Weekend Wrap

So, what do you guys want to talk about today?  

Tigermania - Grizzled vet Mike Bamberger was in the scrum coming up that 18th fairway:

Eighteen on Sunday at 6 o’clock, as Tiger marched up it with Rory McIlroy, was absolute pandemonium. For a few hectic minutes, the sheriffs and cops and security

officials — many of them burly men with huge voices and necks that were huger yet — could not control the crowd. Thousands of spectators, nearly all of them sweaty men, a good number of them over-served, swarmed the fairway. If you were in this dense mass of humanity, you could barely breathe and you might have found it scary. 

Woods was ahead of the fray, but only by a few yards. It was like a a great pressure valve had been released. There were rhythmic chants for the winner, for one of the greatest winners any sport has ever witnessed. But it felt like more than that. “The art of clapping is gone, right?” Woods said good-naturedly later. Back in his prime, he hated it when crowds got near him. “You can’t clap when you’ve got a cellphone in your hands.”

That actually looked more than a little scary, though it seems everyone survived unscathed.... 

Dave Dusek had this pithy summary of the five years in the wilderness:

After waiting more than five years since the 2013 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational – 1,876 days to be precise – and undergoing four back surgeries to alleviate pain in his neck and lower back, Woods was emotional on the 18th green during the closing ceremonies.

Before we circle back to The Striped One, let's take a moment with this schadenfreudaliscious header:

Oh no! Under next year’s new Tour Championship format, Tiger Woods wouldn’t have won

  But I've been reliably informed that Justin Rose won....

The Tour Confidential lads dive in on the issue of the day:

1. Tiger Woods has done what many observers once thought was unachievable. He overcame injuries, swing changes, off-course embarrassments, chip yips and even Father Time to win again on the PGA Tour. No one will confuse a 30-player Tour Championship field for the Masters or U.S. Open, but given the circumstances, is this the greatest comeback in sports history?

This is clearly a no or, perhaps more appropriately, a not yet....

John Wood: The win is too fresh to say. There have been some unbelievable comebacks

(Hogan almost dying in a car accident comes to mind) and only time will tell where this one ranks. But I’m sure in the end it will be way up there. What this win does do is resurrect golf. Not that it was down, but THIS is why we need Tiger to be like this. The crowds and the reactions were absolutely thrilling and priceless. The other guys are great, but Tiger does something to sports fans no one else is capable of doing.

Michael Bamberger: No. It’s a process. He’s a work in progress. It’s astounding. But Tiger Woods, as a historical figure in the game, is all about the majors. As a human being, where he is from where he was is… immeasurable.

This was a great week for Tiger and the game, but a little perspective is in order.  He beat only 29 other guys, so I'm far more impressed that he qualified for the event than by his winning it...  

In fact, the Golf Magazine guys did a pop-up TC Panel Saturday night that dealt with this question:

Tour Confidential Daily: Would a Woods victory be diminished because of East Lake’s small field?

Diminished seems not quite the right word, perhaps we should just quote that famous philosopher who famously said, "It is what it is."

We'll give Alan Shipnuck first crack at the issue of the day, what comes next, though I can't help but include his even pithier take on the back story:

He might’ve started celebrating a little too early, making a couple of sloppy bogies on 15 and 16, but those little mistakes were long forgotten by the time of the emotional

celebration on the final green. The fire hydrant, the 85 at Memorial, chip-yips, a DUI, hacked naked photos, shooting pains that brought him to his knees between the ropes, the layup on the 72nd hole at Valspar, the back-nine bogies at Carnoustie…you could see all of that in Tiger’s watery eyes. The fans were feeling it, too: The madcap scene at East Lake looked more like a religious revival than a golf tournament.

Well, revival seems exactly the right word.....

So, now that Woods has done what many of us thought he would never do again, what’s next? Tiger has famously had four back surgeries but it’s clear now that he still has more backbone than any other player in golf. During this season of reinvention two clubs had been holding him back: his driver and putter. (Woods had already reclaimed his title as the best iron player in the game.) But recent tweaks to the shaft and loft of his big stick have left Tiger swinging with more confidence and less bellicosity, and the way he dominated McIlroy off the tee on Sunday will long linger. No middle-aged warrior putts as well as they did during their halcyon 20s, but Woods was brilliant on the greens at the Tour Championship. Suddenly the ascent up Mt. Nicklaus has begun again, though up next is Sam Snead and his Tour record 82 victories. 

But Tiger turns 43 before this year is out. Can his reconstituted spine hold up to the rigors of the Tour grind? Will this divorced father of two continue to chase his former glory with the same single-mindedness now that he’s proven to himself (and everyone else) that he is still a winner? Those are questions for another day. Let the record show that Sept. 23, 2018, is when Eldrick Woods became Tiger once again.

Alan has just broken faith with his readers... If you're header promises an answer to the question of "What comes nest?", leaving it for another day is bad form....

3. How does this alter the landscape of the Tour moving forward? Can this version of Tiger have several more years of successful, winning golf, including more major wins? Is 18 back on the table? 

