He's back ...

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Just as the world of golf was beginning to ask the question "Will Tiger Woods ever be the same again?", crash bang wallop he goes and wins in typical Tiger fashion, making up 6 shots on his final day playing partner Sean O'Hair to win the Bay Hill by 1 shot. With a 15 foot birdie putt across the last green to seal it, too.

In the nick of time, too. Phil Mickelson was about to take over as World number one (following Woods' lengthy absence last year) and while I've nothing against Lefty per se, I don't like to see anyone getting to number 1 in golf purely on the strength of a couple of recent US Tour wins, when they're not even a current major champion. It makes the ranking system look as volatile as the one they seem to use in women's tennis.

[Incandenza]

He's back ...

Phew. It's good there's no competition in golf--hate for it to get interesting, you know?

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

He's back ...

For competition to be interesting, you have to have at least one real champion, and preferably 2 or 3 credible challengers. If any sport goes through a period where as many as 9 or 10 contenders are all much of a muchness and "leadership" among them changes hands every other week, that's not interesting either, that's horse racing.

[Guest]

He's back ...

Incandenza wrote:

Phew. It's good there's no competition in golf--hate for it to get interesting, you know?

I have a close friend who is big into golf, and we spent the weekend at his father's wedding.

While we were driving back home yesterday, he began enthusing about how fantastic it was to see Tiger Woods in charge again, as if the last two years had been a deeply tiresome interlude full of annoying randomness, and now at last it was time to get back to the properly serious business of having one guy winning everything.

As we know, golf is the favoured pastime of the corporate classes (apart from stealing). Most of the people into it are reasonably well-off, a high percentage of them are the sort of people who worship blanket success and have an inbuilt resistance to the concept of egalitarianism, and so the idea of one person relentlessly crushing all opposition for the next decade or two and squeezing almost all the uncertainty out of the major events is pretty appealing to them.

[Guest]

He's back ...

Wouldn't the corporate classes be better off watching football then – at least at a domestic league level? Woods has won fewer than half the majors he's played in even if you ignore his pre-2000 results. Golf's majors have more nonentity winners than any other sporting events.

[hobbes]

He's back ...

Most of the people into it are reasonably well-off, a high percentage of them are the sort of people who worship blanket success and have an inbuilt resistance to the concept of egalitarianism

This is utter utter bilge of the most boring and feeble type. Sure some are, but have you been out on a municipal course? Or are you just allowing predjudice against the game overwhelm any objectivity you may have?

[Mr Beast]

He's back ...

Rogin the Armchair Fan wrote:

For competition to be interesting, you have to have at least one real champion, and preferably 2 or 3 credible challengers. If any sport goes through a period where as many as 9 or 10 contenders are all much of a muchness and "leadership" among them changes hands every other week, that's not interesting either, that's horse racing.

Your definition of competition isn't one I recognise. By your definition you must love the Premier League status quo, but then you do support one of the credible challengers.

I think that 9 or 10 contenders would be far more interesting in golf or any other sport. But then I also think horse racing is interesting.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

He's back ...

My analogy doesn't apply at all in team "dynasty" sports, where you don't get "champions" that last for years (because by the end of their "reign", you rarely have the same players who were there at the start).

But in individual sports, yeah. I like the natural cycle of a Borg being challenged and overtaken by a McEnroe, who in turn loses out to Lendl and Becker, who in turn pass on the baton to Sampras, who eventually loses to Federer, etc.

Golf had this with Palmer being usurped by Nicklaus, then Watson, then Ballesteros, then Norman, then Faldo ... but then there was a dreadful period in the 1990s where virtually every major championship was a free-for-all, and everyone from career one-hit wonders like Mark Brooks and Corey Pavin to unknown chancers like Paul Lawrie and Steve Jones were picking up major titles.

It was good when Woods came along and became a true champion in the game again, for the rest to try and challenge. It's not his fault he's so much bloody better than the rest that he's won 14 majors in an era when no-one else has won more than 3. Yes, I hope he wins at least 3 majors this year, none of the other current players apart from Garcia really deserve one, and then we can spend the next 5 years guessing when Woods will match Nicklaus's all-time record.

[Brandenburger Toro]

He's back ...

none of the other current players apart from Garcia really deserve one

Rogin will not see the following picture, because of his persistent blind spot;



What, exactly, is it that convinces everyone Garcia is major championship quality? He's never looked like winning one, and that didn't change noticeably in Woods' absence.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

He's back ...

Toro, I should have said "none of the other players really deserve one (if they haven't already won what they deserved)".

Garcia's surely done enough to have earnt one win (he's been a runner up 3 times now) whereas Harrington, with his 3 majors, has been elevated into contention to be considered as one of the weakest golfers ever to have won as many as 3 major titles, alongside Larry Nelson, Vijay Singh and Ray Floyd. Decent enough company, don't get me wrong, but unless Harrington does something mental like win the Grand Slam this year with Woods back, he will never be considered among the game's great all-time champions. After years and years of coming second, he won his first major only after finishing with a double-bogey, for God's sake. And his latter two were both "asterisk" wins.

[Wyatt Earp]

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I don't really follow many individual sports, but I think Rogin's right here that the dominance of one player is different from, and preferable to, the dominance of one club. I don't really think about , say, Muhammad Ali or Ronnie O'Sullivan in the way I think about Man United or the New York Yankees.