The spin doctors who make their living off the sport will tell us the absence of Tiger Woods from the 2014 Masters won’t be catastrophic for the golf’s first major championship, that it will give others a chance to shine. At least that’s the way CBS broadcaster Jim Nantz sees it.
“There’s going to be competition next week and it’s going to be exciting,” Nantz said during a recent conference call. “That tournament is never about one player.”
We also will hear about how the talent pool in golf is deeper than ever and about how the class of rookies in this year’s Masters might be the most talented ever — headed by Patrick Reed, who won three times in seven months, and Jordan Spieth, who had nine top-10 finishes and one win last year to land on the money list last year.
“Once this tournament gets started, we’re going to have a pretty quick transition from the headline being ‘Tiger not being there’ to the fact that young players like Jordan Spieth and Patrick Reed are making an impact on this golf tournament,” Nantz said. “I’m very excited to see what those two are going to do at Augusta this year.”
Of course, that’s the glass-half-full version. The flip side is Woods missing his first Masters in 20 years is a blow to the tournament. The Tiger lovers and Tiger haters have no rooting interest, nor does the casual fan who only follows golf when he is on the leaderboard.
“It will definitely affect the sport,” two-time major winner Rory McIlroy said. “I think golf is always better when Tiger Woods is in the conversation.”
With or without Woods, the Masters will offer some sort of dramatic ending that will be talked about days afterwards. It always does, whether it’s Bubba Watson’s shot out of the trees on the 10th hole of a playoff to win in 2012, or Adam Scott beating Angel Cabrera on the second playoff hole last year to become the first Australian to win a Green Jacket.
“It’s still the most fascinating and most pristine tournament that is on the players’ schedule,” three-time Masters champion Nick Faldo said. “Every year is a historic week.”
That might be true for Augusta. The prestige, setting and tradition combine to produce a memorable event. What golf needs from this Masters is a winner, who will then begin to establish himself an elite player into the future, and not a one-time wonder.
Reed and Spieth are known to followers of golf because they’ve shown some consistency. But they haven’t won on a stage like Augusta, which would make them recognizable to the average sports fan.
“It’s great for the sport to have people who are up there week in, week out that win tournaments,” McIlroy said. “That creates sort of rivalries, and that’s something we haven’t really had in golf for a couple of years.”
Woods’ rivalry with Phil Mickelson has carried golf for the past decade, but both are starting to feel their age. Woods, 38, is out until the summer after undergoing a microdiscectomy procedure to relieve pressure on a nerve in his back. Mickelson, 43, is playing in the Shell Houston Open trying to work through a pulled muscle in his side.
Woods should make a full recovery, according to Dr. Andrew Casden, an orthopedic spine surgeon at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who has treated many athletes with the same procedure.
“He’ll have to start off slowly and build up,” Casden said, “but with a gradual therapy program and resumption of his swing, he should be able to return to competitive golf at a level he is used to.”
To what level is uncertain. Will it be the level that helped him win 14 majors or the level that hasn’t seen him break the top 20 in his past three majors?
That’s why golf needs a few new stars to emerge at Augusta.