Tiger in decline - a whole new world?

by Greg Allen

It looks like the new world of golf without a dominant figure like Tiger Woods will be very happy hunting ground for bookmakers, a nightmare for punters and a source of a headache for television executives.

The latter have already glimpsed a world without Tiger after the early tournaments of 2010 suffered massive fifty per cent drops in audience figures. Then came Sunday's stroll around the links by the gap-toothed, smiling Louis Oosthuizen who obviously cared little that his easy canter to victory was a switch off for many viewers.

Television ratings in the US for the final day were so low that ESPN.com columnist Gene Wojciechowski wrote the following:

'It wasn't boring. It was a par 5 beyond boring. It was so maddeningly dull that you wanted to stick the sharp end of a barbecue (sic) tongs in your eyes.'

So it wasn't good for you then Gene I guess.

But if it had been Tiger Woods winning that way you can be sure that such a performance of effectively lapping the field would likely have been applauded with a different sort of hyperbole as his wins in 2000 (by eight strokes) and in 2005 (by five strokes) unquestionably were.

Is the era of Tiger's dominance over?

It looks like we are now in some sort of post-Tiger dominance era.
There's every chance he could win again and possibly even scrape his way towards his long held goal of eclipsing Jack Nicklaus' championship record of 18 but to do that he has to win more majors from now on than Phil Mickelson has won in his entire career.

And he has to do it with a new fearless brand of player like Oosthuizen, YE Yang or Graeme McDowell for that matter to contend with.

Yang's success last August in the USPGA Championship, in more than matching Woods over the closing round in Hazeltine, might well be regarded in future as a watershed which preceded the scandal which in turn precipitated a slow decline in the powers of the once all-conquering phenomenon that is Tiger Woods.

Certainly, the new world of golf is different and not quite as rich with the old fist-pumper struggling as he is but in many more ways it is a more interesting place which, as a spin-off, is a lot more profitable for bookies.

Dating back to April of last year, six of the last seven major winners have been ranked outside the top 30 in the world on the week preceding their respective triumphs.

Low ranked winners are the new Major trend

In 2009, Angel Cabrera was at number 69 before he won the Masters, Lucas Glover was ranked 71st before he won the US Open, Stewart Cink was number 33 in the world before his victory at Turnberry and Yang at 110 before he thwarted Woods in the PGA.

This year, we have had Mickelson at number 2 when he won the Masters but since then Graeme McDowell won the US Open from a ranking of 37 and now Louis Oosthuizen won the Open ranked 54 in the world.

Hail the new outsiders who have witnessed Tiger raising the bar so high that while many of them have upped their game in response, the man who pioneered the new territory is trying to cope with a body ravaged by a whole host of injuries in recent years and a personal life that is the most nutritious fodder in modern day celebrity-obsessed history for the scandal sheets.

There is a school of thought that Woods has thrived on being over estimated in his career. To a great degree, that comes with winning your first major by 12 shots but now it will be interesting to see how he will respond if, as is likely, he loses the top ranking in the world for the first time since he turned 30.

When he temporarily lost the No 1 spot to Vijay Singh in 2004, it was at the end of a lengthy period of swing rebuilding and Woods was only 28 at the time. Now, with so many more rivals, some half a generation younger than him, the road back to the top might look a lot more pot-holed and slippery.

But for all we know, the next chapter in his career may well begin here.

Can St Andrews defeat spark another reinvention?

Defeat over the Old Course at St Andrews, his favourite venue in all of golf, may well be the kind of experience that stirs something within Tiger that we haven't yet seen. He remains utterly driven by that one goal of reaching Jack's total of 18 majors and then getting to 19.

When you have won a US Open by 15 shots in your career and another with two stress fractures and a busted cruciate ligament, there are clearly deep personal reserves of mental strength within Woods and possibly some he has yet to tap into but it may take a year or more for him to come to terms with his personal life before we see Tiger Mark II emerge.

In the meantime, well done Louis on winning the Open in such revered surroundings in a manner in which Tiger would have been proud.

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There were a significant number of inquiries about the pronunciation of Open winner Louis Oosthuizen's name. After his Friday round, I was among a number of journalists who asked Oosthuizen how his name was pronounced.

He said quite clearly that his name was pronounced 'West-hay-zen'.

There were only a few journalists present but I recorded his pronunciation of his own name and played it on two RTÉ programmes on Saturday. All the journalists present when he pronounced his own name agreed that the first syllable of his name was 'West' rather than 'Oost'.

There was no BBC journalist present at the gathering that I could see but I subsequently heard that Jean Van de Velde, who was working as a commentator for BBC television, also asked Louis how to pronounce his name and again he clearly pronounced it 'West-hay-zen'.

For myself and others who were present, we were left with a situation of pronouncing his name either correctly as the player wished or incorrectly. We chose to pronounce his name the way the player wished.

As a footnote, in an unrelated situation at his victory press conference, the chief press officer Malcolm Booth congratulated the Champion golfer for 2010 with the phonetic pronunciation 'West-hay-zen'.

Clearly he had asked the champion and wanted to get it right.