Bamberger: The whole example, the whole point here, is to say there’s no reason to think 18 should not be back on the table. Although I cannot see it. But it doesn’t matter what I think. Tiger’s the one doing the work. He is the one who understands his favorite word, process.

I think Mike should have rejected the premise of the question...  The important point is that 15 is back on the table, which it hasn't been since August 2013.  But the usually observant John Wood doesn't seem to get it:

Wood: As always, if his health remains, he looks to have at least five more years of championship-caliber golf. That’s 20 more majors, and given the fact that he had a chance to win two this year, before this win, I’d say everything is back on the table. As far as the landscape of the Tour, WHY are we changing the playoff format? The scenarios that were going on on that back nine were some of the most exciting things I’ve seen in golf in a long time. I kind of like the idea of two different things going on at once.

C'mon, John, do I really need to explain this to you?  Yesterday was interesting because it was Tiger....  Put Billy Horschel or any other interchangeable player in the lead of the Tour Championship and can you not see how yesterday would have deprived us of our will to live?

Ritter: I don’t know about 18, but I feel good about at least one more. It all depends on his health. Also, it seems like every year, in early spring, we ask ourselves, “Is this the most hotly anticipated Masters ever?” We can break that one out early. As in, today. 

Passov: I’ll agree with John Wood on Tiger’s prospects. He was right there on the back nine of the season’s final two majors, so why shouldn’t he be in the mix for several more? Eighteen is clearly a stretch, but why preclude the possibility? He’s once again one of the best players on Tour, so more wins and at least one more major is a realistic expectation. The Tour has to be LOVING this.

Christopher Powers and John Feinstein tackle the historical comeback issues, but the category errors mar the effort.  The former goes wide, covering all of sports, but.... well, see what you think:

Peyton Manning

After undergoing a pair of surgeries for his neck and spine in a span of five months in

2011, there were legitimate questions about whether or not Manning could ever return to an NFL field. Rumors then began to swirl that Manning couldn't even complete his throwing motion and had lost a significant amount of arm strength. But Denver Broncos general manager John Elway must have known something we didn't, because he signed Manning to a five-year contract that paid dividends. He went on to play four more years, winning his fifth NFL MVP award and appearing in two Super Bowls and winning one of them along the way.

See what I mean by category errors?  And more from Feinstein:

One need not compare it to Hogan. Apples and oranges. Different circumstances; different time; different world. Both are worthy of great respect, perhaps even awe. Tom Watson almost won the Open Championship six weeks shy of turning 60—26 years after his last major victory. That surely should garner some attention. 

Outside of golf, seven years after he had last won a major championship, Jimmy Connors made it to the U.S. Open tennis semifinals at age 39—which is considerably older in tennis than 42 is in golf. He didn’t win, but like Woods this year, played well enough to make those two weeks memorable. 

Watson and Connors made their stunning comebacks in one tournament, not over an entire year. Gordie Howe returned to the NHL at 51 when the Hartford Whalers of the defunct WHA joined the league, and he played in all 80 games, scoring 15 goals. He even played alongside a then-19-year-old Wayne Gretzky in the All-Star game. 

Muhammad Ali was denied 3½ years of his peak as a boxer because he refused to be inducted into the U.S. Army and came back to beat George Foreman to win back the heavyweight championship at age 32. 

There are, of course, other comeback stories across sports. But what Woods has accomplished this year certainly belongs high on any list of great comebacks.

Tom Watson?  Comeback is a funny term, dependent in equal part on the "From" and the "To".  In the Tiger's case the from is quite impressive, given that most of us considered him toast.  It's the "To" that's problematic, as beating a 30-player field in a money grab pales compared to Hogan's six majors post-bus.   On the flip side, though, it's still a work-in-process, so perhaps we should all chill....

Let me also note that we live in a world in which Steve Stricker won two consecutive Comeback Player of the Year Awards.... OK, I get the first, but the second has always puzzled me....

This was great, but there are two issues of greater interest to your humble correspondent....  care to join me?

Out With a Thud - Perhaps I erred in not saving that "Oh No!" from above, but Shack takes on the issue of the event's format change, first with this from his blog:

For over a decade we were annually told that what we saw before us was not as bad as

most suspected: the FedExCup was wonderful and not the most poorly constructed competition in sports. It was even exciting—Bill Haas!—and beyond the massive bonus money, was so much better than merely ending the season with a fall Tour Championship.

Which was true, if you were a PGA Tour player or executive cashing a bonus check.

Mercifully, the final version of the points-reset, algorithm-decided iteration ended with Justin Rose’s clinching 73 Sunday at East Lake. Rose made just 18 starts in 2018, killing the notion that season-long play starts were rewarded.

Questions loom about the purity of the next format with $15 million now on the line, but Tiger Woods thankfully helped everyone forget about that issue until we get to next August.

Rose must have been awarded the $10 million large for season-long achievement, because yesterday's play wasn't worthy of consideration.  I'll also say that that good bounce on the second shot on No. 18 was deserved after the bad break of blowing through the fairway with his 361-yard drive.

