Golf has a Tiger Woods problem, Woods is like a drug they can’t quit. Sports media is so high on this drug that their haze and obsession has blinded them to an understanding that it is hurting their game. Those outside the addiction can see how it has twisted and poisoned the great game of golf.
Woods came into the game in the late 1990s as a phenom. He would be the greatest of all time, everyone in sports media knew it. And he captured the golf and sporting worlds attention throughout the 2000s. He was amazing.
But in 2018 he is a has-been, a could-have, a just-short-of-GOAT. Yet the sports media still things he is the story. But the story has moved on. The game has gone forward without him. There are new stars and new talent. Golf was before Tiger, it will live past him. But the sports media, which lives in the here and now, does not see it through the lens of perspective. They want 2000 Tiger. But he is gone.
When they learn to move past Tiger, the game of golf will be able to grow again. Now it is so stifled by a non-story, real stories are being snuffed out. Interesting people, great golf and a wonderful sport has been just Tiger Woods for so long, the sports journalists have become lazy. They have stopped searching for the next big thing or even the stars among us. They only look back at the could-have-beens.
