Good for Game: In youth, golf may be served

        Where have you gone Tiger Woods?  A golf nation turns its lonely eyes to…kids.

        I write this as I watch the Travelers Championship at the Tournament Players Course just south of Hartford, CT.  Unless you have stopped at this web site in error, you have an interest in golf and, no doubt, have read the big news from the TPC; a 19-year old amateur, Patrick Cantlay, had the

lead after an other-worldly score of 60 in the tournament’s rain-delayed second round.  (He finished the third round at 11 under par, five strokes back of leader Fredrik Jacobson.)   Although he is unlikely to jump over a pack of good players on Sunday – he would be the youngest golfer ever to win a PGA event if he did -- the kid is no fluke.  Just a week ago, he placed 21st at the U.S. Open, finishing at level par and 16 strokes behind another young’un -– and young gun –- Rory McIlroy, a comparative senior at 22, who blew away the field.  Cantlay, a rising college sophomore at UCLA, should have no problems conjuring some material for an essay for English class this fall on “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.”

        Cantlay and McIlroy, as well as others still too young to shave every day, may be the change the golf tour and the game itself have been waiting for, at least in the U.S.  How refreshing, for example, to read the exhaustive coverage in this morning’s Hartford Courant and see just two passing references to Tiger Woods, neither having to do with how pathetic the game of golf is without him.  When is the last time a story on golf made it through more than a few paragraphs without at least a hint of a woe-is-us reference to the state of the game without Tiger?

        The truth is that the game -– any competitive game -- is better off when there is actual competition.  Tiger at his peak turned his fellow PGA touring pros into a bunch of girly men who spent more time explaining

to the press why Tiger could not be beat than how he could.  (Rocco Mediate gets a pass on that one.)  No wonder that during the Tiger Woods era, the Ryder Cup grew into the most interesting of all golf competitions.  After all, Tiger could only contribute a small percentage of points –- and he didn’t do a very good job of that, compiling an overall 10-13-2 record, although a good 3-1-1 tally in individual play.  (Doesn’t play well with others, we suppose.)  Europeans, it appears, figured out a way to beat the Tiger before his life -– and knee –- imploded.

        Imagine, if you will, a tour without Tiger Woods.  Consider -– it’s not that big a stretch -– that the imperturbable young Mr. Cantlay and the baby-faced and sweet-natured Mr. McIlroy are golfers as good as they appear.  They are undemonstrative, for sure, but real golfers and true fans care about the performance, not the sideshows, the drama not the fist pumps.  Dream of a June Sunday, say, in 2018; the two 20-somethings are strolling up the 18^th fairway together at Shinnecock Hills, with the U.S. Open on the line.

        Wouldn't that beat a Tiger cakewalk any day?