Golf without Tiger Woods is plenty exciting.
Really, it is.
Watch it and you’ll see a group of emerging stars ready to step into the limelight and become the next big draw in the sport. If you haven’t been watching youngster Jordan Spieth, you’ve missed out watching the tour’s next superstar.
Spieth hasn’t won this year, but the 20-year-old from Dallas, Texas, has already tasted victory, having won last year’s John Deere Classic, holing a bunker shot on the 18th hole to become the youngest winner in the tour’s 82-year history and the only player to ever hoist a trophy while in their teens (he was 19 at the time). He wasn’t a one-hit wonder either, finishing in the top three two other times.
As an encore, Spieth came within a few shots of becoming the youngest player to ever don the green jacket at The Masters, the first of the year’s four majors. After three rounds, Speith was tied with Bubba Watson, the eventual winner, at 5-under and seemed to be in the perfect position to chase his first major.
Up two strokes after a birdie on 7, Speith made back-to-back bogeys on 8 and 9 to surrender the lead and knocked himself out of serious contention on the 12th hole, when he knocked his tee shot on the par three into the water fronting the green and double bogeyed.
It took a fantastic bogey-free back nine from Watson, the quirky everyman from Baghdad, Fla., who won his second green jacket. The 35-year-old with the pink driver and enormous personality is exactly the kind of eccentric character the tour needs to attract the casual fan to the sport.
Then, there’s Phil Mickelson, the ultimate people person whose wide smile and bubbly personality attracts scores of fans to his side. Throw in Mickelson’s amazing skill and a penchant for pulling off the risky shot under the gun on a Sunday afternoon in contention, and you have a player perfect for the fan looking for the kind of excitement that only Woods seemed to be able to generate.
The PGA has generated its share of excitement in the last few weeks with the ending in the tour’s most popular event, the Masters, and a dramatic ending at the RBC Heritage in Hilton Head Island, S.C.
Matt Kuchar, also in contention on Masters Sunday, holed a shot from the bunker on the 18th hole with a share of the lead to take a one shot lead that ended up being his margin for victory after England’s Luke Donald couldn’t birdie either of his final two holes to tie.
Sure, you’re going to have your share of winners in tournaments with less prestige that are not familiar to the casual fan.
But, frankly, Tiger plays so few of the “lesser” tour events that him being injured makes no difference in the results in those tournaments. Also worth noting is that Tiger hasn’t won a major since the memorable 2008 US Open at Torrey Pines, where Woods held off Rocco Mediate in an 18-hole Monday playoff on one leg.
Five years and one major into 2014 later, Woods is still stuck on 14 majors, which, despite Woods’ drought, is good for second place all-time behind Jack Nicklaus’ 18, which is to say the tour needed to begin looking for Woods’ successor as the sport’s premier superstar.
Speith is the front-runner after breaking out last year and coming within nine holes of his first major at the tender age of 20, and is already being lauded as the sport’s newest poster boy.
If Speith can develop into the star the tour desperately needs him to be, and tournaments, both prestigious and not, can produce dramatic, edge-of-your-seat action to suck the casual Woods fan into the sport, than golf can survive without its longtime star. It would still benefit the tour to have Woods in contention down the stretch on a Sunday, because Woods’ name still brings thousands of eyeballs to the tour’s telecasts, but he’s not going to be around forever. The tour needs a crop of young, fiery golfers to step up and put their charisma on display the way Woods did as a young man. The good news for the tour is that Speith appears to be the charismatic up-and-comer that they were hoping to find in Woods’ absence.