As Sergio Garcia two-putted to win The Players Championship this past
Sunday, after Paul Goydos hit an unlucky shot into the water, the NBC
announcers were falling all over themselves trying to praise Garcia and talk about
how "he's back" after his first win in three years. Garcia did
end up winning the tournament, but the fact of the matter is, he made exactly
two "tester" putts in the final round. Garcia shot an opening
round 66, but shot 70-73-71 to close it out, having to hold off such luminaries
as Paul Goydos, Jeff Quinney and Briny Baird who were nipping at his
heels. The Players Championship does traditionally have the strongest
field on Tour outside of majors; but this year Tiger wasn't there, Vijay (among
others) missed the cut and Phil was just dying to put up his clutch
closing-round 78 to take himself out of contention. That left Garcia as
the only upper-echelon golfer on the first two pages of the leaderboard.
And he still had to wait until the 18th hole to catch career journeyman Paul
Goydos.
The fact of the matter is, the way the top of the leaderboard was
playing on Sunday; Garcia should have won by three or four shots going away and
had a victory walk up 18. The reality was, Garcia did what he's been
doing for years, missing 10-15 foot "tester" putts that an
"elite" golfer should be making. In essence, Garcia was trying
his best to throw away the tournament; only the fact that his competition was
too far behind to start (Quinney) or just wasn't very good (Goydos) made it
possible for Garcia to win; and even then he needed the lucky water shot by
Goydos that was about six inches off the ground away from landing about two
feet from the cup. If Goydos gets the break there; would we be talking about
another epic Garcia collapse?
My guess is probably not, and it's interesting to listen to network
golf announce teams who don't cover the Tour every week (NBC for example) fall
all over themselves about a golfer like Garcia; but barely remember Jeff
Quinney's name. For all intents and purposes, Quinney's had a much better
season than Garcia this year, and one would think the announcers would be aware
of it, rather than only knowing about a name that's well-recognized. I
understand the want for networks to attach name recognition to the game.
It's almost unavoidable when it's an individual sport, and it's also an
individual sport where the most recognizable name is really, really good.
And it's not recent; you can look back to Nicklaus and Palmer for earlier
examples. For the best of the best; pushing name recognition isn't a bad
thing.
However, pushing name recognition for people who haven't won anything
isn't just confusing, it can damage the game. If you push a name like a
Garcia for the last eight years or so, and a viewer connects with him and likes
his personality; but six years down the road, he STILL hasn't won anything and
tends to choke like a dog down the stretch, that eventually is going to damage
the game on the grander scale. At least Mickelson, who has a similar
M.O., is good enough to push through it and win occasionally. But the
fact still remains, it seems like the networks (not The Golf Channel, they
aren't guilty of this), especially ones that don't broadcast golf every week,
seem to latch on to five or six names and talk about them incessantly;
regardless of where they are on the leaderboard. All golf broadcasts will
look for Tiger wherever he is, understandably. However, when Kenny Perry
and Paul Goydos are dueling it out on a Saturday afternoon to see who will have
the 54-hole lead, and you're yapping about Phil and Garcia, there's something
wrong there.
The fact of the matter is, the vast majority of the time, the top-5 of
a tournament is going to be made up of people you aren't familiar with.
My question is why aren't you familiar with them? Why hasn't the network
broadcast educated folks about these players? Why not a mini-Who Is He
on each golfer in contention, if you will? It's not like they don't
have the budgets for it. It's almost like these network announcers don't
want to do any work, and just want to bang the same drum about the same six
players. Isn't that counter-intuitive however? Wouldn't you want
your audience to have a good base of knowledge on 30 players, rather than
six? Would you rather your audience want to know about golfers like
Stewart Cink, Geoff Ogilvy and Chad Campbell; or would you rather have them
endure another "Sergio Garcia is from Spain"
story?
Golf has come an awfully long way over the last 30 years, and a good
portion of that can be traced to television, among other sources, for being
responsible for its growth. Golf has a great opportunity now, especially
in the middle of Tiger's prime, to grow the game to mainstream levels, if they
go about it the right way. The era of the six-player Tour is over; and I
think it's time to go back to the ad campaign of a few years ago, that could
have been even bigger than it was: "These Guys Are Good." The
fact of the matter is, these guys ARE good, and there are more than six golfers
who are good. There is simply too much talent on Tour for it to be
ignored, and ignoring the younger generation of those looking to enter the fray
is a mistake as well. Eventually, Tiger will go into semi-retirement, and
the Tour will need something to market itself around. It's time for them
to start building that "something" now, rather than 10 years from
now, when it will be too late.
Golf fans and Fantasy Golf players all know this: The Name isn't
what's important, it's the golf. This means, whomever's playing well will
get the attention/start, and whoever isn't, won't. If Fantasy players can
dispassionately take name recognition out of the equation when selecting their
starters, and golf fans can enjoy good play as well as watching personalities;
why can't the networks and the PGA do this? The popularity of the game is
already on the decline, and is in danger of falling off the cliff completely if
something isn't done. It's crossroads time for the PGA. Are the going
to lay-up, or are they going for the green?