Is Tiger The Most Undervalued Golfer On The PGA Tour?

I was listening to ESPN talk radio yesterday and heard one of the talking heads bring up this subject.  I thought “Wait a minute, are you crazy?”.  But then I listened some more and realized what he was asking.  He wasn’t saying Tiger was underrated;  he was really asking this question  “Can the #1 player in a sport be undervalued?”  In regards to Tiger, it’s actually a great question.

Now, as I’ve said before, I’m not a Tiger crazy golf fan.  I tremendously respect his ability, but there are other golfers that are my favorites much more than Tiger.  But when you think about what he brings to the PGA Tour financially, he may in fact be undervalued, regardless of the huge amounts of money that he makes.

Look, for example, at the International Golf Tournament.  It was held in Denver and used to be on the PGA Tour schedule.  Tiger quit showing up for this tournament in 1999 and two years ago, boom, it’s not around any more.

Some have said that Tiger gets too much coverage.  And the media no doubt swarms to him like flies to honey.  But look at the absence of coverage while he was out with his knee surgery and you begin to understand the impact that he has on the sport.

Think about the growth in the size of the purses since he came on the tour.  All the golfers benefit from the money that has been poured into the sport.  Now I don’t have the numbers right here in front of me, but I’m willing to bet that they will bear me out.

After thinking about this, I believe that if you measure the financial impact that Tiger has had on the game of golf by looking at the actual dollars and subtract Tiger’s income directly from that number (even though the PGA doesn’t pay all that money directly to Tiger), the result would be a positive number.  And probably not a small one.  Which means that the impact he has had is huge.

So does this mean that he is undervalued in his sport?  Well I said that it’s a great question and I stand behind that.  But I can’t call a guy that makes the money that Tiger makes “undervalued”.  But I believe that he has been worth every penny to the sport.