Yes -- there's golf after Tiger Woods
AKRON, Ohio - Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. And by the way, hon, there's also golf after Tiger Woods. The question is, how much.Now, we're about to find out in the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational, colloquially known simply as “Firestone,” the place where that tournament, with its $8 million purse, is played. It's also the place Tiger Woods practically owns. You win six times in nine tries at a place, including the last three years, and you mine a tidy $7.9 million out of it, and it sort of has your name on it.
And now, for the first time since 1999, Firestone has to go it alone. That is, without Woods. He had to have knee surgery shortly after winning the U.S. Open in June and was out for the season. Lots of athletes - or sports figures, if you've decided golfers aren't athletes - have been sidelined in their career. But the thing about the Woods case is very much different. There has been some frightful weeping and wailing and gnashing of the teeth throughout golf. This has been doomsday stuff, and when you're talking doomsday, the only stuff scarier is in the Bible. One gets a sense of what the Philistines were feeling without Goliath.
Well, the tournament starts Thursday with an exclusive worldwide field of 81, which has as its headliner Padraig Harrington, the eloquent Irishman fresh from winning his second straight British Open, who is building a house near Charlotte (in North Carolina) and for all of his genuine warmth and ready smile, does not ignite fans outside the Isle. You have your Phil Mickelson, who seems to be receding farther and farther into the background and also running out of gurus, and Sergio Garcia, who seems to have past his time of stimulating crowds.
For all of that, Northeast Ohio does not seem to be sinking. Big-time golf has been here for decades, and the fans have been coming out in droves over the years. The absence of Woods clearly will knock down attendance, but by how much is hard to say.
As Tournamenent Director Don Padgett III put it Wednesday, “Ticket sales are tracking about the same as before.”
TV ratings will be off, of course. PGA Tour official Ty Votaw had already addressed that issue soon after Woods headed for surgery after the U.S. Open. Votaw said that to focus on TV ratings was “shortsighted,” and noted that Woods' absence might affect the “casual fan.” Which sounds like an institutional statement in need of some tidying up, inasmuch as it's been the casual fan by maybe the millions that have pumped up TV ratings when Woods is in the field, and deflated them when he isn't. The point is, these are Tiger Woods fans, not golf fans per se, and the difference is not lost on TV advertisers.
And what does the guy in the fairway think? He being the other golfers, the supporting cast.
Ian Poulter, the Englishman of the many colors, agreed that any field without Tiger Woods will be the weaker for his absence. But -
“Does it feel any different to me?” Poulter said. “No. I've still got the same amount of people to beat, whether he's in the tournament or not. Yeah, it's slightly weaker because the world's No. 1 is not here to play, but it won't change anything.”
Anthony Kim, the Tour's resident young flash - a two-time winner this year, just 23 - was pretty coolly logical for his youth. “It's hard to replace a guy like [Tiger], and you're really not going to,” Kim said. “But at the same time, there's still 81 players out here than can obviously play … And there's some young guys that may have an opportunity to make a name for themselves.” (Hint, hint.)
The most pragmatic answer came, not surprisingly, from a craggy veteran, Stewart Cink. He put the real meaning on the absence of Tiger Woods.
“Everyone,” Cink said, “will just move up one place from where they finished in the past.”
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