Not so fast, kids.
That’s the message Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson sent over the last few weeks. The season after roaring twentysomethings took enough big checks to suggest the tour’s middle-aged stars might start replacing their drivers with canes, Woods and Mickelson look ready to make a stand. And the kids are all right with that.
“It’s important for the tour to see him kind of come back and have that buzz about each week that he plays,” said 29-year-old Hunter Mahan, who won the Accenture Match Play Championship two weeks ago. “He moves the needle like no one in the game. When he’s there and when he’s not there, there’s a difference. There just is.”
And, this place, the TPC Blue Monster at Doral, site of this week’s World Golf Championships-Cadillac Championship, has been Woods’ turf: three wins, three other top 10s in his past six Doral events. Now, however, there’s a depth of potential winners each week not seen on the PGA Tour in decades.
“I was part of it when I first came out,” Woods said Thursday, as the youngest world No. 1 since Woods, 22-year-old Rory McIlroy autographed his way down a fence of lunging fans nearby. “I was in my 20s and you had Greg [Nortman] and [Nick] Faldo and Pricey [Nick Price] all in their 40s, all doing great. Bernhard [Langer] was in his 30s. But this is the nature of golf — we have playing careers that last.”
It’s not the breadth of the careers, however, that’s of note lately. It’s the movement at the top. The WGC-Cadillac Championship epitomized the sea change of 2011.
The tournament fuss surrounded Woods’ return after a one-year absence from Doral even as youth and first-time winners dominated the early part of the season. Woods, Mickelson and Graeme McDowell formed the featured trio for Thursday and Friday. By Sunday, they were reduced to being big-name also-rans to Generation Smartphoners Mahan, Dustin Johnson and Nick Watney.
Watney won, just as Charl Schwartzel birdied out over the last four holes to win a thrilling Masters; just as McIlroy stormed back from his Three Mile Island back nine at Augusta to run away with the U.S. Open; just as Keegan Bradley, 25, won the first PGA Championship he played. Jason Day, 24, finished second in the U.S. Open and tied for second at the Masters. Johnson, 27, finished second to first-time winner (but veteran) Darren Clarke.
Mickelson won here in 2009, won this year at Pebble Beach and lost a playoff at the Northern Trust Open. But it was Woods’ final-round 62 at last week’s Honda Classic in Palm Beach Gardens that stopped traffic.
Literally so, in Mahan’s home. Mahan said Woods getting his putting together prompted him to sit down and watch the Honda finish. Otherwise, he said, he would have found out what happened via SportsCenter.
(Asked if he watches tournaments when he’s not playing, Woods said, “I do if my friends are up there. I’ve found that most of the guys that I grew up with and have become very close to over the years are now on the senior circuit. So, I watch them quite a bit.”)
Woods’ 62 required McIlroy to navigate deftly the PGA National Champion Course’s perilous Bear Trap to stay ahead of Woods’ 10-under and assume the world No.?1 position with a win.
“I can sit here and lie and say that it didn’t feel better to have Tiger post a score and to be able to play solid,” McIlroy said. “It maybe made it feel a little sweeter than if it had of been someone else.”
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