Golf Goes the way of Wrestling
Professional golf is equating itself with professional wrestling today with two past-their-prime players, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods, currently dueling unspectacularly on pay-per-view.
Golf is game that is dying with the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers. Golf peaked even before 2009 when Woods wrapped his SUV around a tree, escaped then wife Elin’s attempt to take a divot out of the 14-time major champion.
The print title of Ed Graney’s LVRJ Thanksgiving day column said it all, “Tiger-Phil PPV duel more sad than sham.” The online title was even more scathing, “Pay for Tiger-Phil golf match or watch paint dry?”
Graney gives a tip of the cap to Billy Walters, writing, “Although if you tell me Mickelson is instead playing Bill Walters over 18 holes and the wily gambler is packing a few Ping G400 Max drivers in his bag, well, that would be must-watch television.”
Walters is a victim of the DOJ’s Preet Bharara’s irrational pursuit of Wall Street scalps and is now serving time in Florida, a place Graney described as “minimum-security prison camp.”
People who have visited Walters say the prison food is so bad, the ex-gambling guru eats all he can out of the vending machine. Not only was Walters railroaded for the made-up “crime” of insider trading, the time he is doing is not as easy as Graney’s description would indicate.
Michelson was involved in the Deans Food stock trading case, but was given a free drop and continues to play through, today dueling Tiger for $9 million in front of a VIP-only crowd of a couple dozen or so.
In 2014, Money ran an article , “Fore! No, Make that Five. 5 Reasons Golf is in the Hole.”
People are too darn busy.
It’s elitist and too expensive
It’s just not cool In 2009, Jack Nicklaus lamented, “Kids just don’t play golf any more in the United States and it is sad.”
It’s too difficult Pat Gallagher wrote, “While other sports have embraced new technology and innovation with open arms, traditionalists strive to protect the game of golf and keep it exactly as they love it—even in the face of suffering courses and shrinking audiences.”
Tiger Woods. According to David Hill, “Tiger’s decline from Teflon coated Superhero to mere great golfer precipitated the bursting of the golf bubble. It’s as simple as that.”
If you care. Phil won on the 22nd hole. Ho Hum.
