KEY POINTS:
Sport is littered with tales of leading practitioners sidelined with injury in their prime. But it's doubtful any enforced layoff ever had as much impact on a game as what golf will endure without Tiger.
Some analogies this past week have been delightful. "It's like the Pips without Gladys," noted ESPN's Rick Reilly, disclosing his love of 1970s soul music. "My kids can go to college because of Tiger Woods," admitted PGA Tour player Briny Baird, one among hundreds of professional golfers who've become millionaires because of the money Tiger's brought to the game.
In 1998, the total prizemoney on the PGA Tour was US$96 million. A couple of Tiger-inspired TV contracts later, the 2008 purses add up to just under US$280 million. No man in the history of sport has expanded an industry the way Tiger has.
That industry will continue without him, of course, but golf can't afford to have him missing too long.
The double blow for golf is that it's come just a few days after a tournament which will take its place in folklore, a tournament which reached fans on the fringe, many of whom have never even played golf.
This wasn't just a terrific final day charge like other legendary major championships such as Arnold Palmer's US Open win in 1960 or Jack Nicklaus' charge on the final nine at the 1986 Masters. Torrey Pines was an event of high tension, some extraordinarily great shots mixed with many awful ones.
It was, remember, a tournament Tiger began with a big blocked slice into rough on the right side of his very first hole, which resulted in a double bogey six. The next day, he risked a serious wrist injury to go with his wounded knee, as he played a staggering second shot to the same green after his ball lay just inches from a concrete cart path. That hole began a sequence of five consecutive threes, four of them birdies.
Then there was round three and the hole-outs on the 13th, 17th and 18th, two bombed putts for eagle complimenting the chip-in for birdie, shots which belong only in the world of a novelist specialising in sports fantasy. The fourth and fifth days nearly allowed a wily veteran to emerge in glory but Rocco Mediate should have known that, when you're in combat with Tiger, the extraterrestrial spirit will always be sprinkled on the god, not the apostle.
Steve Williams once told me that whenever Tiger has to make a putt on the final hole to win or tie, he never misses. So those birdie putts on the 18th were always going in. The legend was established before Torrey Pines but it was embellished atop those San Diego cliffs.
I've always believed no one is bigger than the game. But that theory is going to be tested between now and next February. Tiger-less golf was going to happen eventually but we hoped not for a decade at least. Now we wait to see if someone can emerge to fill the gap, to give us even a fraction of the magnetism Tiger Woods brings to golf. Adam Scott, your number is up.
