They were everywhere Sunday afternoon at the WGC-Workday Championship at The Concession, all these PGA Tour golfers dressed in red shirts and black pants. Unfortunately, the man who made that fashion combination famous for Sunday golfing attire wasn’t among them, the legendary Tiger Woods confined to a Los Angeles hospital bed as he attempts to recover from career-threatening injuries sustained in a SUV crash last Tuesday.
Still, the gesture was pretty cool, and certainly well deserved, for no golfer since Arnold Palmer has done as much to boost the allure and financial power of golf on the world stage as Eldrick “Tiger” Woods.
For the better part of the past 15 years, Woods has been golf, for better or worse, though mostly to the good. No, he probably won’t surpass Jack Nicklaus’s record 18 majors, which once seemed a certainty. Though he reached No. 15 with his unexpected victory at the 2019 Masters, Woods’ ongoing back problems and advancing age (45) had already appeared to cut short that possibility even before incurring multiple leg fractures last week.
Beyond that, his personal issues with infidelity and driving under the influence long ago tarnished his once carefully constructed and controlled image as some sort of golfing cyborg, obsessed with golf and golf alone.
It is here that an old quote from his late father Earl, a serial philanderer, can’t be ignored. Said Papa Woods in 2001: “A wife can be a deterrent to a good golf game. The level Tiger’s at, finite problems could destroy him.”