The Big 24?

The Big Five? They don’t exist. It was a myth. It expanded in March or April or so to include Retief (remember “The Big Four?”), but it should have shrunk to “The Terrific Two” or “The Winning One” as Phil Mickelson has faltered, Ernie can’t win anything with a top-50 player in the field, and Retief falls apart whenever his calendar says “Sunday.” Vijay Singh hasn’t holed a putt for a month or two now.

“Is Tiger Back?” It’s a dumb question to ask, because it was answered in April. Only fans who don’t like to see one player dominating the sport were still asking the question last week. If anyone seriously asks the question now, they’ve obviously not been paying attention for the past two months. 1-2-1 at the majors, a second-place finish at The Western Open, and a 2-major, 4-win season so far. And we’ve just passed the halfway point. Tiger’s season, thus far, is better than Vijay’s last year.

But who’d have thunk that Tiger’s re-emergence would have led to the utter disappearance of the other top golfers?

The top five golfers in the world have not gained any ground on Tiger Woods and now rate rather poorly. In fact, Tiger’s British Open victory puts him more than four points ahead of Vijay in second place in the Official World Golf Rankings:

1         Tiger Woods         16.24 
2         Vijay Singh         12.19 
3         Ernie Els            9.36 
4         Phil Mickelson       8.58 
5         Retief Goosen        7.61

Sergio Garcia, at the #6 spot, comes in at 7.35. Kenny Perry, at #10, has got 5.24 points. In fact, we have to go all the way down to #24 and Nick O’Hern to find a gap (4.07) between Retief and O’Hern as wide as the gap between Tiger and Vijay (4.05). If we’re going to talk about “The Big Five” or “The Big Four,” surely we’ve got to include the left-handed Aussie with the long putter? After all, he’s as close to Retief as Tiger is to Vijay.