Tiger Woods After His ACL Repair
Tiger Woods and family
When you talk about the Pro Tour, the big question in the back of the room is always what Tiger will emerge when he returns from his ACL repair. Will it be the guy who’s dominated the tour for years or maybe someone different?
Tiger will certainly know how to play his game. If he’s committed – which he always has been – he’ll come back as strong or stronger than he ever was. Maybe it won’t last for a lot of years – let’s not forget all the speculation about how many surgeries to the same knee can someone have before it’s compromised, or how Tiger’s swing puts too much pressure on his left knee – but it will be OK for at least a few.
So what reason do we have to think that he won’t be back as the dominating Tiger of old? For one, everyone changes, even Tiger. Sometime it’s the mental changes that are the critical ones. Tiger will have been away from golf longer than anytime in his life. That much time to reflect and expand activity into other areas can alter where golf fits into his life, after all Tiger is human. He’ll have had the chance to really immerse himself into fatherhood. Based on how he was raised and the reverence he has for his parents, it’s easy to imagine that golf will be a distant second to Sam. As she grows and begins to interact more with the world, Tiger will want to be there. Don’t forget there’s at least one more child on the way.
Then there are Tiger’s numerous philanthropic and business endeavors. While playing golf may be off his agenda for awhile, promoting it and building courses will certainly be more prevalent. Once you start a ball rolling, it’s difficult to stop it. If Tiger was practicing golf 8 hours a day, will that shrink to 5 because he’s allocated another hour and a half to Sam, a half hour to the Tiger Woods Foundation and an hour to designing courses?
Of course, this is all speculation. But as Tiger matures and grows, his involvement with the rest of the world is bound to become more than just being the best golfer. And this new involvement will demand time. I expect Tiger to really focus in ’09 on establishing his position once again at the top. After he does that, expect to see him become more and more selective in where and when he plays in the following years. Everyone who follows the pro game knows he will be intensely focused on beating Jack Nicklaus’s record 18 major wins. I’m not so sure that beating Sam Snead’s record of most tour wins will mean that much. Watch for other things – family, philanthropy and business - to become more important at some point. When they do, rest assured that Tiger will be driven to be the best at these as well. Even for Tiger Woods there are only so many hours in the day.
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Comments
Chris, I also think that the increased number of tournaments have hurt the game by cheapening all except the majors. There are now so many of equal value that the best pros don’t have a lot of incentive. And what’s going to happen now that the economy has crashed. Are a lot of the sponsored purses going to disappear?
I think you’re spot on John – in fact, I think the only way that Tiger can get to 18, and eventually past that (I’ve always said he’ll go for 20) is if he stops playing nearly as much. And as long as golf continues to have the lame-duck Fed Ex Cup, Tiger will have no incentive to continue to play more than just the majors and a select few tournaments that align with his business and philanthropic pursuits. It’s not as if he needs the cash at this point — the game of golf itself is not generating his cash flow. Tiger will adapt his game, re-engineer his swing to take pressure of the knee long enough to keep him on track to 20, and then walk away.