Tiger effect led to golf renaissance
Current generation filled with potential champions
You’re busy, and you like sports but aren’t a golf freak - so you’re in the majority - but now your addled attention span must learn Scottie Scheffler and Collin Morikawa and Jon Rahm and Hideki Matsuyama and Bryson DeChambeau and Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka and Justin Thomas and Viktor Hovland and Patrick Reed and Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele and, oh, Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth and now Cameron Smith and Sungjae Im and Will Zalatoris and ...
Then, every once in a while, you’re tuning in to a major and there’s Gary Woodland winning at Pebble Beach and Shane Lowry winning in Northern Ireland and 50-year-old Phil Mickelson in South Carolina, so at least that one’s easy.
And to think your addled attention span used to get by with Tiger and a little Phil now and then.
Your old ways weren’t a complete picture of those old days, but it does take more diligence to follow golf nowadays. It’s an age of parity, as people kept saying Sunday at the Masters. Since Tiger Woods won at Augusta National in 2019, the ensuing 11 major titles have gone to 10 different guys, another of the binges of equality that have marked chunks of golf history. (Between 2009 and 2012, there were 15 different winners across 15 majors.) Rahm - the 2021 U.S. Open champion, the No. 3 player in the world and a terrific spokesman for his sport - gave it a go.
“I think maybe the last seven years of golf since 2015 with Jordan, Jason Day, Dustin, Rory, Brooks, myself, Justin Thomas if I didn’t say him, many other great players, now with Cameron and Scottie,” he said, straining to name everyone because everyone strains to name everyone, “it’s a perfect example of the Tiger effect. All of us are close in age, and we all - Dustin being a little bit older, but the rest of us, we’re all within five years, and we all grew up watching Tiger.
“We all grew up wanting to be him, and we all grew up with the dream of being major champions. With the advancement in golf, in all of us thinking of ourselves as athletes, you can see the difference. Everybody can reach a new level. It’s really hard to stay up there for a long time. Some players have been able to do it, but it’s just the next guy comes up, gets hot and there you go.”
That guy has been Scheffler since February, but ...
“Patrick Cantlay, too,” Rahm said. “I forgot him. He played pretty good last year, too.”
Wait ...
“And Bryson.”
He didn’t get to Morikawa, but everyone understands, surely including Morikawa. “Look, there’s always going to be this young guy,” said Morikawa, the only player since Woods’s 2019 Masters title to win two majors. “There’s always going to be guys my age,” which now is 25.
Follow if you can: 2022 Masters champion Scheffler, a Texan, was 9 months old when Woods won the 1997 Masters by 12 strokes at 21. Morikawa, a Californian, was 2 months old. Rahm, a Spaniard from the Ballesteros-Olazabal coast, was 2. Matsuyama, Japanese from Ehime prefecture, was 5. DeChambeau, a Californian, was 3. Thomas, Schauffele and Spieth, from Kentucky, California and Texas, were straining toward 4. Koepka in Florida was 6, and Johnson in South Carolina was a grizzled 12. Tyrrell Hatton over in Buckinghamshire in England was 5. Hovland in Oslo in Norway, nowadays No. 4 in the world, hadn’t even joined us yet.
From all around the country and the world, they began watching the whole supernova of it, year upon year, and on Sunday, Scheffler spoke from the winner’s interview dais.
“I played Tiger’s irons, wore his shoes, wore his shirt this week,” he said. “Tiger on the golf course is just ridiculous. He’s done so much for the game of golf. I spoke about it a little bit at the beginning of the week - we are so glad to have him back out here. He is the needle for the game of golf. He has completely changed the PGA Tour . ... And his YouTube clips are such an inspiration for me.
“I remember watching the highlights of him in ‘97, kind of running away with it, and he never really broke his concentration. That’s something that I reminded myself of today. I tried not to look up. I tried to keep my head down and just keep doing what I was doing because I didn’t want to break my concentration. The minute I did was on the 18th green when I finally got there and I had a five-shot lead and was, like, ‘All right, now I can enjoy this.’ And you saw the results of that [missed par and bogey putts, a facepalm and a giggle]. Thank you, Tiger.”
The construct of it all puts golf in an eccentric position. Even before his car crash of February 2021, Woods drew more attention from some remote portion of the leader board than the contenders did from the top. In the days running up to this Masters, those among the multitudes who seldom watch golf asked, “So, will Tiger play?” Those who often watch golf often seethed - at least in emails to those writing golf. Granted, much of Morikawa’s fledgling career has happened in the vacuum of a pandemic, but he said Sunday, “Even on Thursday, the crowds following Tiger and hearing those roars, I’ve never heard anything like it.”