Woods Captures the Imagination Like No Other Great

Those men in suits teetering on the window ledges of high-rise office blocks this morning are the executives of television channels with a commitment to broadcast major golf tournaments this summer. The absence of Tiger Woods, announced yesterday, will exert an effect on their viewing figures and advertising revenues that could be not be matched by the withdrawal of the leading figure in any other sport.

Woods came to prominence in a time when individual sports were dominated by a handful of hugely significant figures, none of whom matched his hold on the imagination. There was Mike Tyson, the youngest heavyweight boxing champion of all time, invincible until Buster Douglas cut him down. There was Pete Sampras, with his record 14 grand slam titles. There was Michael Schumacher, eclipsing Fangio's record of five formula one titles and extending it to seven. And there was Lance Armstrong, ending up with a yellow jersey for each day of the week.

Golf is a different sort of game, and Woods' quest to surpass Jack Nicklaus's record of 18 major titles was always going to involve him in a much longer haul. Despite his imminent appointment in the operating theatre, however, you will not find a bookmaker willing to give decent odds against him replacing the Golden Bear in the record books. If he could win the US Open at Torrey Pines on one leg, as he did this week, surely nothing is beyond him.

Which is why he tends to double the television audience for any tournament in which he participates. No other sports figure in history, not even Muhammad Ali, has achieved that kind of appeal, season after season. People who know nothing of golf tune in to watch Tiger because they believe that, as well as a charismatic figure with a unique place in the history of his sport, they are going to see someone doing something better than it has ever been done. They wept with him when his father died, and shared his joy at the birth of his daughter.

Golfers of all abilities have been mesmerized by his mastery. If Nicklaus could praise the young Woods by invoking the wonderful sound bite - "He is playing a game with which I am not familiar" - used by Bobby Jones to welcome his own rise to the top, there could be no doubting the extraordinary nature of his hold on the public imagination.

Here is another piece of proof. When Woods, for a variety of reasons, was not winning majors, there was no rush of enthusiasm to acclaim the greatness of Todd Hamilton, Rich Beem, Paul Lawrie, Shaun Micheel, Michael Campbell or Mike Weir. His absence from the top of the leader-board made the world seem a less interesting place. There was a feeling of waiting for Tiger to reassert the natural order.

The exception to this has to be the Ryder Cup, where he will not be missed. Ever since his first participation in 1997, successive US captains have promised that Tiger would make the difference. He never has. A week before the 2002 event he played in a million-dollar American Express event in Ireland and assured the press, when asked directly, that there were "a million reasons" for preferring that individual tournament to the unpaid team contest. A week later he issued a wholly unconvincing retraction.

His absence from the starting line-up in Louisville in September might even enable this year's US captain, Paul Azinger, to plan his pairings with a clearer head, rather than fall prey to the temptation that led Hal Sutton to send Woods and Phil Mickelson out to a morale-draining defeat at the hands of Colin Montgomerie and Padraig Harrington on the first morning at Oakland Hills in 2004.

Nothing much about the Ryder Cup appeals to Woods, particularly the need to set aside his normal ascetic preparatory routines in favor of social functions and team-bonding sessions. "That's not normally what I do to prepare for major championships," he said two years ago.

Underlying the news, however, is a feeling that Woods may have brought his current problem on himself. The constant work in the weights room to build his upper-body strength, increasing the amount of torque transmitted through his knees as he strikes the ball, may have contributed to weakening the cruciate ligament, perhaps also placing extra stress on the bones between knee and ankle. In going beyond what anyone imagined possible, the great champion might just have gone too far.