Shack uses his Golfweek platform to talk about what might have been:

If all goes well and the new format survives, the conclusion to the PGA Tour season should be compelling enough to watch most years. But the Tour Championship, now just 

a FedEx Cup concluding tournament adding a season-long excellence bias, will be missing the core component of any great playoff: rejection. 

The new FedEx Cup borrows a guiding and fatal flaw of its predecessor in resisting rejection by trying to influence on-the-field play. Yet America loves winners but secretly adores watching how others handle losing. The PGA Tour says it’s all about fan engagement these days, but the millions who tune into reality shows or playoffs in other sports also enjoy the process of elimination.

Yes, and that issue is complicated by the nature of our game, in which the best players win realtively rarely.

Had this been up to fans, some players or media, the playoffs would eventually let go of protecting season-long play and turned the players loose to decide the FedEx Cup. Gasp! Upsets might occur. Rejections in the form of a Tour Championship cut could have created shocking twists. Fans would have been more engaged by the possibility of an upset. 

Imagine a simple scenario in which the PGA Tour retained four days of Tour Championship play by keeping the hard-working algorithm in business a few days longer while also deciding a legitimate tournament. Then send the final six FedEx Cup leaders to a fifth day with an 18- or 36-hole shootout for the new first prize of $15 million that anyone can follow. 

“I would say that internally, we had a lot of discussion about a format like that, coming down to 18 holes or coming down to 36 holes, whether you were four or six players, and we brought that forward,” Monahan said.

“We didn’t get a whole lot of traction on those concepts just because players felt like – you look at the FedEx Cup and the fact that I’m battling from the Safeway Open to the Wyndham Championship, I make my way into the playoffs, and it’s going to come down to an 18-hole shootout?”

Traction?  Bitterly clinging to their participation ribbons, though theirs come with lots of zeros and commas...

The point of including that Wndham nonsense should have been to allow the freedom to make what comes after a high-stakes shoot-out, but they just can't get out of their own way....  The question is what happens when they have the next runaway result at East Lake?   That, we can all agree, is a question for a future day....

The Week Upon Us - Josh Sens had a well, sensible item Saturday night on the ramifications of a Tiger win, including this obvious point:

7. It would add yet another jolt to the Ryder Cup 

As if we needed further reason to be pumped for Paris, we would now have Tiger, fresh off a W, firmly in the fray of golf’s fiercest rivalry, no longer merely playing a ceremonial role. Not even the French could remain blase. Vive le Tigre!

Sure does, and it's a jolt to an event not actually needing any more juice...  But who does it help?  Not much attention to that...

Oh, the TC panel did have this:

5. Oh, if you haven’t heard, the Ryder Cup is next week. Woods is clearly in form, but several of his teammates aren’t quite so sharp. Jordan Spieth didn’t qualify for the Tour Championship (the only U.S. Ryder Cup player not in the field), and Brooks Koepka (four over), Patrick Reed (nine over), Bubba Watson (10 over) and Phil Mickelson (13 over) spiraled to the bottom four spots on the leaderboard. If you are Captain Furyk, any cause for concern?

Oh, yeah, though there's concerns for both teams....

Wood: No. The Ryder Cup is a completely different animal. It’s not a normal golf tournament. Being sharp physically going in is nice, but it’s certainly not a prerequisite for having a great Ryder Cup. There are too many variables. In the Tour Championship, if you’re not right there with a chance to win or at least top 10, it can be difficult to find inspiration. The difference between 15th and 30th is negligible in almost every way. So, if you’re not right there it’s easy to let your focus slip and let your mind wander to other things, especially when the Ryder Cup is the next event you’ll play in. I’m sure Captain Furyk is not concerned with anyone’s form. 

Bamberger: I stand with John. It’s match play. It’s head games. It’s Paris. It’s just completely different from a 72-hole I-hate-bogeys grindfest.

For sure...unless, you know, it isn't.  Some more thoughts:

Zak: I tend to agree with the men above. That being said, the difference between 15th and 30th here has got to be a lot more. Mickelson, Reed and Spieth have all caught my eye in a bad way. Let’s continue to talk sample size, though, and presume that they’ll all bring their hard hats to Le Golf National.

Dethier: Concern? Perhaps mild; the bottom four players on this week’s leaderboard are all donning the stars and stripes, and that’s not meaningless. But I think there may be a bit of a reset happening on the team plane at the moment as they celebrate Tiger’s victory and head to Paris. The U.S. is still certainly the favorites, but I expect a competitive, compelling week.

It's just the great unknown....  Some will thrive and others will wilt, but it makes those Friday morning matches Guys like Spieth and Phil may well ride the emotions to a better place, but they better do so quickly.....  

But what might we expect from Tiger?  Talk about your wild cards...  We've all seen Tiger finally embrace this event, and we can assume that he really wants to deliver the goods.  But we also see emotional letdowns after big wins, and only a few weeks back the conventional wisdom was that Tiger was worn out by the rigors of the long season.

I think the two top Euros, Rose and Rory, will be a bit embarrassed by their play, and they'll all want a piece of Tiger....  I'm going to allocate a small edged to the Euros coming out of this week, though the Ryder Cup remains a toss-up in all regards.  

And we will be flooding the zone on it all week.  Check back early and often.