You know that old saying about someone being so ticked off about losing that he picks up his ball and goes home? It's usually meant to identify someone as a sore loser or a bully. Well, he might not fit that depiction at this point -- or perhaps you think he does -- but Tiger Woods still has enough clout on a golf course to take his bag of clubs and go somewhere else.
Someone in the massive number of comments about the equally large number of blog posts and articles about Tiger suggested he should play on the European Tour this coming season, live there with his family and come over for the U.S. based major tournaments just like his pal Padraig Harrington. Europeans have usually taken a more liberal attitude toward sex scandals. While they revel in tabloid journalism, they are more tolerant of the kind of behavior Tiger engaged in.
That should send chills down the spine of the PGA Tour and its commissioner, Tim Finchem, who would have to scramble to see how many of his minor tournaments would survive with Tiger on a different continent 80% of the season.
But more chilling to the PGA Tour might be the suggestion of a sports analyst speaking about what Tiger could do to regain control of a piece of his life. How about putting on his own mini-tour, invite the world's best to join him, make the prize money impossible to pass up and see if he could become the new golf czar? If his wife leaves him, the smell of defeat would need one heck of a room deodorizer.
Woods lost Accenture as a corporate sponsor this past weekend, which makes sense for a company that sells its judgment to clients and uses him as the face of its advertising. That is significantly different from sponsors having their signs on a golf course that was host to Tiger, the number one golfer in the world.
Virtually no one believes he won't draw an audience once he is ready to return to playing golf. In fact, the media frenzy will sell out tournaments quicker than usual. That is why he is in a position to set up a small number of tournaments that aren't affiliated with the PGA and attract players as well as money.
He couldn't take the PGA members off the Tour for long since they would lose points toward the year-end Fed Ex Cup standings and prize money. But then again, with big purses for the participants, any money they might lose could be recouped by a generous prize structure on the "Tiger Tour."
He already puts on the Chevron event that he skipped immediately after his car accident. He hand-picks the invitees and even the person who comes in last earns a healthy pay day while spending a week of December in Southern California. If he is looking for a new lead-dog role that gives him power and stops the talk about him being a fading presence in the sponsorship world, this idea fits the bill.
Most golf observers have said for a long time that Tiger merely tolerates the PGA and we know that they try to make things as comfortable for him as they can. When 50% of a television audience disappears during a tournament without Woods, what else would you expect. But being the biggest draw as well as the owner/operator of the new hot place to be in golf surely has cache.
It was just a random thought of a sports journalist on one show broadcast on ESPN but it isn't as far fetched as we might think. The guy is plotting something besides saving his marriage. That only makes sense. Like all other ideas about what he's doing and thinking it's mere conjecture and blue sky hypothesis. But it sure is something to think about.