Woods still casts shadow: Bet on it
Tiger baring his teeth but appears to have finally run out of any bite
The best bet I’ve seen put down was at the 1995 Open Championship at St Andrews. Tiger Woods to win.
Yes, yes golf nerds. The brieflyon-the-wagon John Daly won that tournament after a four-hole playoff with Costantino Rocca — and Kiwi Michael Campbell didn’t win after shooting 76 in the final round.
But the bet was on Woods, who finished equal 68th in 1995 as a 20-year-old amateur, to win the next Open Championship at St Andrews in 2000.
Five years later Woods duly ripped the Old Course apart with rounds of 67-66-67-69 and won by eight shots. So the crafty punter, a betting expert for a London newspaper, collected at odds of 500-1 and the rest of us in the press tent have been suffering nonbettors remorse since.
As much as anything that wager is a reminder of the sheer inevitably of Woods’ rise and subsequent domination, something we had taken for granted by the time the now three-time major champion and world No 1 lifted the auld Claret Jug for the first time in 2000.
Even then, Woods’ opposition was resigned to playing for second. Like when Australian pro Stuart Appleby was asked what he would have to shoot to win a tournament and he replied straight-faced: “Tiger Woods”.
This was back when Woods was so hot caddie Steve Williams had to wear oven mitts to pick up his clubs and Tiger could bend over to pick up his tee without requiring spinal fusion.
That Woods attained such a level of modern-era, 24/7 media wallpaper, corporate superstar excellence that has made his diminished public persona so hard to reconcile. Even 10 years after he won his latest, and quite possibly last, major at the 2008 US Open.
It is why there is a sense of denial that the still-pretty-good-but-notgreat Woods who has played on after a marriage breakdown that was literally a car wreck and four separate back operations can never again dominate in the way he once did.
Why Woods, not world No 1 Dustin Johnson, the local favourite Justin Rose or the controversial Masters champion Patrick Reed, was still the most talked about player in the lead-up to this week’s Open Championship.
Perhaps that is why even Woods, once golf ’s uncatchable hare, has at least publicly lived in denial about his newfound status as part of the chasing pack. Although before teeing off in Thursday’s opening round at Carnoustie, Woods betrayed a rare hint that he has finally come to terms with his golfing mortality.
Woods admitted his chances of winning a fourth Open Championship were accentuated by the bare Carnoustie fairways on which he could run the ball to places
Woods’ outsized deeds still cast a shadow over the field regardless of his scores.
he could no longer reach on the fly. Unlike Augusta, which he said “outgrows you”.
“Look what Tom Watson did at Turnberry at 59 years old [Watson lost a playoff to Stewart Cink], so it’s possible. Greg Norman was there at Birkdale [in 2008] when he was around 54ish, so it can be done.”
But can it be done by the now 42-year-old Woods whose body has the wear and tear of the US Marines whose training programme he mimicked? His opening round of even par 71 was typical of his recent performances — a bright start with a couple of front nine birdies blighted by a some late bogeys, not enhanced by the once routine back nine blitz.
Woods was still in the hunt, but the question first asked when injuries and personal misadventures curtailed Woods’ career lingers — can the game continue to prosper without him? Not merely go about its business as it has since Old Tom Morris was Little Tommy, but prosper in an era when Cristiano Ronaldo and LeBron James are brands almost bigger than the games they play.
Before this Open Championship, Irish comedian Conor Moore performed a series of hilarious impersonations of golf ’s contemporary stars including downbeat Johnson, giggling Sergio Garcia and hirsute Tommy Fleetwood that went viral.
But the uncomfortable truth is that, outside its hard core constituency, too many people would struggle to distinguish the fake from the original. Not because of the impersonator’s great talent, but because golf doesn’t enjoy the same exposure it had even before the Woods boom.
Certainly, the argument is not that modern players don’t deserve that exposure. Despite justifiable complaints about souped-up balls and clubs that have made some of the great courses obsolete and players so ponderous they would have to let a group of turtles play through. But Woods’ outsized deeds still cast a large shadow over the field regardless of his scores, and will continue to do so until the next young phenom challenges his incredible records the way he once engaged in a statistical dog fight with Jack Nicklaus.