Modern Times

James Corrigan is one of the few remaining golf writers in the U.K. old enough to have hit a Tour Balata, and his perspective on Tiger's return is worthy of your time.

His lead should be taught in J-Schools everywhere:

Tiger Woods is the quantitative easing of professional golf. He is not the solution, he is the

mask. He only seems to make things right in the short-time.

So it is that euphoria will burst down those dollar-decked fairways of the PGA Tour this week as Woods returns, at breakneck - but we must pray not ‘break-back’ - speed, to rescue his sport from obscurity, or, as one American columnist said, "the soccer World Cup".

Two short graphs and he's slammed everyone from The Federal Reserve to xenophobic American sportswriters... well played, Sir! 

But Corrigan is making a serious point, and here's the gist of it:

Rory McIlroy was bang on earlier in the season when he declared it to be the responsibility of the elite players whose names were not Tiger to step up and fill the void. The young Ulsterman is wise enough to envisage the picture without the red-shirted one and he is horrified to see a mass of bland parity. No heroes, no zeroes, but so many multi-millionaires. That is the fate of modern professional golf. 

Why? The factors are numerous, some to do with the shameful inaction of the governing bodies, some to do with the nature of golf as sport and the nature of 21st Century fame. 

There’s the equipment, the ball, the course design. Technology, progress, call it what you will, has made it harder for the creatives to separate themselves. Golf has always been a sport where any of many can turn up and win on a given week.

I absolutely love his concept of "The Creatives," but what he's really saying is that modern technology has greatly compressed ball-striking skills, with which I wholeheartedly agree.   

In fact, it reminds me of a pro-shop conversation I had a few years ago with Bruce Berman, the best player at Willow Ridge.  Bruce, whose opinion always warrants serious consideration, was of the belief that Jack's 18 majors was the more substantive accomplishment because he had to beat gamers such as Arnie, Trevino, Watson, Miller and Weiskopf (though he never actually seemed to prevail over Trevino and Watson, did he?).  

By contrast, Bruce was dismissive of Tiger's challengers, including Phil, Ernie and the like, who wilted in his presence.  My rebuttal, which will seem more cogent than probably expressed off the cuff, was a variant of the "deeper-field" argument, simply that Tiger had to beat more players to win his majors than Jack did.  What I really wanted to say was that the modern equipment equalizes ball-striking to a great degree, making professional golf tournaments more putting contests than they used to be.

That last is undoubtedly somewhat an over-statement, the key word being somewhat.  For instance, we've discussed at length the work of Mark Broadie in compiling Tour stats and analyzing player performance.  In revisiting my original Moneyball post, we found that the best ball-strikers on Tour (Tiger, Justin Rose, Henrik Stenson, etc.) picked up some 2 strokes on the field every round.  I'm guessing that if Broadie had the requisite data form Jack's era, that differential would be far larger.  After all, a bad shot with a persimmon driver and Tour Balata golf ball is far worse than  abd shot with a 460 cc Titanium driver and ProV1, no?

While I agree with much of Corrigan's points as relates to the professional game, but I'm not completely with him on his conclusions:

Yet this applies now more than ever and it is happening at a time in sport in which celebrity is everything and, in which, only big names sell. Equality sucks. Hence the hysteria which will greet Tiger in Washington DC. 

Yet one day Woods will be history and then, if something has not been done to capitalise on the Tiger factor, to glean out of it more than greenback for the troops, golf will go back into its niche corner. 

That will mean even lower participation levels, less finance for the grass-roots, the game becoming yet more inaccessible. Yes, Woods is a once-in-a-lifetime, even a number of lifetimes probably. But his influence reveals the weaknesses of golf in its present guise, not its strengths. This week, more than any.

Golf has really never come out of its niche corner, though we could argue whether that's a good or bad thing.  The reality, irony alert, is that the technology has made the game far more enjoyable at the club or hack level, but has no doubt made the game poorer at the professional level.  

I'm not quite the pessimist that Corrigan seems to be, because there's value in puncturing the Tiger bubble.  Every sport has casual viewers, just check the TV ratings for the Belmont Stakes as an example.  The problem seems to be more that we built golf courses for these casual viewers, and that's not going to end well.

There's nothing inherently wrong with being a niche sport, especially one with an attractive demographic profile.  The industry simply needs to rationalize itself around a realistic participation rate, and not over-invest based upon inflated expectations.  Or, if you're TaylorMade, you can continue to assume that every person watching Tiger wants to replace their $500 driver every 90 days...