There is the possibility that Tiger won’t be back.
The Professional Golf Association and its television and marketing partners never prepared for the day that Tiger Woods would not be part of the daily business world of the golf industry. The reality is probably now setting in. Sure, Tiger will be around in the future but more than likely Tiger Woods is not going to be the player that brings eyeballs to whatever video platform that features golf programming. There will be no potential Masters moment this year, there will be no talk of Tiger Woods adding to his grand slam total in trying to catch Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 major tournament victories. Woods has 15 major tournament victories but just one of those happened in the last 12 years.
The golf industry really has to move on. There are some very talented players who are competing from week to week but those players lived in the shadow of Tiger Woods. Because Tiger Woods got people in front of television sets, network executives treated him like gold. In the world of pay per view, Tiger Woods was the big attraction in trying to get people to pay for a made for pay per view golf event. In October, 2009, the International Olympic Committee dropped some sports from its program to add golf to the 2016 Rio Olympics. Golf was last an Olympics sport in 1904 but the thought of Tiger Woods competing for a gold medal in the 2016 Rio Olympics created visions in the heads of Olympics officials of money raining down on them after all, Tiger Woods in 2009 was just 34 years old and figured to still be at the top of his game seven years later in Rio. But in 2009, Woods’s golf world collapsed. He never reached prior levels. The golf world must adjust to life without Tiger Woods.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
