It took eight months for the World’s No. 1 golfer, Tiger Woods, to heal his surgically repaired left knee and return to the Professional Golf Association’s Tour in 2009. It took the international sports media about eight hours in an Arizona desert to inform the earth that golf, played by millions by ruled by only one, was relevant again in late February.The headlines, save no irrational metaphor for the man who has become the walking hyperbole of modern sport, read like taglines in a Hollywood script.
From the desert’s Arizona Daily Star — “Return of Superman means golf world will survive” — to the Los Angeles Times — “Tiger Woods’ comeback is bigger than the game” — not even the organization’s public relations department could save from spelling out Woods’ impact in bold language.
“Finally here, Tiger’s return is golf’s stimulus package,” read a headline on the Tour’s website February 19.
There was no uncertainty as to whether the world would be watching when Tiger teed it up for the first time in the new calendar year. The mainstream media, who plastered Woods’ toothy smile on the cover of Sports Illustrated and provided minute-by-minute coverage of his first public practice session two months ago, made the decision a one-sided affair.
The number of credentials issued was especially telling of the event’s mainstream magnitude. According to Sports Illustrated, “After attracting 128 media outlets and 379 journalists last year, when Woods defeated Stewart Cink 8 and 7 in the final, the tournament this year issued credentials for more than 175 outlets and 500 media members.”
The chosen PGA Tour event’s 10-syllable name alone — Accenture Match Play World Golf Championships — suggested a profound significance to Woods’ comeback.
Desperate for Woods to breath life back into the Tour, such coverage created an unprecedented saturation of Tiger-related stories in national media, but some argue that the importance of the event to the professional game commanded the attention.
“Is it over-coverage or coverage?” Golfweek columnist Jeff Babineau said. “I mean, [Woods] drives it. I saw a Champions Tour player over Christmas and he said ‘man, we miss Tiger.’ Tiger doesn’t play on the Champions Tour but he just talked about golf as a whole.
“We just saw everything suffer.”
In the longest absence of Woods’ career, the writers, reporters, authors, photographers, and bloggers of the 21st century journalistic world watched and portrayed golf as a silver screen with no superhero. Eight excruciating months later, Woods was back, complete with a bionic knee, a second child in newborn son, Charlie, and a resuming chase of Jack Nicklaus’ record 18 major championship victories.
“Eat your heart out, Michael Jordan,” Times columnist Bill Dwyre wrote February 20. “Your return was huge. His is gigantic.”
He later added, “… It is difficult to articulate how huge Woods is. The media doesn't just report. It drools.”
Few understand the dynamic of Woods’ mainstream coverage than Bob Smiley, a writer who followed every hole of Tiger’s 2008 PGA Tour season and authored a book about his journey, titled Follow the Roar. Asked about Dwyre’s assessment, Smiley said many writers avoid negative angles about Woods, fearing a backlash or future refusal for interviews from the Tour’s most powerful icon.
“Almost none of them will criticize [Woods],” Smiley said. “I think, to some degree, it’s because he’s the most powerful person in the sport. Arguably, his agent, Mark Steinberg, is the second most powerful person in golf.
“If you’re a reporter for the Phoenix newspaper and you trash Tiger, the problem with that is you’re pretty sure that you’re not going to get called on to ask a question for the rest of career. Tiger is very distrustful of the media and he has a handful of writers that he really trusts and enjoys.”
Babineau disagrees, contending that Woods’ is receptive to fair criticism and that many national publications, including Golfweek, have no reservations about treating coverage of Tiger as they would any other professional.
“If you’re accurate and you’re fair, I don’t think Tiger would ever hold that against you,” Babineau said. “… He’s a hard interview subject in that you only get so many spots to take your shots, interview him, and get a question in. It’s certainly challenging from an access point.
“I don’t think people fear negative stuff. As long as it’s fair, I think he’ll give you an honest answer.”
If the coverage of Woods’ initial week back was unparalleled — some, including ESPN.com reporter Jason Sobel, actually deceased coverage of the event after Woods lost in the second round — the fanfare was astronomical.
“In sports history, there is no recorded event at which 1,000 people awakened before dawn, drove to a remote location and paid $25, minimum, to watch Michael Jordan, or anyone, practice,” Star columnist Greg Hansen wrote on February 25 from Tucson, Arizona.
The picture paints a vivid explanation about Woods’ return to the Tour, in that news coverage deemed wildly unreasonable for the average professional golfer is wildly successful and not that uncommon with the man they call Tiger.
“He moves the needle,” Babineau said. “TV ratings show that and readership reflects that, as well.”
The ultimate missions of Woods’ return — “save golf from irrelevancy, win back corporate sponsors, restore the PGA Tour's television ratings and surpass golf's legends,” as summed by Cam Inman of the Contra Costa Times on February 25 — were almost universally understood in his initial week back from injury.
The Tour’s issues being overlooked in the wake of Woods’ first victory this year, a five-shot Sunday comeback the Arnold Palmer Invitational on March 30, are not as crystal clear. While outlets like Sports Illustrated and Bloomberg have focused recent coverage predominantly on Woods’ pursuit of winning the Masters and perhaps even the Grand Slam, others have enlightened major concerns — including the racial disparity of professionals — that have maintained on Tour.
Woods’ career, after all, has been built on success in the most crucial moments of competition, including the 16-foot putt that gave him a one-shot victory on the 72nd hole of the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Such drama, and Woods’ own sheer confidence, lends itself to the belief that winning the Grand Slam — accomplished only once, exactly 79 years ago by Bobby Jones — is entirely reasonable.
“The hazards are many, and the competition on the Tour may be the deepest Woods has ever faced,” SI senior reporter Damon Hack wrote in the magazine’s April 6 issue, assessing Woods’ chances at capturing all four major championships this year. “The math, however, is right.”
The math of the Tour’s current racial disparity, according to an April 1 article published by the Associated Press, is not. Lost in the majority coverage of Woods’ pursuit of the record books is that fact that 12 years after his first major win, at the 1997 Masters, he remains the only African-American professional on the PGA Tour.
“There were eight black players on tour in 1975, the year Lee Elder was the first black golfer in the Masters and the year Woods was born,” the report reads. “Now there is only Tiger.”
The surrounding context of Woods’ monumental return — especially in this, the first year an African American, Barack Obama, was sworn in as President of the United States — is also a significant factor in understanding Tiger’s latest media swarm. But while parallels can be drawn between Woods’ initial breakthrough on Tour and Obama’s election into office, neither Smiley nor Babineau believe the new President has impacted the way Tiger’s been covered initially this season.
“The parallel doesn’t totally work for me, but Obama will probably raise the race issue more than it has been in a few years,” Smiley said.
With all the concerns — economic, event sponsorship, and otherwise — that arose on Tour during Tiger’s extended absence, some wonder if the professional game is being set up for a nightmarish hangover when Woods finally decides to retire. Although his final event is likely years and perhaps, decades, down the road, the coverage surrounding his return reflects the Tour’s current dependence on the World’s No. 1 player.
“Certainly, if he left today, you’d feel all the air go out of the balloon,” Babineau said. “The tour has to build some other stars around him. I think it’s tried, but he’s just so far above everybody else. When we lost him for the eight months or so we lost him, it was felt.
“It was pretty sobering actually.”
Photo Credit /Robert Beck/ SI
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Here are the podcast versions of the interviews I conducted for this report --
Jeff Babineau - Charlie Kautz
Bob Smiley - Charlie Kautz
