For the millions of us who get our golf through TV, our summer and fall will not be the same with Tiger Woods out of action. He won't be taking sandy divots at the British Open on ESPN and ABC. He won't be fist-pumping at the PGA Championship on CBS. He won't be making a processional walk with his wife at the Ryder Cup opening ceremonies on NBC (unless he becomes an assistant captain, and don't count on that). The various Golf Channel talk shows won't be able to analyze Tiger's prospects and Tiger's swings and Tiger's performances. It will be a brave new world. As a general rule of thumb, Tiger's presence at a golf tournament doubles ratings.
"This will be an incredible opportunity for the guys, especially Phil Mickelson and Sergio Garcia," said Tommy Roy, the executive producer for golf for NBC, which will cover the Ryder Cup and the FedEx Cup events. "Phil has already shown that he draws general sports fans, not just golfers, to the screen. Sergio showed at the Players that he's coming into his own. But there's no question, we're going to feel the loss of Tiger, especially at the stroke-play events, where you'll have a true golf viewership. The Ryder Cup is different, because we tend to show whatever match is closest that is farthest along, whoever that may be."
Roy used to rank the '86 Masters, won by Jack Nicklaus, as the most compelling golf telecast he had ever seen, followed by the '99 Ryder Cup, when the Americans staged a wild Sunday comeback over the Europeans. But now he has a new No. 1: last week's U.S. Open at Torrey Pines. At the '86 Masters (on CBS) and the '99 Ryder Cup (on NBC), the intense action unfolded over an afternoon. "At the U.S. Open this year, you had that drama going from Friday afternoon through the end of play on Monday," Roy said. And now that we know more about how bad Woods's left knee was at Torrey Pines, what he accomplished there — and the telecast of it — is even more of a feat.
Jim Nantz, the longtime CBS Sports anchor, said that he now considers Woods's play at the U.S. Open, given what is known about it now, as the greatest performance by a hurt athlete ever, ahead of Willis Reed of the New York Knicks in the 1970 NBA Finals or Kurt Gibson of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1988 World Series.
"We'll have golf this year, and someone will win that Claret Jug at the British Open and someone will win that Wanamaker Trophy at the PGA Championship, and whoever does, it will be a great moment for them and there will be no asterisk on it, but let's be realistic here: this news is a punch in the gut. It's as if someone sucked all the air right out of the building. We're talking about perhaps the most dominant athlete in the history of sports. I'm already thinking about '09. Can you come back from this kind of surgery in nine months? But you know he'll treat his rehab as he treats everything else, as a personal challenge, and he'll thrive on it."
Nantz looks forward to covering Woods again at Torrey Pines — at the Tour stop in San Diego early in 2009. In the meantime, he says, what we know now further explains two of the shots from Woods he had never seen before. The first was the level of exuberance — "bordering on over-exuberance," Nantz said — that Woods showed when he holed the putt to tie on the 72nd hole. The second was the smile on Woods's face when his daughter, Sam, who turned 1 on the day Woods made his announcement about the '08 season, wanted to return to his arms when Tiger handed her to his wife, Elin, at the U.S. Open trophy ceremony.
"He knew what he was putting himself through," Nantz said. "When he holed that putt to tie, he was saying, 'I didn't put myself through all this to finish second.' That smile with Sam told you it was all worthwhile."
Lance Barrow, the coordinating producer for golf for CBS, will have the job of producing the PGA Championship without Tiger in the field. He said, "Sure, we would like to have Tiger in contention on Sunday. But no matter who is in contention, it's a major championship and someone has to win, and it will be exciting. There are so many other good golfers out there ready to make their move."
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