With two of the four majors, those two being the last two (The Open and PGA), Rory McIlroy has the possibility to capture all four majors at the same time. He is also third youngest to win 4 majors behind Tiger and Jack, but only by a matter of months. As I watched Rory come from behind during the PGA final today, I heard the announcers start the Tiger comparisons. My question is this, if you can remember back to when Tiger was 25, the hype was unbelievable with Tiger's face EVERYWHERE. The only differences between Tiger at 25 and Rory at 25 is race and nationality. Do you think Rory will be treated like Tiger was at 25? Should he even WANT to be? Mods, I posted this in P&CE because I am much more interested in discussing the race and nationality part of this story, not the golfing skill, although the latter will undoubtedly come up. Feel free to move this to the sports threads where it will die an anonymous death.
Different time in the sport. When Tiger came on the scene golf was in a bit of a lull and they were looking for a character to rejuvenate the sport. Also, McIlroy isn't anywhere near as good as Tiger was. Back when Tiger was 25 the question wasn't whether Tiger would win a tournament, it was who would stop Tiger from winning. That isn't the case with McIlroy.
How big was Tiger in the UK? McIlroy is already huge there and has been for years. The furor over whether he would represent Ireland or Great Britain in the Olympics was all-encompassing.
An excellent point. I'm sure Tiger being American helped with his popularity here. I'll also add, just to make Stanger happy, Tiger blowing up did have a racial tinge to it. Golf was going through a really old, white men issue at the time. I'm sure having a young black man getting a ton of attention helped with that perception.
I wouldn't say he was particularly well known at all until he had broken records then people starting taking notice, even then golf was just so low down the sporting order here in England that most people still had no idea who he was. Golf has always been popular here but I think it's only been the last few years that it has regularly moved onto the back pages, mainly because we have had no one to cheer on for years. (last few years have been good to English/British golf though) McIlroy is box office over here, and has been since he was a teenager really as he was expected to go on and take the world by storm. Him winning was one of the news headlines on BBC TV this morning, not just sports headlines but actual news headlines. 'Kurds taking back towns in Iraq' 'McIlroy wins major' 'another ceasefire in Gaza' ^you've made it at that point
Well I'm Irish and nationalistic but I was rooting for the two Americans. That should tell you a little something about Rory!!
Not sure how any "racial tinge" is supposed to make me happy. Tiger was expected to win every event he entered, true, and I don't think Rory is at that point yet but that plays into it, too. Rory was dominating the previous majors he won, just like Tiger did. Perhaps the competition is greater now than when Tiger was on his run.
Like nearly everyone I was in awe of Tiger's game at that age. But I also suspected that due to his rigid upbringing like Todd Marinovich, he was a bit of an emotionless robot. When Tiger's dad died he seemed to go off the rails. Nationalism in golf is a joke IMO. There's a bit of it during the Ryders Cup. But fans still cheer for their favorites regardless of country of origin. Ernie Els & that other "black guy", Vijay Singh, were hugely popular here.
I thought this was the new Tiger: http://www.business-standard.com/ar...ers-wives-during-pga-tour-114080500279_1.html
1. By his 25th birthday, Tiger had already won PGA player of the year THREE times. 2. The breakthrough is always has more notoriety than the follow up. Hank Greenberg and Jimmie Foxx each hit 58 (I think) home runs within a decade of Babe Ruth hitting 60, but Babe Ruth was the player who figured out that with the new balls that were introduced ca. 1914, a player could consistently swing for the fences and actually reach them. Ruth wasn't a superhuman freak, as evidenced by the careers of Foxx and Greenberg. He just was the first. Tiger was the first, as I see it, to see himself as an ATHLETE who golfs rather than as a GOLFER, and that's what gave him his edge. The sport caught up.
Rory isn't full-time on the PGA yet has a PGA player of the year as well as a Euro PGA player of the year. Not the same but comparable. Your second point is interesting on a couple of levels, first is the equipment. I would have to say the technology allows for the shortening of the courses, I think Rory had driver-9 Iron into a 500+ par 4 twice in the PGA. I would say Tiger was the only one that would even attempt that back in the late 90's/early 00's. Now Bubba is hitting 400+ yard drives (when he isn't being an ass). Your last part is about being an ATHLETE golfer. I would lean toward Rory's accomplishments being GREATER than Tiger's to this point because of the greater emphasis on fitness on Tour. You don't see the fat guys winning majors on a regular basis anymore and with the exception of a certain Euro player, the smoking is gone, too. Tiger was the first to be ultra-fit on Tour but now they all are if they want to win.
