WHY AMERICA NEEDS TIGER WOODS
THE Valspar Championship has never been one of the PGA Tour’s most prestigious events. Initially, it was the Tampa Bay Classic and up against the Presidents Cup.
For a time it played second fiddle to the WGC-American Express Championship. When its sponsors, Chrysler, pulled out, it looked as if it would fold. Valspar, the paint manufacturer, came along in 2013, since when it has been relatively stable. Unexceptional, but stable.
Then this year, a strange thing happened. On March 11, the day of its final round, the Valspar Championship recorded the highest ratings for any golf tournament outside the majors in five years. At the same time, the streaming service, PGA Tour Live, crashed due to ‘unprecedented traffic’. Tiger Woods had returned and America is mad for it again.
Back, and now one of the favourites for the Masters. Back, and with expectation levels soaring, a man who a year ago could not sit through the traditional champions dinner has been installed as a leading fancy to win it, his first major victory in a decade.
Good news for golf, good news for Donald Trump, too.
Woods is one of those figures synonymous, regardless of his personal politics, with making America great again. If the miracle happens, expect the President to be tweeting his way into the reflected glory come Sunday.
Woods on his game lifts the national mood. At the peak of his career, a win for him on Sunday moved the financial markets in a positive way on Monday. When Woods did well, America arrived for work feeling empowered, confident, bullish and ready to buy, buy, buy.
A favourite is a reflection of the market, not necessarily the reality, but America appears to be investing heavily in this sporting resurrection. Whether Woods should be shorter-priced than Dustin Johnson, Justin Thomas, Rory McIlroy or Bubba Watson is another matter. He is, by his own admission, a walking miracle. A man who had spinal fusion back surgery, not to play competitive golf again but merely to exist without opiates.
Squirming his way through Danny Willett’s champions dinner at Augusta last year, and weeks away from surgery that he hoped might give him a last swing at normality, he confided in Jack Nicklaus ‘I’m done’.
Yet what sent ratings off the dial for the Valspar last month was the sight of Woods, not just un-done, but in contention. He finished tied second behind Paul Casey, then tied fifth at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, his last tournament before coming to Augusta. It cannot be underestimated how excited America is by this new chapter. And America was always excited about Woods.
The 2001 US Open was played at Southern Hills, Tulsa, a monster of a course. In response to the advances in equipment technology, the US Golf Association demanded a new level of precision and length.
The par-five fifth was 642 yards long. The total course distance was 6,973 yards. The rough was punishing, the greens devilishly fast. Miss on the wrong side and there was no chance of saving par. Tom Lehman reached for a baseball analogy. ‘Playing this golf course,’ he said, ‘is like trying to hit a 90mph knuckleball.’
Woods arrived fresh from completing the Tiger Slam at Augusta, with all four major trophies on his coffee table. After three rounds he was 10 shots off the lead and tied for 23rd place. Woods had never won a major without leading or being tied for it going into the final day.
Chasing wasn’t his thing and this was a course that would not respond to desperation and attempts to force a low score through sheer will. Equally, the leaderboard included some of the greatest golfers of the time. Retief Goosen, Sergio Garcia, Phil Mickelson, David Duval, Jim Furyk, Stewart Cink and Davis Love III were all ahead.
If one blew up — as joint-leader Cink did — it was unlikely 22
others would follow. So Woods had no chance, as good as he was. Yet that morning, in the face of all rationality, every televised broadcast began the same way. Can Tiger do it? they asked. Will this be his fifth-straight major? Are we going to see golf’s greatest comeback?
Of course, they were not. Goosen won, after an 18-hole play-off with Mark Brooks, Woods trailing in a creditable tied 12th having shot 69. Yet those questions haven’t changed much in 17 years. Once again, America is asking whether it is going to witness golf’s greatest comeback — that of a man it was feared might end up in a wheelchair, or unable to swing a club, let alone return to competition.
SO SET aside the dream, for a moment. Just to play, really, is Woods’s achievement. A year ago, awaiting another operation on April 19, he was contemplating quite the saddest retirement.
Elite athletes who compete in aerobic sports know there will come a time when they cannot play again. Some continue in exhibition matches — and Sir Trevor Brooking turned out for many years in Sunday football — but most accept their careers will be short and have a finite end.
It is not the same for golfers. They can play competitively for many years on the senior circuit and, even when that is over, have 18 holes with friends.
Woods was looking at a lifetime without even that succour. He could dine at golf tournaments, he could talk about golf tournaments, he could watch golf tournaments and be feted wherever he went, but he couldn’t hit a ball. It must have been killing him.
So, in that respect, anyone who loves sport must be buoyed at the sight of his return. Wherever he finishes, just the fact that Woods may be able to enjoy what others in his trade take for granted is a source of great comfort.
He didn’t arrive at Augusta until yesterday, but has already played practice rounds there on March 22 and 23, getting a feel for a course that was once his second home yet has changed, even since he last competed there in 2015.
He played with a local caddie, Jay Thacker, and took his time — no doubt mindful that on his last visit he would have barely been able to tee up.
Yet Mark Twain’s good walk, no longer ruined, is not enough. His public, his countrymen in particular, want more. They want the dream, they want the Hollywood ending. They want Tiger in his final-round red, making America great again.
‘The one thing I would say about Tiger Woods is you can never say never,’ said Butch Harmon, his former coach. ‘Should he be favourite? No. Do I think he is going to win? No, I don’t. But would I like to see him win? Damn right I would.’
Harmon is now coach to Johnson and Rickie Fowler, two golfers who have equally high hopes of wearing the green jacket on Sunday. But that’s how much America wants it, for Tiger, and for themselves. That’s how much weight rests once again on his shoulders. No wonder he got a bad back.