Golf Is In Trouble

For the past 15 years (or so) the PGA has enjoyed unprecidented popularity and it can be explained in two words: Tiger Woods.

There was so much hype about this young amateur that he couldn't possibly live up to the expectations, yet he did!  As his popularity and notoriety grew and he transitioned from amateur to professional the PGA and their TV partners began to design broadcasts around Tiger.  Watching the PGA on television was a bit like being in the gallery and walking the course along with Tiger.  Between his shots they aired highlights of the rest of the field and ran the all-important commercials.

This formula worked for more than a decade.  Sponsors flocked to the PGA and committed record amounts in sponsorship money.  Purses grew by leaps and bounds.  Profits for the PGA and the networks that aired it grew as well.  America and the world was fascinated by the enigmatic golfer and his quest for history.  When he won it was good for golf.  When he struggled it was good for golf, so long as they were short term struggles.  He had an ungodly streak of leads held and a knack of reeling in the leaders in unlikely final-day comebacks.  He was on pace to be the first athlete billionaire mainly because he had countless corporate sponsors.

The drama, or circus, that was Tiger peaked at the 2008 U.S. Open.  He managed to win the tournament and immediately thereafter revealed that he had basically done so on one leg!  Surgery soon followed and everyone was confident that he would rehab well and resume his assault of Jack Nicklaus' record 18 major "Grand Slam" Championships.  The 2008 Open was Tiger's 14th major and he was only 32 at the time, giving him plenty of time to break the Nicklaus record.  (Nicklaus was 46 when he won his final major, and Tiger is considered one of the fittest golfers on the tour so should be competitive for years to come.)  The moment Tiger left the tour for his surgery and rehab television viewership dropped almost 50%!

2009 was an up and down year for Tiger.  His play was inconsistent by his standards.  He won 6 tournaments but none of them was a major.  It was the first time in 5 years that he had failed to win a major and only the 4th time in his career that he had failed to win at least one in a season.  Actually, he missed the cut at a major for only the second time in his professional career, the other time being immediately after the death of his father, Earl.  For him, this is a disappointing year -- Tiger's focus on Nicklaus' record 18 majors is unrelenting.  Still, he managed to win the FedEx Cup for the second time in its then 3-year history.  His PGA 2009 season winnings of $10.5 million were the third highest of his career.

Then Armageddon struck Tiger's life.  It was revealed that Tiger had had an extramarital relationship and it was later revealed that he'd done so with over a dozen women!  When this became public his marriage melted down.  He had a car accident in his own driveway and may or may not have been fleeing from his angry wife, Elin, who may or may not have brandished a golf club breaking the windshield of Tiger's Cadillac Escalade.  The official story is that she 'liberated' him from the car when the door jammed as a result of the crash.  The chaos in his personal life forced Woods to step away from golf indefinitely as he tried to repair his broken life.

That didn't really work out well.  He finally spoke to the media about what happened in a very artificial, orchestrated press conference where only invited persons were admitted and he took no questions from the gathered press.  So, really it was a public statement, not a press conference.  Public reaction to this was not favourable for Tiger.  Within the year his marriage ended in divorce and his idyllic life was permanently shattered.  His quest to become the first athlete billionaire was for all intents and purposes over as the divorce settlement effectively halved his wealth.  Further, he lost most of his endorsements and sponsorships drastically reducing his earning power as well.  2010 saw Tiger play very little professional golf and he was not as competitive as he had been in the past.  He managed 2 Top-5 finishes in majors but the other 2 were only Top-30 finishes.  He suffered from poor health and suffered even more from poor play.  He didn't even qualify to compete for the FedEx Cup tour championship.

2011 was every bit as bad a year as 2010 and worse.  He missed two majors and missed the cut in a third.  He also ended a 12 year working relationship with caddie Steve Williams.  Williams took the news incredibly badly and IMHO showed extreme poor taste and poor sportsmanship in his reaction.  Williams' relationship with Woods had made him extremely wealthy and he showed no gratitude or appreciation for that instead choosing to portray the break as a betrayal.  (It is estimated that Williams' share of Tiger's winnings was about $12 million!)  The reasons Woods gave were actually in Williams' best interest, which proved to be true when Williams and new pro golf partner Adam Scott promptly won the 2011 World Golf Championships - Bridgestone Invitational.  Williams chose to rub this in Woods' face and later in the year made an allegedly racist comment about Woods.  Williams' defense was "I had a lot of anger in me about what happened (with Woods) and it all came out."

During this attempt at a comeback television ratings and tournament galleries have not been the same as when Tiger was in his prime.  If Tiger doesn't recapture the golf game that made him so successful it is likely that these will both erode even further.  Part of the problem is that for a dozen years the PGA and its television partners have focused so intently on Woods that the public doesn't really have any kind of relationship with most, possibly all, other golfers.  When others succeed, few seem to get excited about it.

Making the problem worse is the overall play of American golfers.  Of late, international players have been dominant and the American viewer has always been fickle when it comes to rooting for 'foreign' athletes.  This dynamic is even more extreme for the LPGA where Asians have dominated for some years now.  Too many of these champions speak little to no English and communicate with the media through interpreters.  This makes it difficult for the American fan to embrace them.  The PGA doesn't really suffer from this problem as their 'foreign' champions are largely European (and many of them from the English-speaking UK), Australian, English-speaking Africans, etc.

So, the PGA and golf-broadcasting TV networks are reaping what they have been sowing for more than a decade.  Too many golf fans are actually Tiger Woods fan and have very little to cheer about right now.  Too many skilled golfers are effectively anonymous to the American golf enthusiast.   The fact that Tiger's squeaky clean image, albeit sterile and typically laced with profanity, has been badly tarnished making him seem as much a villain as a hero has driven others away from golf entirely.  It may be too late to fix this and recover lost audiences or even retain those that remain, but even if it isn't, the PGA and TV don't seem particularly well equipped to make any kind of change.  They seem adamant to sink or swim on the fortunes of Tiger Woods.  If the Tiger of old never returns the PGA is going to fall on hard times.  Audience and gallery sizes will continue to drop, sponsorships will become less lucrative or dry up entirely and events may even cease to exist.

Golf is in trouble...