Tiger Woods - Good or Bad For Golf?

If you didn't know, the fourth and final major of the year tees off today. Yeah, it's sort of different without Tiger Woods playing, isn't it? The 90th PGA Championship is being played at Oakland Hills Country Club this year, a 7,395 yard par 70 in Bloomfield Township, Michigan. Oakland Hills CC has hosted 10 major championships before, most recently the 1996 US Open won by Steve Jones. Normally, this tournament is at the front of the headlines, and granted this year with the Brett Favre soap opera dominating the news there's an exception, but this tournament has barely even been mentioned. This is a tournament where, as Phil Mickelson said, you can turn a good year into a great year by winning one of the four majors. Alas, with Woods hanging out at his mansion with his wife and daughter after knee surgery, the PGA Championship has hit a major speed bump of anonymity.

When Woods plays golf, people watch - it's about as simple as that. The common fan tunes in on occasion to see how he's doing, the passionate fan watches every stroke, but with Woods out, it's all different. The passionate fan will still watch most of the tournament, but that common fan, he's nowhere to be found. With Woods out of the PGA Championship, it had no chance at becoming the week's top story. With the Favre fiasco in full swing, it was a given that it would take an additional hit. Add in an Open Championship that was far from entertaining, and you have the PGA Championship taking a back seat like it's never taken before.

With this, you have to ask yourself if Woods is good or bad for golf. This year is basically all you need to look at. The Masters was great golf with Woods on the prowl, but the Masters will always be golfs greatest major, so let's just move on to the US Open. The Open at Torrey Pines Golf Course in San Diego, California was one of golfs proudest moments. It was filled with drama, phenomenal golf, and story lines that would make Steven Spielberg shake his head in disbelief. The realization of just how much pain Woods was playing in throughout the tournament simply made it all that much more amazing. What it also did though, was give a dramatic slap across the sporting culture of America's face, as we all had to realize that golf was going to go into a dark time - a time without Woods. None of us wanted to come to grips with it, and I think some of us still haven't, but golf doesn't have Tiger Woods right now, and golf is also nearly nonexistent.

With Woods gone, golf goes into a cave and becomes a hibernating bear. Only if you go into that cave to try and wake that bear, it kinda just looks up and rolls over - that's golf right now. The coverage of this PGA Championship is at a bare (pun intended) minimum. So, is Woods good for golf? Well, when he's playing there's nothing better for golf, the TV ratings sore like one of his 5-irons from the middle of the fairway and golf becomes the top story in sports for that weekend. But when Woods doesn't play, there's nothing worse for golf, the TV ratings drop like a kid's self esteem when he's turned down by the girl that nobody even likes anyway, and people become so indifferent to the sport that it barely registers that it's even played.

So with the PGA Championship teeing off today, I ask you to be a fan and realize there are still a ton of great golfers out there and it can still be very entertaining. I will guarantee you right now, it will be far more entertaining than the Open Championship was a few weeks ago. First of all, it will be played on a golf course that actually looks like a golf course (it's gorgeous) and not a cow field. Second of all, the scores and rounds of golf will be realistic, and players won't be happy to move on to the next hole knowing that they only bogeyed. Enjoy the tournament everybody, and get well soon Mr. Woods, we all need you back.