Tiger came off the rails, but this is why he’s still my favourite GOAT

Some GOATs dominated rivals within their sports for long stretches of time. Other GOATs were so influential they ended up changing their sport.

So when we are narrowing down the very greatest of the GOATs, you have to look to the rare collection of people who did both. And when it comes to the alpha of that exclusive club, it’s impossible to go past Eldrick “Tiger” Woods.

Woods was part superstar golfer, part cultural phenomenon. The son of an African-American father and a Thai mother, he showed himself to be a prodigy from an early age, and after a star amateur career, there was feverish hype around Woods’ potential when he went pro as a 20-year-old in 1996.

Few could have predicted how dominant Woods would become, and how massively he would change the game of golf. Four months after turning pro, he had won three tournaments, including his first major, the 1997 Masters – by 12 strokes.

He never let up. Up against the world’s best golfers, he soon began making them all look second-rate.

The stats around Woods are ridiculous, and so plentiful you have to cherry-pick the best.

Between 1999 and 2001, he won 20 of his 40 starts on the PGA Tour, and he achieved the same feat again between 2005 and 2008. In the past 60 years, there are only three instances of players winning five or more tournaments in a row, and all three are Woods’ streaks (seven, six and five). At one point between 1999 and 2001, Woods won five of six consecutive majors.

Between 2004 and 2006, he had 1466 putts from three feet – and only missed three.

When Woods was leading at 54 holes on the PGA Tour, he won 44 of 46 tournaments, at 95 per cent. All other players in the past decade have a 54-hole win percentage of 42 per cent.

In majors, between 1997 and 2009, Woods’ cumulative score was -134. Of the 52 players who had 100 or more rounds, the next best was Phil Mickleson with +99, and Ernie Els with +118.

Since 1900, only two majors have been won by a double-digit margin: Woods in the 1997 Masters, and Woods (by 15) at the 2000 US Open.

You could go on and on. And so we will – or, at least, let’s give an example of how good Woods was compared with the current world’s best.

In 2022-23, Scott Scheffler’s adjusted scoring average of 68.63 was the seventh-best season of all-time. The top six spots? You guessed it. El Tigre.

Woods had the ability to see, and play, the game at a different level than even the very best golfers in the world. I recall covering Woods’ visit for the 2009 Australian Masters in Melbourne, and on a practice round he dropped four balls and struck irons to an empty back corner of a Kingston Heath green, seeing how the ball moved upon landing. It was nowhere near the pin. But on the fourth day of the tournament, the phantom landing zone was exactly where the pin was placed. He’d predicted it.

He had a tap-in birdie – and later won the tournament.

Injuries and off-course chicanery meant Woods’ career came off the rails prematurely, and ended what seemed to be an exorable march to breaking Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 majors. Tiger has 15, and while an incredible comeback Masters win in 2019 after years of crippling injury showed he still had the goods, it’s now a step too far.

But he also sits tied with Sam Snead for most PGA Tour wins (82) and at 48, Woods can’t be ruled out from breaking that one.

The Nicklaus-Woods GOAT debate is a good ’un, and you can fashion good arguments for both. But while the “Golden Bear” was famous in his day, Tiger was a worldwide force. Young and ethnically diverse from golf’s mostly white workforce, Woods drew in massive new audiences globally – and domestic ones, too. Young black Americans saw Woods as an inspiration.

For a long period, he was one of the most famous athletes on the planet, if not the most famous. And he not only cashed in himself, with rich endorsement deals with Nike and others, he made all his golfing colleagues richer too.

Now competing with NFL and NBA, revenue streams for golf turned into raging torrents. The Woods effect meant broadcast, sponsorship and equipment money poured in, and prizemoney for golfers duly skyrocketed.

Consider this: when Woods went professional in 1996, Tom Lehman was the PGA Tour’s top earner for the season with $US1.78 million, and nine others earned more than a million dollars. Last year, the PGA Tour’s top earner, Scheffler, trousered $US29 million, and 114 players made more than a million.

And that’s not even counting the LIV riches.

But Woods also changed the way golfers had to prepare to be successful in their sport. With a focus on physical strength and fitness, he built himself into a muscular athlete and hit the ball further than almost everyone. After decades of being average Joes with good swings and a nice touch, rivals had to start hitting the weight room to keep up, and pro athlete-level fitness is now considered a must to compete on tour.

Woods’ power also made tournament organisers change their courses. In the first changes since 1934, Augusta National was forced to “Tiger-proof” several holes by making them longer, after Woods tore the course up in 1997.

He tarnished his legacy with personal problems after 2010, which became the stuff of tabloid fodder. Along with a body that broke down under all that duress, he dropped out of golf for periods as dramatically as he’d arrived.

But none of it disqualifies, or erases, his overall impact in golf – and wider sport, too.

Woods humbled all his rivals, and changed the game of golf forever – athletically, culturally, commercially and technically.

That’s why he is the GOAT.

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