Tale of two icons
Golfers tee up contrasts as era fades
Brennan: As golf’s Tiger-Phil era winds down, one is in trouble, the other in control,
The juxtaposition was striking. The dashcam video of the alarmingly disoriented Tiger Woods was still fresh in our minds when Phil Mickelson announced that he would rather skip the U.S. Open, the one major championship he has never won, than miss the high school graduation of his oldest child, Amanda, the class president who will be giving a commencement speech.
Tiger and Phil. One man, 41, so dishearteningly in trouble. The other, nearly 47, so admirably in control.
Tiger and Phil, linked again, but this time the only common denominator is that they’re both missing the same major golf tournament.
For the first time since the 1994 Masters, which is a lifetime or two in golf years, a men’s major is going to be played without both men. Interestingly, it’s the first time in their professional careers that Tiger and Phil will miss the same major championship.
Tiger has missed quite a few majors over the years because of injury; the last one he played was the 2015 PGA Championship, in which he missed the cut. Phil has missed only one since 1994, the 2009 British Open, when he chose to be with his wife, Amy, after her breast cancer surgery.
One gets the feeling that we’re going to see more of this: majors coming along without both men. It might not be for several years, if only because Mickelson is showing no signs of slowing down. But with all of the sad uncertainty swirling around Woods, including the four back operations in three years and the recent DUI arrest, it’s hard to imagine when he will come back to the top level of the game, if at all.
So the Tiger-Phil era might not yet be over, but we can see the end from here.
This is as good a time as any to mention that golfers can be competitive well into their 50s, so it’s possible Mickelson could win another major or two. Why not?
As for Tiger, here’s an idea: How about we place a moratorium on the questions about his return to golf while he and everyone around him focus on getting him whatever help he might need?
So, while we admit it’s a bit early to talk about the game of golf after Tiger and Phil, the upcoming U.S. Open certainly gives us a sneak peek of what it might look like.
Here’s the headline: Golf will settle back into being golf again. It will no longer be a highly anticipated cultural happening, especially when Tiger teed off with the lead on a Sunday. It will be just golf, a niche sport with a fantastically wealthy but declining fan and participation base.
The TV ratings tell the story. The 2017 Masters was wonderful sports theater, with Sergio Garcia winning his first major. The TV ratings? The lowest for the tournament in 13 years.
Does a U.S. golfer other than Tiger or Phil draw better? When Jordan Spieth won the 2015 U.S. Open in Washington state over fellow American Dustin Johnson, the ratings for the final round were down 43% compared with the last time the Open was played on the West Coast (and in prime time in much of the nation), which was 2012.
As entertaining and exciting as Tiger and Phil have been to millions, the game has not grown during their reign. Golf participation declined 30% among 18- to 34-year-olds in the 20 years from 1993 to 2013, according to the National Golf Federation. You see it when you drive by a field that used to be a golf course, or when the local country club dramatically cuts its fees, hoping to attract people it never would have wanted a couple of decades ago.
That’s not the fault of Tiger and Phil. They have no control over the high cost of the game, its exclusionary reputation, how difficult it is to learn and the time it takes to play a round in an increasingly impatient world. Golf couldn’t have been given two more compelling representatives, but even they couldn’t stave off this inevitable decline.
Their job was to play the game, and they have done that as well as anyone ever has. We’ll miss them at the U.S. Open, and we’ll miss them when they’re gone.