In case you haven’t heard yet, Tiger Woods won all of golf this weekend. The event was the Tour Championship finale at the beloved East Lake Golf Club in/near Atlanta, Georgia. As you can see in the picture above, a few people turned out to watch Tiger walk down the 18th hole to wrap up his first victory since 2013. Apparently this was a big deal to a lot of people and the 2019 Masters tournament is already over.
Like most of you, I assumed Tiger winning again on Tour was a forgone conclusion based on his 2018 performance. There have been a lot of people that are embarrassingly emotionally attached to the Tiger comebacks, and there have been plenty of others that have been nay-sayers. If I hear one more person refer to “we” when they talk about Tiger’s play, I might go crazy. “No, you have zero impact on Tiger Woods and his performance.” Me? I’m a former massive Tiger fan that isn’t as big of a fan these days but wouldn’t mind seeing him win again and believed it would be good for the game. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how I would feel or react when Tiger won again, but I too got to find out this weekend.
So there I was, standing at the bar of my local bottle shop (shout out Beer Cellar) where I stopped in to say hello to a couple friends and see if there was anything I wanted to pick up for that evening’s dinner. I convinced the guys to flip from the Bears-Cardinals game that seemed like a railroading (we were wrong) to the last few holes of golf. A few random know-it-alls start chiming in about Tiger and how Bryson DeChambeau already won the FedEx Cup, but otherwise, I watched Rose make birdie on 18 and the final wave of bodies flood down 18 to see Tiger plop a shot out of the bunker for an easy two-putt bird.
Tiger Woods won again. I didn’t cheer, I didn’t go nuts, I didn’t act like my life was changed forever. To me professional sports is entertainment, not a way of life. That doesn’t mean I don’t get caught up in the stories and enjoy it for what it is, but my life would go on should Tiger never win again. Then it hit me. I turned to my right and told my friend, Edgar, “I can’t tell you I’m going to lose my mind, but I feel like there’s some equilibrium in the world now.” Equilibrium? That’s exactly what it was. A certain sense of, “Tiger Woods is winning golf tournaments again, this is what’s supposed to be happening in professional sports.” All of the sudden, the consistent performances of my childhood felt like they might be back, and the dumpster fire of the past decade of Eldrick-based drama was over.
I do hope Tiger can win more majors and I know he’ll win enough tournaments to pass Snead. I’m genuinely hopeful for this to happen so “the greatest sportsman relative to his sport in my generation” can set the bar. There’s a certain level of excitement about that regardless of who or what that is. To have been around to be a witness to it. At the least, it will give golf a seriously needed boost that may revive some of its mainstream popularity. I read a quote that said “Tiger doesn’t move the needle. He is the needle.” That’s 100% the truth and it’s good for all of us in the golf world.
Did you have any interesting reactions, or witness anything absurd that you can’t shake out of your brain? Share your story in the comments below!
