA. Yesterday
he pulled out of Ryder Cup consideration, saying he’d stay away from golf until
his rehab was complete. Stay tuned.
Golfers can play at a high level
well into their 40s (Nicklaus won his last major at age 46; Julius Boros won
one at 48), so the 38-year-old Woods is by no means washed up by the calendar.
Maybe he’ll regain his mojo and storm the heights again, maybe not.
There’s a new phenom around in
Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy, the 25-year-old winner of this year’s PGA and
British Open, and two other majors before that. Nicklaus, who wants his record
to stand forever, stuck a needle in the young man recently by saying there was
no reason he couldn’t win “15 or 20” of the shiny baubles. TV ratings for the
closely contested PGA Championship were better than they had been for years, so
fans may be finding new reasons to watch.
Still, for a long time they’ll probably be doing it with an eye out for
Tiger.
