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Friday, February 20, 2009
Never has golf needed someone as much as Tiger
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The earth can start turning again. Gentlemen, start your drivers. Warm up your irons. Tim Finchem can exhale at last. Charlie Axel Woods’ father is coming back to work again.
Using the trade name of Tiger, he sent this invigorating message: “I’m now ready to play again.”
Doing his best to put a mask on his joy, Commissioner Finchem said, “We are pleased that Tiger is returning and look forward to watching him compete next week.” Or any week, for that matter.
Never has a performer in any game been so sorely missed. Some of the Tour tournaments looked as if they were being played to a gallery of weeping pines and stoic oaks. No roping off the spectators. No spectators. In some sports, the game might have been called off on account of inclement attendance. Think of how those players had to feel, Paul Goydos, John Mellinger, Charlie (nice name) Hoffman, Richard S. Johnson, all those guys who showed up to go to work in the morning and found out nobody cared. Things got so bad that when a kid named Dustin Johnson was leading after three rounds at Pebble Beach, they sent everybody home.
(Well, actually, it was the Crosby weather. Rained like the devil, the wind blew flags out of the pin, and the seagulls were flying in reverse.)
Now those vacant spaces along the fairway will be filled again. Break out the ropes, even in some place in Arizona named Marana. They’ll be playing the Accenture World Match Play Championship there next week. This has not been one of Tiger’s hottest events. He has won it three times, but in other years he has lost to otherwise unacclaimed players with names like Peter O’Malley, Chad Campbell, Nick O’Hern (twice) and last year, Aaron Baddeley was a short putt from putting him away. But blew it. Then Tiger came back and blew Stewart Cink off the course in the championship match.
Balancing the budget is not an object with Tiger and his brood. He leads the world in on-course earnings, $93 millions and change. Winning is. Any tournament he plays and doesn’t win is a tournament squandered. To lose to him has become a popular way to go. You’ve never see a more ebullient loser than Rocco Mediate after the Open at Torrey Pines last year,
That was Tiger’s last fling, gallantly stumping around the course like a wounded warrior. Eight months have passed and the body and spirit are revved up to hit the trenches again. And, as the PGA Tour goes, not a moment too soon. The Fed Ex Cup has not had the curative effect Finchem had in mind, especially after the embarrassment of the Tour Championship at East Lake last year. Sponsors are dropping out in unceremonious style. Alvin Stanford and Bobby Ginn, whose names were on tournaments on three tours, are up to their clavicles in legal entanglement. Buick and Chrysler, two long-running sponsors, are now pawns of Congress. Things are in a cussed mess.
Welcome back, Tiger! Not a moment too soon.
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