Cameron Morfit has an interesting piece at golf.com titled Will Tiger Woods Be Forever Stuck On Major No. 14? It's somewhat tardy, as the golf press has been all over this in recent days and even unpaid bloggers have been toiling in this field for months if not years.
Morfit starts on an extremely unpromising note:
It's an age-old philosophical question: If you could know the date you were going to die and
Seems like ages ago, doesn't it? how it was going to happen, would you want to?
As the Masters approaches, it seems that golf fans are wrestling with a variation of that conundrum: If you could know beyond a doubt that Tiger Woods will never claim another major -- that history will show him winning his last in what we all assumed had been the middle of his prime, at age 32, at the 2008 U.S. Open --would you want to know that?
OK, I'm new at this writing thing, but I thought the purpose of editors was to put big blue lines through that first paragraph? Golf and death should never be mixed, unless someone dies on the golf course.
And the second graph isn't much better. The answer is clearly no, as knowledge of the outcome robs sports of any drama. If you're in doubt on this, watch me cover my ears as I run through the locker room after my round on Open Championship Sunday, desperate to get to my Tivo unburdened by any knowledge of the results.
So, having been a tad harsh, why do I think Morfit's effort is of interest? Though he's buried the lede, he makes two important points on this subject. The first is one I've been making for quite a while:
Tiger is stuck at 14 major wins. He'll need four more to equal Jack Nicklaus's mythic total, and five more -- keep in mind, five majors is Phil Mickelson's current career total -- to set the game's new gold standard.
That's the crux of the can Tiger beat Jack issue. Back in the aughts when he was winning one or two majors each year, five more seemed inevitable. But, especially in light of his physical issues, what are the chances of Tiger having Phil's majors career from age 38 to retirement?
The second point, and one I'm envious of, is that Morfit has come up with the perfect potential analogy to Tiger's 2008 U.S. Open win at age 32:
Arnold Palmer, 50 years ago this month, won what turned out to be his last Masters and his last major, despite the fact that he was only 34. Endings don't always have the grace to announce themselves, to give "closure." Sure, some of them do. Jack winning the 1986 Masters at 46? That was closure with a bow on top, like the finale of "Breaking Bad." But maybe the end of the reign for Woods, as with Palmer before him, will be more like the last episode of "The Sopranos": We'll just sit there staring at nothing, wondering, "Wait -- so that's it?" Kind of like we are now.
Geez, how about the courtesy of a spoiler alert for Breaking Bad, as the brdie and I are still muddling through Season 4.
Morfit adds this color on Palmer c. 1964:
But then there's Palmer. Fifty years ago he won the Masters for a record fourth time, by six shots. At 34, he was seemingly in the prime of his career. He hit the ball a mile. He played and lived under a microscope. According to the Sports Illustrated account of the tournament, his fellow competitors "hesitated to think" what the future might hold for the dominant Palmer.
Isn't that perfect? You can see why it's resulted in a case of bloggingfreude on my part.
Morfit adds this to hedge his bet:
Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Sam Snead and even Lee Trevino won at least one major when they were as old or older than Woods is today (38). Hogan won five of them after his 38th birthday, and Nicklaus was 46 when he won the 1986 Masters. Player slipped the green jacket on in 1978 at the age of 42. And it's not like Woods hasn't come close at Augusta. He always comes close: T4s in three of the last four years.
The list of players who won frequently in their forties is quite short, pretty much limited to Sam Snead and Vijay Singh. The Hogan example is probably the most optimistic for Tiger, as he played about six events a year in deference to his physical limitations resulting from the horrific auto accident. But there was only one Hogan, so I'm taking the under.
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