I”m sure longtime fans of Ben Hogan cringed this past Wednesday when cable television station ESPN termed the return of Tiger Woods to competition as “the most anticipated return in the history of golf.” While Woods was returning to the PGA Tour wars following an extended eight-month layoff because of knee surgery, Hogan had missed more than one season because of a head-on car crash with a Greyhound bus. Nonetheless, these are very different times and the return of Tiger Woods is big enough to garner the prime-time spot on the cover of this week”s Sports Illustrated.
All this press coverage regarding the man often described as the world”s most famous athlete leads us to two big questions of importance. How healthy is Tiger Woods and how healthy is the PGA Tour?
Regardless of how you interpret Tiger”s performance this past Thursday in the World Golf Match Play Championship with his 4-and-2 defeat at the hands of South African Tim Clark, the Great Striped One”s return to the PGA Tour will take some time to assess. The magic of match play is that on one given day, Tim Clark, a hardened veteran player with an international reputation, was better than the best player in the world. That doesn”t mean that over the course of 72 holes at a major championship venue such as Augusta National or Turnberry that Tim Clark will be putting on a green jacket or raising a claret jug. Yet it is also doesn”t guarantee that Woods will be winning the Grand Slam in 2009 and equaling Jack Nicklaus” mark of 18 major championships.
Tiger Woods is the toughest mental competitor on the world golf scene today. He also has a short game that is nothing short of creative and majestic. Yet only time will judge whether he comes back as 100 percent of the Tiger of old or, because of his serious knee surgery last June, lacks the skill or the stamina to stay atop the game of professional golf.
The aforementioned Ben Hogan is an interesting case in point. Hogan was the top golfer in the world in February of 1949 when a bus crossed the center line on a lonely stretch of a Texas highway and crashed into Hogan”s sedan. The accident resulted in Hogan suffering a fractured pelvis, broken collarbone and ankle, and near-fatal blood clots. He returned to the Tour some 14 months later and won the 1950 United States Open.
In 1953 he won the Masters, the U.S. Open and the British Open along with the Colonial and the Pan American Open. However, it”s important to note that while he returned with his skills intact, his stamina was very much an issue. His high-water-mark year of 1953 is all the more remarkable because while he won five times that season, he also only entered six events that year.
Ernie Els is another interesting case in point. In July of 2005, the three-time major champion blew out his left knee in a sailing accident in the Mediterranean Sea. He, like Woods, needed reconstructive surgery. Since then he has won just one time on the PGA Tour, namely the 2008 Honda Classic. He has captured six international tourneys in Europe, Asia and South Africa, but he has had minimal impact in the majors.
Hogan lacked the stamina to return to full-time competition and Els has lacked the physicality to be a truly world-class golfer. I think it”s safe to say that Tiger can get back to the top of his game, but it will definitely be different, much like a power pitcher in baseball who picks up a curve ball and learns how to paint the corners.
Regardless of whether or not Tiger returns to form, he is rejoining a very different PGA Tour from the one he left last June. The economy has brought forth serious questions about the stability of the PGA Tour. Ginn Resorts has dropped its PGA Tour event sponsorship as well as its connection to the LPGA Tour, the Champions Tour, and NASCAR. U.S. Bank will end its relationship with the Greater Milwaukee Open after this year. The same is true for FBR, sponsor of the Super Bowl-weekend Phoenix Open. Northern Trust has benefited from governmental bailout monies and has been severely criticized for its affiliation with last week”s tour event in Los Angeles. The longtime Memphis tour stop is having similar issues with its sponsor, Standard Financial. The recession has even hit Tiger Woods, who was recently dropped by Buick, one of his longtime major sponsors.
On top of that, the question that is out there front and center is how good a product is the PGA Tour without Tiger Woods? Golf is such an international game that its biggest stars such as Sergio Garcia, Padraig Harrington, Geoff Ogilvy, Justin Rose, Luke Donald and Camilo Villegas only play 15-20 times annually in America and spend the remainder of their season at international venues. A golf fan in a minor market seldom ever sees the top names play in Las Vegas, the Quad Cities, Memphis, Milwaukee or Houston.
Recently, golf pundit Frank Deford stated on National Public Radio that the PGA Tour stands for the Professional Golfers Anonymous Tour. Obviously that is a funny overestimation of the issue, but we are talking about an entertainment entity where the best entertainers aren”t seen enough by golf”s fan base. Fans go to a Phoenix Suns game to see Steve Nash and Shaquille O”Neal. Going to the FBR Phoenix Open doesn”t necessarily mean you”ll get to see the stars of golf. Professional golfers are independent contractors and can choose to play in Dubai or Qatar instead of Pebble Beach or San Diego.
Welcome back Tiger. The fans of the game are glad to see you back. So are the sponsors and the television networks. Tim, Ty and the rest of the PGA Tour hierarchy need you now more than ever.
