He was the last player to register for that Masters, the reason being his wife had given birth a week early, which subsequently freed him up to play in the tournament.
He then snatched the opportunity to win, after the famous twelfth hole meltdown by Jordan Spieth. To be on top of the world and then lose his game, body and momentum must be unbearably difficult.
To doubt himself, with the worst fear being that that was his best moment and he was a ‘fluke
winner’. The very thought compounded with a
horrible representation in the Ryder Cup at Hazeltine.
The relief that he was a champion again, a winner of one the year’s most prestigious events, showed that his best days were not behind him. Whilst choking up and holding his two-and-a-half-year-old son whilst being interviewed, the emotions were clearly visible.
Yet why this feeling of being underwhelmed?
There were many other stories available from the tournament. Molinari wins the whole Race to Dubai, Fleetwood gets nudged to third place behind Reed and one place ahead of Xander Schauffele.
The money which has been injected into the whole Tour is substantial, if not enormous. Some might say obscene. Willett won €1,177,645 on Sunday. Patrick Reed won €613,708 with a boost from the Rolex bonus pool of €750,000. Matt Wallace by finishing second with Reed picked up the same cheque for the event with a bonus of €275,000 for finishing ninth in the Rolex Series order of merit.
All of the money to play for, so much so that two US players (quite rightly) made their way over to make a little extra pre-Christmas cash. Which is where the problem lies. The World Tour Championship should have a little more kudos than having a little more money to play for than a usual event. It should be a fanfare, massive crowds, a huge hullabaloo. Yet it just felt like a big tournament which ended a run of big events.
Heck, Justin Rose and Paul Casey didn’t even feel like it was necessary to make the trip because they couldn’t win the title. Perhaps another reason why this event felt a little limp is because the 2019 starts all over again next week in Hong Kong. No break, just this never-ending loop which fails to give the audience time to breathe, take stock and reflect, let alone the players.
So, the Tour is looking to find ways for the game to appeal to a larger audience, trying to appear fresh with new events and formats. Even introducing music on the driving range has been tried, to pump up the energy.
Nothing seems to change though, more events after more events, where the emphasis is if you can increase the money being played for, the excitement and the prestige players will be delivered.
Yet the shining lights of the season are and always will be the Masters, US Open, The Open and PGA Championship with the Ryder Cup every two years. Now you have, due to this injection, the World Golf Championships and the Rolex Events and the FedEx Playoffs plus the World Tour Championship, to add to the equation. That’s around sixteen events. Almost a full
season for the players.
I had a very interesting lunch, around ten years ago with one of the movers and shakers of the F1 crowd.
He kindly met me and my business partner to give some sage advice on a project we were developing. His opening gambit was that he, “was a little young to start
playing golf.” Then at age 71, it was meant as a joke. Then the bombshell came, “I can’t take a
sport seriously which doesn’t have a world champion.”
He was right, over the year there are many champions, now in golf there’s an Olympic Champion, but not a World Champion. The singular importance,
the bragging rights,
everything which a player wants to be, doesn’t exist in golf.
That would be something to tune in for wouldn’t it?