Interesting point, and probably correct. To go on with the baseball analogy, in the 1930s guys matched Babe's gross totals for home runs, but nobody dominated home runs like Babe did in the 20s. (I think it was in 1920, when he hit 54, that he hit more home runs than several teams. You can look it up on Wikipedia if you want the details, but the point is that Babe dominated and intimidated for a few years there just like Tiger did. But once each sport caught up, similar performances were no longer dominant.) If a player had come along in the 1930s and won the HR title year after year with big margins like Babe did, that player would have been greater than Babe. So yeah, if Rory matches Tiger, he's a greater player, because he'd be dominating better players.
Nice. In my mind, the accomplishments of Rory are greater than those of Tiger at a similar age. The way it is being viewed and/or promoted are different and I think that distinction is interesting. I do think the media hype machine will go into overdrive if Rory can win the Masters in the spring. The possibility of one person holding all four majors at the same time is akin to the Triple Crown in horse racing, you just don't see it very often.
I think race is a partial answer. A brown guy crashing the white man's party was the right story for the time. But just as large, if not larger, is that Tiger was American, and that golf was on the upswing. Now golf is something of a nostalgia sport. Caring about the Ryder Cup is so 1998. The NFL ate golf and tennis. Every day of the year, there are more people in Chicago obsessing over the Bears -- training camp to games to off-season rumors to draft to fantasy teams -- than care about any golf or tennis event.
You mean a "Tiger Slam". But seriously, the major difference between Tiger's popularity and McIlroy's popularity has to do with his nationality. If McIlroy were American the American press would be on him like white on rice just like the UK press is all over him. But again, as mentioned earlier, Tiger is where he is because he was the first to be an athlete that plays golf and not just "a golfer".
As a side note, team sports have eaten individual sports in the U.S. over the past half century. Boxing, track, horse racing, tennis, and golf were once big items. Now forget it, except for golf to an extent with the majors. The sports sections cover NFL, NBA, MLB, college football, college basketball, maybe some NHL. That really is about it.
I dunno about golf being on an upswing at the time. My recollection at the time was that golf was starting to trail off, particularly in the US. Americans weren't really as dominant in the game as they used to be and there wasn't really a character that people could rally around, particularly a young attractive person. Tiger became that character and really rejuvenated the sport until his body and personal life fell apart on him.
Tiger came on when there were no other "stars" that were young. IIRC, Jack, Arnie, Watson, Kite and the rest were aging and not competitive anymore, there seemed to be a different winner every week and people were losing interest because they didn't have a "name" to root for on the leaderboard. I have been going to The Memorial since I was a kid and one of the games we would play in the gallery was a 1$ closes to the pin. You put your 1$ in and take the first, second or third ball. You didn't know which order the players would be teeing off in. Even I, a fan of the game, couldn't put a face with a name for the most part. That all changes with Tiger and Phil. Two hotshots that could BOMB the ball beyond anything we had seen before and they played aggressively, actively wanting to win. Now that Phil is getting up in age, Tiger's health and mental state are in question, we are in a lull. Maybe Rory, Bubba, Fowler and maybe a few more, like Day, can bring the popularity back. One thing Rory won't be able to do is bring a different fan base in. The sheer numbers of African-Americans I see at Muirfield every year can only be attributed to Tiger's popularity. Singh didn't have that impact and Chi Chi didn't bring Latinos in. It has carried over to what I see on the local courses, too. Making the game more interesting to people that thought of it as only a white man's sport can only help the growth of the game, and any new fans brought in are a good thing.
Hard to read, but the upshot is that golf grew 25% in popularity 1985-1995 before Tiger showed up, then another 20% from 1995-2005, when he was in his prime. So Tiger does not appear to be the main driver in the sport's U.S. growth. He gets half credit at the most, but even that would be generous.