Tiger Woods and Roger Federer were back working their usual magic over the weeked, with Federer notching his tenth Grand Slam title at the Australian Open and Woods running down the field at Torrey Pines for his seventh consecutive PGA Tour win. It has sparked several ‘who is better?’ debates in the media, including this one from ESPN.com. It says here, though, that there is no debate. Roger Federer is an amazing talent, perhaps the finest tennis player in history. But as Jason Sobel noted in his argument in the linked ESPN piece above, Woods doesn’t face one player at a time…he takes the best shot of an entire tour every time he shows up. Critics seem intent on pointing out that Tiger picks and chooses when and where to show up, but such an argument is made irrelevant by the fact that Woods wins on a variety of courses when he decides to put the spikes on. No one could compare Hoylake to Medinah or Torrey Pines, yet Tiger mastered each of them.
Federer, for all of his brilliance, still needs to win a French Open title to elevate himself into completely rarified air. He has put himself among tennis legends, and arguably his only company in that pantheon might be Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Connors, Rod Laver, John McEnroe, and Pete Sampras. But Woods is on the verge of being really lonely at the top, as only Jack Nicklaus remains in the conversation with Tiger as the greatest golfer of all-time. Golf is not a game that lends itself to one man actually beating another. In tennis, you stand across the net from the man you are trying to beat. If you are better, you win. Golf throws the course into the mix, and there is really very little one man can do to beat another. One golfer cannot physically stand in the way of defeating another, unless it is a match play situation. But somehow Woods does just that, with his mere presence becoming a legitimate physical impairment to his foes. They always know when he is on the leaderboard, and that presence routinely causes outstanding professionals to turn into weekend hackers. And then Tiger has nothing left but closing the deal…something he does as well as any competitor in any sport ever has.
If you watched any of the Buick Invitational last week on either the Golf Channel or CBS, you may still have a concussion from being beaten over the head with the PGA’s new FedEx Cup. It was a shameless bit of promotion by the PGA and its broadcast partners, and I have no idea how they were able to get Nick Faldo to speak with enthusiasm on the contrived playoff system. Faldo’s greatest strength has always been his candor and wit, yet there he was over the weekend, forced to play the company man and endorse this ridiculous concept. They even had the Cup on hand, as if it was somehow a trophy steeped in tradition and worth having around as anything other than a place to take a crap if the nearest port-o-let was out of order.
People who love golf, love golf. They don’t need some playoff (cue Jim Mora) system to give them a reason to watch. And neither do I (at least not as long as Tiger is in the field). People who don’t love golf, don’t…and they won’t be watching whether there’s a playoff or not. The entire system is asinine, just like that of the Nextel Cup. Apparently its only real purpose is to force the best players (Tiger and Phil) to play more often…which is something they won’t do. Will Tiger try to win the FedEx Cup? Sure, but only because winning is the only thing he knows how to do. But not because he needs the $10 million in prize money and not because he’s trying to win as many FedEx Cups as Jack Nicklaus (who thankfully has zero). He’s not going to change his preparation in pursuit of majors just so he can rack up an arbitrary number of points for a championship created out of thin air. Mickelson isn’t going to spend less time with his family or less time binging on In and Out burgers because he is so passionate about putting a FedEx Cup on the mantle. It’ll be nice for some guy to cash the winner’s check for the cool ten million, but in the long view of golf history being FedEx champ isn’t going to rival being the Masters champion or the winner of the U.S. Open. At least not in my lifetime.
But it was nice of Jim Nantz to try and convince me otherwise…
Well it took me a while, but I’ve finally looked at the site again in depth and found this jewel. The Chief Justice is so right in his analysis of the Fed-Ex Cup. As someone who spends quite a bit of time on golf-related sites, the number of people interested in this “playoff” begin in and end in Tim Finchem’s hallway.
Not only is the process as confusing as Chinese Trigonometry, it has forced a huge problem with scheduling. Tournaments that have been staples for years on the tour are gone. Chicago has lost the Western Open (which is the second oldest tourney in the US) and is now on a rotation with two other cities. Denver is losing it’s long standing tournament and unique scoring system because the tour gave them a new week and said, “Thanks for your long-time support, but we would rather showcase our latest TPC project during the high ratings weeks.”
Finchem has helped make the players a lot money (Tiger may have something to do with that too…), but he wants the Fed-Ex Cup to be his legacy. But he has it all wrong: the big boys, TW, Phil, Ernie and a few others aren’t there for the money. Ten million, twenty million what do they care. It is not enough to make them leave their mansions to go to Quad Cities to earn some more Fed Ex points. I hope Tiger and Phil win 4 or 5 times each this season, and thanks to a slew of top fives Charles Howell hoists the cup at whatever tournament it finally comes to an end at.
Nothing better than having your inaugural champion be recognized by about 48 people.