Aug. 4, 2013. Prior to yesterday’s scene at East Lake Golf Club, that was the last time Tiger Woods won on the PGA Tour.
Here are a few things that changed since the last time Tiger Woods won
It’s been five years since Woods won on PGA Tour. Here are a few things that have changed since then.
It’s the kind of story we hope to get when we invest all this time watching sports. This is someone who was the greatest ever to do it, was left for dead by most of the golf establishment, couldn’t even walk without pain a year ago, and he’s a PGA Tour winner 365 days later. He didn’t even need this win to prove himself after this wildly successful comeback year, but now we’ll take the hype and hope full-throat heading into this week’s Ryder Cup and on into next season.
Here’s a look back at where we were in the sports world, golf world, and beyond when Woods picked up career win No. 79, just for some context on how long we had to wait for number 80.
The young stars of pro golf today? Yeah, they pretty much weren’t even a blip on the radar.
Jordan Spieth has just won his first Tour event — the lowly John Deere Classic. Justin Thomas was a Web.com Tour rookie. Brooks Koepka was playing on the danged Challenge Tour — Europe’s version of the Web.com Tour.
LeBron James had just won an NBA Title. In Miami.
Hey, little did we know what was turning in the background. Maybe Woods’ triumph in Akron played a role in bringing The King home?
Donald Trump ... was a guy tweeting about Pete Rose a lot.
The current president of the United States had just wrapped up his reality television show, won by country music singer Trace Adkins a couple months earlier. This particular week, he was, uh, [squints] ranting on twitter about Pete Rose not being in the baseball Hall of Fame.
The preseason No. 1 in college football was Bama.
Ah, wait, yeah, these are supposed to be things that were different. Right.
The Cubs were still turbo-bad.
Theo Epstein’s work hadn’t turned the corner yet, and the North Side was still without a World Series for over 100 years. They were in the middle of a 66-96 season at this point. Not good!
The Browns were about to send out Brandon Weeden as their starting quarterback.
Rob Chudzinski was the coach. Jason Campbell and Brian Hoyer would get starts before the season was over. Baker Mayfield was walking on as a true freshman at Texas Tech.
The newest available iPhone was the 5.
No portrait mode! 3G! We thought we had it made back then, too.
Here’s what else you missed in the golf world from the weekend while Woods was causing a ruckus
Justin Rose won the FedEx Cup, and few people cared to notice.
There’s been much talk about the new Tour Championship seeding format — with some players getting a head start next year. The No. 1 player in the FedExCup standings will start the tournament at 10-under, No. 2 at 8-under, and 26-30 at the bottom of the standings will start all the way down at even-par.
As someone who’s always pro-format changes and getting diversity beyond standard 72-hole events, I didn’t care too much. It sounds fine, and it’s not like that seeding is random or unearned. Sunday flipped me. Can you think if we were cost a win from Woods because of that format. No thanks! Two winners on one day are fine, and maybe the Tour reconsiders after that show.
Tom Lewis edged Eddie Pepperell in Portugal. Hmm.
Tom Lewis won the Portugal Masters over the weekend, and that’s not a particularly huge deal. It was a rather benign set-up for a forgettable Euro Tour event, and that’s fine, the PGA Tour has plenty of those. Lewis has won here before, and nowhere else on the PGA or European Tours. Fine. Onto the next.
But it’s who Lewis edged out that’s rather intriguing. Here’s Eddie Pepperell, golf’s No. 1 tweeter, lingering up near the top of a leaderboard once again. The second-place finish pulled him up into the top 10 in the Euro Tour’s Race To Dubai. It’s fair to say that he had a better case than Sergio Garcia, among others, to make the Euro Ryder Cup team as a captain’s pick. He’s clearly in good form. Does that matter? Maybe.
We won’t have to wait long to figure out if Sergio was the right call. It’s officially Ryder Cup week.
Celia Baroquin Arozomena was honored at Iowa State’s football game on Saturday
It’s still a horrifying story that’s hard to calibrate: the Big 12 Women’s Player of the Year being murdered in cold blood on the golf course in Ames, Iowa. Her school honored her memory at Jack Trice Stadium on Saturday. It’s an emotional scene. Watch below.
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