With his defense of the SBS Title, Geoff Ogilvy moves into the Top Ten, and this already is sparking discussion among golf pundits as to Tiger’s status as World Number One. Take this line in a recent USA Today article, for example:
And if he is to catch Woods, he (Ogily) has to figure out how to win without his best stuff, a trait the world’s No. 1 has mastered.
“Tiger has made a career out of winning tournaments. He has won a lot by 10. But he has won tournaments in the past that he shouldn’t have. He found a way to win,” Ogilvy said. “I need to get to that sort of point. I think I can.
“I think I can be a player who can win any golf tournament I play. I’ve just got to work to get through the bad days and bad patches. I have to work on how to do it.”
The GolfBlogger is going to stay out of that discussion. I was suckered into it last spring when some mathematical whiz kid calculated that by not playing, Tiger loses .334 points in the rankings each week. With Woody on a knee rehab (and his paramours on their backs), that was supposed to open the door for Sergio Garcia to eventually overtake him at number one. Sergio, if you will recall had a terrific 2008, and was expected to continue that in 2009.
But it didn’t happen. Tiger returned to his winning ways, and Sergio never really asserted himself.
It’s possible now to apply the same calculus to Phil Mickelson. Like Garcia, he looked very strong at the end of the previous season. And Tiger is out at the start of the season once again.
But I think all of this is very premature. There’s no word as to how many tournaments Woody will sit out. And I’ll bet that it’s not that many, if at all. As a fundamentally selfish individual, he won’t choose family and pass on the one-in-a-lifetime convergence of Majors courses this year. The lure of the aggrandizement that will come with a Grand Slam will be too much. In his behavior, he’s already shown that he doesn’t give a damn about his wife and kids; what’s a little more golf in that unsavory stew?
My prediction: Tiger holds on to number one this year.
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Sergio was suffering from a broken heart last year. How could he concentrate on golf?
As for the dethroning Tiger talk – it’s the same kind of talk as “the next Tiger” talk. All hype designed to sell stuff – papers, magazines, ad time on tv. People who don’t have anything intelligent to add to a conversation will always fall back on these two topics.