Advantage Tiger
Long layoff should do wonders for legend’s body and game ... Mic’ing players full-time during rounds would add to television experience ... Step Curry wants to play in Match 3
When you’re 44 years old and in a tight match against Father Time, having the sports world shut down for months and months would seem like a very bad break. Not for Tiger Woods. Assuming professional golf is able to re-open for business next month, no player should be as optimistic as the 15-time major winner.
The last time we saw Woods in a tournament was at the Genesis Open at Riviera where he came in last out of players to make the cut and looked bothered by his back. He then skipped the WGC Mexico Championship, the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the tour’s flagship event, the Players Championship. The storyline was going to be: Will Tiger be ready for the Masters?
Then COVID-19 shut the world down. The circumstances could hardly have been worse, but it gave Woods time to rest his back and re-emerge at last week’s charity match with a swing that looked great and a body that looked strong.
On top of that,
Tiger has more experience than anyone coming back after a prolonged layoff. Overcoming four knee surgeries and four back surgeries, he has a long history of spending months off the course before re-emerging ready to compete. For most of the top players in the game, this was the longest break they have had from competitive golf since
they were a child. We’ve seen more photos of Rory McIlroy on the Peloton than on the golf course recently.
It hasn’t been easy for anyone to stay focused on their goals in 2020, but if you had to bet on anyone keeping their mind ready to compete, who would it be? If Tiger is healthy don’t be surprised if the 2019 Masters wasn’t his Last Dance.
STILL TALKIN’ THE MATCH
Who would have thought a four-man charity match would be such a tough act to follow?
With the PGA Tour less than two weeks away from its June 11-14 restart at the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial in Texas, the golf world is still talking about last weekend’s wildly successful match that saw Woods and Peyton Manning hold off Phil Mickelson and Tom Brady while raising $20 million for COVID-19 relief.
The entire broadcast — assuming you could find it on Canadian television — was a beautiful mess. The rain was pouring, the players wore microphones, golf cart cams, trash talking, wise cracks from “analysts” Charles Barkley and Justin Thomas, and at the top was the unlikeliest hole-out birdie from Brady that might just be the greatest comeback of his career.
For years now, PGA Tour broadcasts have been fighting criticism that they’ve become stale and haven’t kept up with what viewers want. And COVID-19 taking the fans off the golf course certainly isn’t going to help. With social media allowing golfers to show more personality to fans, the tour has to figure out how to translate that to the broadcast and its other media, something the European Tour has done better.
Barkley’s answer for at least these first four PGA Tour events without fans is to steal a page from The Match.
“If you’re not going to have fans, you can’t just have guys playing golf and announcers talking,” Barkley said this week on the Dan Patrick Show. “They’re going to have great ratings because we need golf, we need sports — I think they should consider mic’ing the players.”
Mickelson was also on the Dan Patrick Show and said he’d be up for wearing a microphone in tour events. That’s no great surprise considering he’s as entertaining as athletes come and probably hasn’t stopped talking since the match ended. The problem is there is only one Phil Mickelson and players won’t be nearly as entertaining when bearing down in tournament play compared to a charity event.
But perhaps the fun that was had during The Match mixed with the strange times we are living in will be the catalyst for change that golf broadcasts need.
CHIP SHOTS
Where will Tiger tee it up? The first two events are at Colonial in Texas, and Harbour Town in South Carolina. He has played in each event just once and both were more than 20 years ago. The Travelers Championship is next and will have a star-studded field, but Woods has never played the tournament. There is no obvious tour stop for Woods to play before The Memorial, but that’s not until mid July. Would he really take another nearly two-month break after playing in last week’s oneday event? Doubtful, but if all goes according to plan it will be a busy end to the summer for him. The golf world will be waiting on his decision ... Basketball star Steph Curry tweeted that he wants in on The Match 3.
That would be great. Just make sure to bring Michael Jordan too.