Tiger Didn’t Win This Week’s Golf Tournament, but…

So Tiger’s streak has ended. He won’t break Byron Nelson’s record of eleven straight golf victories right now. But what does it mean for the game of golf when you look at Tiger, his success, and where the rest of the field is right now? Like everyone else, I have an opinion and you may not like it, but read on.

If any of you have followed golf for more than just a few years, or if you have studied the history of the game, you may recall when Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, and Gary Player used to fight it out on the golf course. There was debate at different times between who was the best Nicklaus or Palmer, and Player was always lurking right behind.
But today it doesn’t seem that Tiger has any golfer like that to push him or challenge him week in and week out. In any given golf tournament, someone may jump up like this past weekend and outplay Tiger. But no one or two golfers are argued to even be in the same class that Mr. Woods is in.
And, unfortunately, I don’t think this will change in the short term. Why? Because of money. Not greed, just the abundance of money available in the game of golf today. Keep reading before you click away and let me make my point.
I think that the success of professional golf, particularly on the men’s tour, is creating a real problem for the game. How many golfers are going to come along with the kind of talent or potential of a Tiger Woods AND have or sustain the intensity and drive to succeed that he has?
Not many professional athletes that have achieved the level of athletic and financial success would remain as driven as Tiger has. He is focused and while it may be Jack’s record of major tournament wins, it seems to go deeper than that. He appears to me to want there to be no question, no doubt in anyone’s mind that he was the greatest golfer of all time.
And I believe that the combination of that drive and talent, and the ability to keep that drive is nearly next to impossible in today’s professional game. Look at it this way. How many of you golfers out there have heard of Johnson Wagner? Well, maybe his Mom and just a few others of you, but I don’t know who he is. But in 2007 he was in position # 98 on the PGA Tour money list with $1,013,024 in winnings. A MILLION DOLLARS! And he probably got some endorsement money as well.
Now I know that professional golfers have expenses and all of that. But here’s the bottom line. If you could net say about $400,000 in income playing what amounts to mediocre golf at the professional level, how motivated would you be to work out and practice all the time? I mean sure, these are professional golfers and they want to win and they want to get better. But what will really drive them if they aren’t already driven, especially when they can make that kind of money and be average?
So unfortunately for the game of golf, for golf fans, and even for Tiger himself, I don’t believe that Tiger will have his Jack or Arnie to ever push him day in and day out. So we may never see the ultimate in how good of a golfer Tiger could become. He has already proven to have more talent AND more drive than anyone out there by a long shot. And I am just afraid that there won’t be another exceptional individual like that for some years to come.
Success tends to breed complacency. And if you don’t believe that or don’t agree with me on this that’s ok. But go look at numbers 50 through 100 on the 2007 Men’s Professional Golf Money list and see if I don’t have even a small point here.
Good golfing!