The Sunday Mail
Nate Scott
We have always been unfair to Tiger Woods.
Tiger Woods
Even when he was at his absolute peak, we had too high expectations for him. Every single tournament we expected him to win. Those unfair expectations continued, even as he got older. Even as he was coming back from injuries.
We still expected him in the hunt on Sunday, every single Sunday, something we haven’t demanded of any golfer since Jack Nicklaus, perhaps. (And Nicklaus didn’t have to deal with 24/7 media cycle and Twitter.)
And can you blame us? Woods was so dominant for so long, he trained us to expect greatness. He made it seem normal for one man to rise above the game, to make the rest of the field look silly every single week. But then golf caught up. Fifteen years ago, Woods was the most physically dominant golfer by far. They extended courses to try and stop him … it only made him better.
While other golfers chowed down donuts and smoked cigars after rounds, Woods was in the weight room. He ate right, he was physically strong, and he had the killer instinct that marked every great winner. But then things changed. Everyone got in the weight room. Everyone started mashing 330 off the tee. Woods had been responsible for the changes to the game, but the game caught up.
Even after Woods started to show kinks in the armor, though, no one really stepped up to fill the spotlight. Bubba Watson turned out to be kind of a jerk. Rory McIlroy was amazing, but he wasn’t American, and crowds (there) couldn’t really get behind him.
Phil Mickelson was great, but most of his prime was spent during Woods’, meaning a lot of second-place finishes.
By the time he was ready to take over and truly own the game, other golfers had already caught up. After Woods’ great season in 2013, the injury bug hit him again, and we golf fans have spent the last two years waiting. Waiting for him to figure it out. Waiting for him to get back. Waiting for him to dominate like he always had.
It didn’t happen. Golf fans got frustrated. Or we made jokes, chirping at Woods, both out of schadenfreude but also to hide the sadness a little bit. We missed his moments, the moments only he seemed capable of producing.
We joked, because joking is a lot easier than being bummed out.
Sometime in the last year, though, things have started to change.
A big part of that has to do with Jordan Spieth. The young Texan had an incredible year, winning two majors and being in contention for all four. He was handsome and articulate and said all the right things to the media. He was great to his sister and still dating his high school sweetheart.
He was American, which shouldn’t really matter but does to golf fans for whatever reason.
And from Spieth’s great play, golf got exciting again. You had the contrast between him and Dustin Johnson, the outrageously gifted golfer who seemed to melt at down every major.
You had a budding across-the-Atlantic rivalry between Spieth and McIlroy, even though McIlroy spent much of the year injured … which somehow built the drama toward their inevitable showdowns that (we tell ourselves) are soon to come. You had the ascendancy of Jason Day, the Aussie who finally broke through and won his first major at the PGA Championship.
There were narratives, finally. It wasn’t some different, seemingly random person winning a major every time we watched.
The same names started to be on the leaderboard every big tournament, and we got to know these golfers, expect greatness from them.
While all that happened, Woods was still there. The Press still followed him around. People still cheered for him. But the expectations shifted. We no longer expected him to win every tournament. Heck, we’d just enjoy if he had a nice round, like he did on Thursday in the first round of the Wyndham Championship, shooting at 64 and sitting comfortably two strokes off the lead. We don’t expect Woods to be there every Sunday. Some people think this is sad, but I’m not one of them.—USA Today
