Covering the golf tour, days are long – even when Bryson DeChambeau isn’t playing – and the nights can stretch well into the morning.
I don’t recall all of them vividly (probably just as well) but one conversation from twenty years ago has always stuck in the memory.
At a hotel bar somewhere in Ayrshire, covering the Amateur Championship, there was a long and reasonably well-oiled discussion with a senior executive from a major equipment company.
In 2000 we were all agog at the first coming of the phenomenon of Tiger Woods. This executive had a vision of the future for golf where Tiger would be golf’s sun, and everything and everybody else would be satellites in his orbit.
Woods would take the game of golf out of the exclusive clubs and country clubs into the urban world, making the sport cool and attractive to millions worldwide. He’d be a pied piper to take the sport to unimagined levels of prosperity and popularity.
So much so, continued my friend, that the PGA Tour would be superceded by the Tiger Tour, his mere name and occasional presence guaranteeing the greatest fields, prizefunds and TV coverage. Tiger wouldn’t just be the greatest ever, he would effectively become the sport.
That discussion stuck in the mind because I’d assumed that the executive was just wrong. Now, even after all that has happened to Tiger and to golf in two decades, I’m not so sure.
Last week we were appraised of plans which have been circulating in whispers across the game for a while – that there are plans for a World Tour which might undercut the established tours.
The people behind the proposed Premier Golf League seem to be similar to the private equity investors pumping money into Rugby Union at the moment and, relatively recently, into F1.
Their proposal is 18 worldwide events, each with $10 million prizefunds, while the four majors would complete up a 22-tournament season, which all players would compete in full.
Proposed World Tours are nothing new. Greg Norman famously tried to get one going in the 1990s, which eventually mutated into the WGC events that are still with us. They are well-subscribed by the best players, even if they rarely quicken the heartbeat.
But the WGCs are wholly controlled by the major tours. The PGL people talk of co-existing with the established tours, but we know that’s not really going to happen. The blazers at Ponte Vedra Beach and Wentworth aren’t up for sharing their riches with anyone, and are not in the business of being replaced either, as Norman discovered.
Given that the tours are effectively run by the players – or executives employed by players, to be exact – it’s asking a lot for them to give up their autonomy to this group.
But the vast sums of money being suggested talks loudly, and it’s interesting to note that the PGA Tour leaked out that the prizefund for their flagship event, The Players Championship, will rise to £15 million in March.
Was that a shot across the incomers’ bows? Possibly, but the money isn’t going to get all the players on its own, anyway. One thing that might is Tiger.
The frenzy for Woods at the moment, especially in the US golf media, is almost all-consuming. It’s as if golf realises it didn’t exploit his fame well enough the first time around, and is going full bore on it for his renaissance.
An example; during the third round at Torrey Pines on Saturday, Tiger – nicely positioned although still some way off the lead – made a nice birdie start.
Behind him, Jon Rahm started birdie-eagle to move within a shot of the lead. But you wouldn’t have known by the CBS TV feed, which was still focused on Tiger. Perhaps they had no film of Rahm, who just materialised on the leaderboard without explanation.
Once the tournament ended on Sunday, Tiger finished six shots behind winner Marc Leishman. But Woods’ reaction to the tragic and untimely death of Kobe Bryant was the only story.
A number of major US media outlets, for example ESPN and their reporter Bob Harig, don’t seem to cover anything but Tiger in golf now. Bob’s an admirable journalist with a broader view, but due to orders it appears he’s a Tiger correspondent now as much as a golf one.
Tiger moves the needle with the general public, we’re told, and the media must follow as a result.
He certainly has much more public recognition than Phil, Rory, Jordan or Brooks. But he never actually took the game anywhere near the broad popularity and diversity my executive friend promised, and let’s face it, with limited time left because of age and a worn body, it’s likely now he never will.
But even in a limited, enclosed market, Tiger seems to be the only story worth telling to get those momentary glances – “hits” – on social media or the internet that are the currency of the modern media world.
As a result, Tiger can still take golf anywhere he wants to.
He seems happy with the status quo. But the chance to influence, and to continue to make money beyond his playing years as the figurehead of the sport?
It might be tempting. What’s clear is that the PGL won’t work without Woods.