Golf's current Big Three can move out of Tiger Woods' shadow at the Masters
I love golf. I love watching it, I love playing it, I love talking about it. I realize that it's not the most widely enjoyed topic of conversation, and that's ok. There's plenty of stuff to talk about with the NFL, the NBA, and seemingly every sport and league shy of the NHL.
This wasn't always the case. Golf used to command national interest. Well, not so much golf as one guy.
When I was working at a newspaper in South Florida, I had the pleasure of covering a few PGA events with golf writer Jeff Shain. On my first day covering a PGA Tour tournament, he told me the truth about covering the sport:
"In other sports, guys move the needle. In golf, Tiger Woods is the needle."
It's been eight years since Tiger Woods won his last major tournament, but he is still the needle.
In that period of time, some spectacular golf has been played, and a bevy of stars have been found, but golf has not quite turned the page from Woods.
This week's Masters is the sport's best chance to turn that page.
Every sport needs a narrative. In football, an enemy does best — hatred of the Patriots and Alabama unifies. Every player that goes against them is a hero, if only for a day.
Basketball, with its intrinsic creativity, has an entertainment value unparalleled to most sports, which makes heroes and villains easy to create. Everyone can get behind the electrifying Stephen Curry. It was easy to root against LeBron James and the Miami Heat.
Baseball was at its conversational best when the Yankees — the Evil Empire — were the dominant force. Now, the sport is too busy cannibalizing itself to try to create heroes of Bryce Harper, Carlos Correa, or Giancarlo Stanton.
With Woods, golf had a singular, unifying hero, and it didn't matter that rivals frequently changed. David Duval, Rory McIlroy, Phil Mickelson — all took a swing at usurping "The Needle" but only Woods could take himself out. That's the problem with heroes — when they fall, they fall hard, and it's difficult for them and the rooting public to recover. Instead of a new hero taking over for Woods, the sport and its fans were left with jadedness and a hole that seemed impossible to fill.
In the last few years, golf has filled some of that hole, but before it can cement it over and declare a new era, it needs to define its narrative.
That's why golf needs a rivalry. More than a hero or enemy, a consistent rivalry engages everyone. Nothing unites like a fierce competition between the best of the best.
It's a hard trick to pull off. Finding two or three comparable, competitive athletes playing at elite levels at the same time is difficult. Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant were never at the height of their powers at the same time.
But golf has a shot at a true, transcendent rivalry right now. Its Big Three of Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, and Jason Day are all playing spectacular golf heading into the Masters and are the three favorites to win the tournament, all coming in at under +1000.
Spieth, the defending champion, is the prodigy. His opening-round 64 last year set the framework of what could be a decade of dominance at Augusta National. When he's locked in, there's no better golfer in the world.
McIlroy looked to be the heir apparent to Woods when he won four majors between 2011 and 2014, but he's cooled a bit since then. The Green Jacket still eludes him, as his meltdown on the back nine in 2011 took away his best shot at the title. Armed with a new cross-handed putting grip, McIlroy has mojo heading into this year's Masters — he's coming off a fourth-place finish last year and a strong showing at the MGC Match Play championship late last month. This could well be the year he earns his redemption in Augusta.
No one is currently playing better golf than Day, and it's near impossible to not root for the Australian. His upbringing featured death, alcoholism, and poverty, and his career has been littered with injuries. But he's playing near impeccable golf at the moment and the current world No. 1 is poised to win his first green jacket.
There are others who will contend, of course, and it's improbable that the whole trio will be in the hunt come Sunday, but golf needs this rivalry to be in the forefront this weekend.
It needs a final pairing that features two of the three, with the outlier pushing the group from afar.
The Masters is a spectacle, and against a weak competition, it'll be at the center of the sports world this weekend. Golf needs its three biggest stars to put on a show to remember — a show so great that the audience demands an immediate encore.
Enough time has passed. The moment is perfect.
This is golf's chance to define its new era.
