Tiger Woods has become a household name in the past decade. He is considered one of the world's best athletes. For those of you who follow golf, and maybe even those of you who don't but know the greatness that is Tiger...You know he has been out of golf for the past 8 months having reconstructive knee surgery. This article, in USAToday, seems to suggest the Tiger can single handedly pull the golf industry, the PGA Tour, and network ratings out of its slump. The article gives hard statistics that insinuate since Tiger has been out, everything from attendance at tournaments to advertisements for tour stops has gone down. It is crazy to me that one man's absence can have such an adverse affect on an entire sport.
Talk about a testament to the power of fandom! Have we ever seen any other sport that has had one athlete with such a significant impact on the fans and their following? When I think about it though, I love watching golf but I haven't tuned in since Tiger last played at Augusta, over half a year ago.... So maybe the article has a point. I guess I'm just graveling at what it is about Tiger Woods that makes him so powerful for the entire golf industry. And maybe it is just the obvious, that he truly is one of the world's greatest athletes.
I think one that draws people into Tiger, besides his golf game, is his personality. The man is one of the most soft-spoken, nicest men I have ever met (Congressional Golf Course in D.C. summer '07). His power and his game are really unmatchable in his sport. I mean take his last tournament appearance, someone as insignificant as Rocco Mediate makes it to a playoff round with Tiger and now everyone knows his name. He even made it to the end-of-the-year wrap-up on HBO Sports, with the likes of Michael Strayhan, Jimmy Rollins, and Michael Phelps (granted Tiger joined him via satellite). A man like Tiger can really turn the game around because he is one of the greatest to ever play. He won his last tournament on a shot knee, basically limping from one whole to the next. He is on course to break records, and not just break them, smash them. I think the closest thing we have to him in another sport in LeBron James -- but lumping the two of them in a category seems wrong. In a twist of events and tying in of blogs, could you imagine if we found out that Tiger used performance-enhancing drugs? I mean, not like they're popular in golf, but still...
ReplyDeleteI really think you can make the argument that no single athlete has meant more to his sport than Tiger Woods, to the point where he can singlehandedly revive the public's interest in that sport. Jordan was the last person you could maybe put in that category, but the NBA still had other faces in the game during his era like Magic, Barkley and Bird. Tiger made people care about golf again, and in his absence over the last 8 months its popularity severely waned. Golf needs Tiger. Sports needs Tiger.
ReplyDeleteIt seems absolutely unbelievably to me that an entire industry can be held up, single-handedly by one man. And yet, the entire industry IS held up single-handedly by one man. Unreal. Tiger Woods, to my, epitomizes the hero in the myths we hear about daily. His myth is one of personal failure, then incredibly triumph. He leads people to believe that you CAN be good looking, have a gorgeous model girlfriend (well, I guess only about half of the population would want that...), have fame, success, talent, children and a career. Tiger leads people to believe that it IS possible to have it all. And that is why he holds up the sport of golf. It is because of what he represents as a hero in the myths we are told.
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