Tiger Woods

Forgive me for beating this drum again, just as I have for so many years. All you Tiger haters out there won’t like what I have to say about the man, especially after he showed the world his feet of clay with his infamous sex scandal. In the years since Tiger’s father died, and in these past three years after Tiger’s domestic screw-up, Tiger’s career isn’t as certain as it once seemed to be. Granted, it’s still pretty great, but just think what it might have been, what it still might be. Tiger’s father devoted his son’s life to becoming the best ever, and Tiger went along with it to an unbelievable degree. What must it have been like for the other tour players during that first decade of Tiger’s career? Playing for second place most weeks, I guess. I hope I live long enough to see how it all plays out. By the end of last season, he’s won 79 PGA tour events, only three behind Snead’s 82 (but some of Snead’s are questionable at best), and Snead, like Vijah Singh, played in nearly every tournament that came down the pike, many with weak fields. Tiger plays in only the most prestigious tournaments, with the strongest fields. What if he’d decided to play a thirty or thirty-five week schedule per year? He could easily have won another three more each of the past dozen years, bringing his total to somewhere around 115. The number of records he holds is remarkable—number of years as top money winner, number of cuts made, number of consecutive cuts made (142), number of consecutive weeks ranked as number 1, number of consecutive PGA victories in a row—7 in 2006-07, 6 in 1999-2000 (second only to Byron Nelson’s 11 in a row). He’s won 27.2% of the tournaments he’s entered. His influence on the tour has been tremendous, almost single-handedly increasing the amount of prize money now available to tour players. He played probably the best golf anyone has ever known in that magical year of 2000-2001. He was then king, and his reign continued for nearly the entire first decade of this century. And then he blew it. But maybe he can right the ship and regain his title. He was and still might be the most powerful figure any sport has ever seen. Paul Azinger once said he thought Tiger was the greatest athlete of all-time, an assessment I’d have to agree with.