The Curse Of Tiger Woods

You don’t have to love golf to enjoy Tiger Woods, but if you love sports, it’s pretty much impossible to shrug off what happened at Augusta National on Sunday. With Tiger charging up the leaderboard in The Masters’ final round, golf felt relevant again.

Maybe it’s unfair to the other golfers to say that if Tiger’s not winning, golf doesn’t matter. But with Tiger at the head of the pack, it feels like you’re watching history. Like you’ve got a front row seat for a spectacle you’ll remember the rest of your life. Something you’ll tell your kids about. When Charl Schwartzel duels with Adam Scott, it’s like watching a bunch of people speaking a dead language.

So, Tiger’s a gift and a curse.

He’s a gift because he brings in millions of new fans and breathes life into a sport with rituals and personalities that sometimes make it seem like some sort Ivy League secret society. Golf’s always gotten more coverage than it deserves in the mainstream, mainly because sportwriters and rich people generally like to play golf. But when Tiger’s in contention, for once, all the attention feels justified.

There’s also the curse, though. When Tiger’s not in contention, regardless of the story that upstages him, the whole spectacle just seems lifeless by comparison. And never has that been laid so transparent as it was Sunday. When it looked like Tiger had a chance and would make a comeback, The 2011 Masters instantly became the biggest event in sports. If you weren’t watching Sunday, you were getting frantic text messages from friends saying, “Are you watching this???”

But once it became clear he’d lost and we had a three-way race between Adam Scott, Charl Schwartzel, and Jason Day, that question became, “So what else is on?” None of it mattered anymore. Only Jason Day’s wife could lend sex appeal to what we were left with.

It’s like when you first experience what it’s like to sit in first class on an airline. After that, anything else just seems inferior. Where are the warm towels? The complimentary champagne? The gourmet meals? Sitting in First Class is a gift; but once you experience life on the other side of the curtain, sitting in coach will never be the same.

It’s stupid, but it happens to pretty much everybody.

Humans flying through the air should be good enough to satisfy us, just like Charl Schwartzel’s four birdies on the final four holes on Sunday should be enough to capture sports fans’ imagination. But once you’ve experienced first class, everything else just seems tedious. And Tiger Woods brought golf into first class for more than a decade. He was the Triple Crown Winner, the Home Run King, and the dominant Heavyweight, all rolled into one.

Sunday, just for a few hours, he was his old self, and it reminded us what The Masters can be.

It can be a must-see event that transfixes sports fans all over the world and makes us rush to the nearest TV. It can drive us crazy over missed eagle putts and clutch birdies. It can have us on the edge of our seats. It can be all those things, as long as Tiger’s in the running.

But without Tiger in contention, everything else just seems like... Well, golf. What else is on?