The closest thing to Woods? How about Wie?
In the wake of his second straight Players Championship victory Sunday, this one while battling nagging neck pain, Scottie Scheffler is drawing comparisons to Tiger Woods.
It’s a reach obvious even to those making them, but the search for the “next one” is an exercise undertaken by fans of all sports. Who will be the next Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky or Woods?
We reserve such questions for those superstars we consider incomparable, so even when legitimate contenders emerge they are ultimately dismissed. LeBron James has more career points than Jordan, but he’ll never be like Mike. Alexander Ovechkin is maybe two seasons away from breaking Gretzky’s regular-season goals record, but he couldn’t carry the Great One’s sticks.
Woods has never led the ledger that matters most in golf — major wins — a failure owed to injuries and addictions more than age or inability. But, when we think of athletes we’ll never see the likes of again, he tops the list of most. At the height of his powers, Woods seemed superhuman.
Nevertheless, we continue to look for his successor. Of the candidates who have come forward over the past decade-plus, Rory McIlroy is the guy compared to Woods the most. McIlroy emerged on the scene with a gorgeous swing and fearlessness. He won four majors in his first seven years as a pro, half as many as Woods in the same time span but more than anyone else in his generation. A decade later, McIlroy is stuck on that number. As good as he was and is, he doesn’t possess Woods’s putting prowess and sheer will to win.
Dustin Johnson took a turn after McIlroy. As powerful a player as the game has seen, once Johnson refined his wedge play and short game, there was a real sense his best was better than everyone else’s. Outside of the majors, that is. Johnson has won two, but his pal Brooks Koepka has five and is most like Woods when it comes to attitude. What Koepka lacks in consistency he makes up for in machismo. Jon Rahm has been dominant at times, but I’m not sure he’s done anything to liken himself to Tiger. Except for the tantrums, maybe. Scheffler is the best iron player the game has seen in years, and he just did something Woods could not, winning back-to-back titles at TPC Sawgrass.
For my money, however, the nearest comparison to Woods over the past 20 years is Michelle Wie (now Wie West). That might sound absurd given the way her career played out, but when it comes to the hype with which she burst onto the scene and her style, she’s as close to Tiger as we’ve seen.
Like Woods, Wie possessed a long, powerful, graceful golf swing and could do things with a club none of her peers could. I maintain that one of the best shots I’ve seen in person was one Wie hit at the 2017 CPKC Women’s Open at Ottawa Hunt Club. Into a stiff breeze on what plays as the tournament’s 13th hole, where the front of the par-3 green juts out into a pond, Wie hit a ball that didn’t veer an inch in the air and flew no higher that two storeys. It stopped and stuck some six feet from the pin. I had watched several groups go through that hole before her and no golfer hit the green, several of them finding the water after their ball ballooned up into the air. Gosh, she was talented.
But talent takes one only so far and Wie, the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open champion and a five-time LPGA Tour winner, ultimately found happiness away from competitive golf after an array of injuries curtailed her career. For a brief time, however, she appeared to be the next Woods, right down to the Nike swoosh and Stanford red.