Rumor has it that the PGA tour is thinking of changing its name to the Tiger Golf Appreciation tour
The U.S. Open is our national championship in golf. Like the Open
Championship in Britain, it is the most prestigious for a golfer.
The neat thing about an "open" tournament is that anyone can play in
it. Yes, they have to qualify, play in a couple of
regional/sectional tournaments and win, but anybody can enter those
tournaments within reason. If I were better at this game I love,
I could attempt to qualify. Of course, I'm not good enough, so I
only get to watch on television.
We Americans tend to love to root for the underdog, and in golf, well,
everybody but Tiger Woods is pretty much the underdog these days.
I will readily admit that Woods is the best player on the planet right
now, but if you watched both the ESPN coverage and the NBC coverage,
you would have thought that nobody else even had a chance. I mean
do we have to see every single practice swing and shot that Woods makes
in the tournament? Did we need to know that his shirt
sleeves were too tight at the beginning of his round?
There is no need for the media to fawn over this guy publicly.
Yeah, he is good, but 153 other players are trying to whip his butt every week.
At the Open while Woods was hitting a 95 wedge shot 20 feet from the
pin, three guy were sinking birdie putts, and the announcers says,
"Here on tape, just a few moments ago." Come on already.
You got a bazillion cameras floating around and several directors in
the truck back there. Is a really not all that spectacular wedge
shot by Woods all that more important than a birdie putt by a guy
moving into the lead?
I was at a U.S. Open a few years ago, sitting in the stands at the 18th
hole on the final day. I saw Kirk Triplett sink an unbelievable
birdie putt that, no lie, broke fifteen feet if an inch. In that
same group, Tom Watson almost holed out a bunker shot. This was
the same year that his long time caddy was dying from Lou Gehrig's
disease and the crowd cheered him as much as the career of Watson as
they walked up the 18th.
So I got to watch Woods finish his round, and as soon as he left the
green about half the crowd in the stands got up and left. They
didn't go to watch the rest of the field. They went home.
Tiger wasn't going to win, so they left.
Television ratings in any tournament where Woods plays goes up.
They go up even more in the majors, and exponentially more when he is
in contention. They go down when he doesn't play, or when people
figure he doesn't have much of a chance to win.
Maybe the over coverage of Woods by the broadcasters is brought about
more by the fans who don't appreciate great golf when they see it.
***
The Western Open in Illinois recently is another example of the Tigerfication of the PGA.
After he shot an opening round of 74, Woods came back with a terrific
66 and shot himself right back into the tournament. He was
still seven shots off the lead at the time, but it was worthy
effort. The media, however, hailed it as the second coming of the
golf gods. The headlines proclaimed him back in the hunt, that
the other players worried about him, that he was coming on.
"Tiger roars!" was a typically trite and redundant
headline.
The next day, Ben Curtis played into a tie for the lead with the same
score of 66, and Vijay Singh played himself onto the leader board with
a 65. Did they get the same headlines? Did the media
capture the drama of any of that? Did they conveniently forget
Jim Furyk who eventually won the tournament?
Tiger Woods is a great golfer. But I should be able to
watch a tournament without him on the screen every minute for
every one of his shots. I didn't even know who he was
playing with until the last hole when he shook the other guy's
hand. That's sad, and the PGA should do something to promote
equal coverage of a tournament. The media should stop the fawning
over Tiger.
