Professional Golf in a Dangerous Place

6/26/08
By: Butch Bundy

All seemed to be right with the golfing world last weekend. Here was Tiger making putts from everywhere, one of which was a downhill ten footer to get into a play off on the 72nd hole. Seemingly like always though in a major, the putt to get into a playoff wasn’t to tie one of the world’s other great players. It was to tie what would have been the highest ranked player to ever win a major since the Official World Rankings were introduced in the mid nineties. Don’t get me wrong, I have long been a fan of Rocco and his great attitude on the golf course. Frankly, he deserved to win the tournament based on his consistent brand of golf during the week as compared to Woods. However, it isn’t realistic to think that a 45 year old with 5 career wins, who almost gave up competition due to back problems, can play at the level to be a consistent challenger to Woods. What we are missing are other top players in the world consistently challenging Woods week in and week out, especially in the major championships. Woods not only was rehabbing from knee surgery back in April and hadn’t played a tournament since the Masters, he had a torn ACL and two stress fractures in the most important leg in a right handed player’s golf swing. Throw in also that he has been privately hurt for most of the year and had to drastically cut back his practice and there should be room to close the gap, right? Wrong.
He has entered 6 tournaments on tour this year, won four of them and finished second in the other one which was the Masters and that isn’t counting the win in a very good field in Dubai. His first tournament back is the U.S. Open which is the most grueling test even if you are competitively sharp which he wasn’t and the closest any other member of the top 10 in the world can finish is 5 shots back (Geoff Ogilvy at 5 over par)? That isn’t good for the tour no matter how good Tiger is for golf.
I love the fact that golf has a dominant player that is a great role model due to his hard work on and off of the golf course, but the rest of the tour, especially the other top players, need to close the gap and challenge him consistently. The game can’t be all about one guy when the tour consists of hundreds of players.