I know, I know. That’s hardly earth-shattering prognostication. And it’s probably a fairly commonly held belief. But I resisted that gloomy conclusion as long as I possibly could. I’ve regarded the opportunity to watch Tiger Woods play golf as being the equivalent of seeing Babe Ruth in his prime – a once-in-a-lifetime chance to watch the greatest player in the history of his sport perform at his peak. And that’s what it has been. Which is not quite the same thing as calling Tiger a has-been.
I’d give a shiny, new nickel to see him be again what he once was, but I just don’t believe that is going to happen. I’ve felt this way since even before the “troubles,” which is a good reminder that while whatever woes are going to be placed at his doorstep and attributed to the sordid saga of his personal life, the real explanation of what the next incarnation of Tiger Woods looks like is going to be much more complicated.
It says here that the 2011 model Tiger Woods could ultimately be a thrilling thing to watch and, indeed, I hope it is, but regardless of how long it takes or even if he’s ever able to bring his game back to a more Tiger-like level, it won’t be the same thing as what we watched for the better part of a miraculous decade.
That version of Tiger Woods wouldn’t have been sustainable through the second decade of this madcap millennium anyway. It was always an anomaly, a wildly distorted version of one player’s relationship to his professional sport, and it was arguably a miracle that he was able to ascend to that remarkable plateau and maintain as long as he did. Even before the “troubles,” there were plenty of signs that the incredible domination simply couldn’t have continued in any event.
At its peak it had reached a kind of pathetic level, a morose situation where the greatest players in an entire professional sport were grotesquely intimidated by the game’s top practitioner. Even at his peak, Jack Nicklaus never held that kind of sway over his contemporaries; he was quite fairly regarded as being at the top of his profession in the 1960’s and 1970’s, but his level of domination over his peers never approached the kind of mystical power that Tiger seemed to have over his PGA counterparts after 1997.
It simply couldn’t have been maintained at that goofy level, and a better case can be made that it was amazing that it went on as long as it did. As facile as it sounds to put it in these terms, there have been signs for years that Tiger was human, even well before we found out just how human after Thanksgiving of 2009.
The prognostications of yet another 18 handicapper like me don’t necessarily carry all that much weight, but now I’m not even as sure as I once was that Tiger will manage to get those four more major titles he needs to tie Jack, something I would have regarded as a given several years ago. I think he will, and I certainly hope that he does, if for no other reason than it will be fun and exciting to watch. But there’s a whole new generation of golfers who have come along in the last four or five years who have virtually no memory of the invincible version of Tiger Woods that they hear all the commentators alluding to.
Nope, this group is likely to function in a fashion much more reminiscent of what PGA golf was like in the decades preceding the arrival of the phenom Woods. Which is to say that over the course of even the majors, any number of the top players can emerge with the trophy based on the same factors that ruled the circuit virtually from its beginnings: who’s hot, who’s putting the best, and a bit of good fortune thrown in.
And regardless of whether or not Tiger wins those four or five more majors, I’d still pencil him in as the greatest golfer who ever lived. Remember, it was a young Tiger Woods who determined that ending up with 18 or 19 major titles was the sole criterion for that august designation; my criteria are a bit more subjective.
- T.S. O’Connell
