Norman Says PGA in Trouble

[Thrash13]

The PGA Tour is better than ever. I don't ever recall a time where there were so many talented golfers from all around the world playing on one tour. Just take a look at the world rankings and check out the depth. Sure, Tiger has dominated the past few months, but most of 2006 wasn't like that at all. People are getting too caught up in what Tiger has done since The Open Championship in July. Before that, he wasn't even in the running for player of the year.

The lack of young stud American golfers hurts a little, but there are so many fans out there that enjoy watching guys like Sergio, Adam Scott, Luke Donald, etc. The youth is there, but it would be nice to see some young Americans give Tiger a run for his money.

Greg Norman just wants everyone to think it was better and more exciting when he was playing. I didn't watch much of Norman's golfing career, but I'd take a guess that things are quite a bit better overall these days.

I do agree with Norman about winning a major championship without using a driver. It doesn't happen all that often, however, so it's not a big deal to me. I do think courses should create their setups so that golfers pretty much have to hit drivers. But all the golfers are playing the same course and are free to the same kind of weight training and conditioning as Tiger is, so there really isn't any excuse for anyone in that regard.

I've watched more of the PGA Tour this year than any other year of my life, so I obviously love it!

[damoc1]

Are not all sports like this in one way or another, when you have a stand out player of course its going to pull in more ratings as people who don't know the game can only associate with that person and plus people also like to watch the best!!, people dont want to watch someone who will hit a perfect drive and split the fairway then duff the 2nd shot into the trees.
Look at soccer for instance, if one of the worlds top players is playing in a match there would be no doubt that there would be more viewers than there would if only the normal players are on. I assume that this would count for baseball, basketball, american football the list is endless.
I also think that although the technology is getting better for players to be better, the courses surely could be easily altered to accomodate this and cause more trouble for the players.
I think a good idea would be for the projected cut to be lower or even have another cut after the 3rd day, this way it would cause more competition and drives players to play better instead of just thinking "oh well if i hit par at least i'll take $75,000 home"..
what do you guys think?

[iacas]

I do agree with Norman about winning a major championship without using a driver. It doesn't happen all that often, however, so it's not a big deal to me. I do think courses should create their setups so that golfers pretty much have to hit drivers.

The goal of golf is not to make everyone hit every club. It's to get the ball in the hole in as few a number of strokes as possible.

I see it as a contradiction of sorts that Greg calls the PGA Tour boring, then implies that everyone should play the game the same way. Tiger found an interesting, unique, effective, non-boring way to play. His 4-irons were inside most guys' sand wedges. Far from boring and exactly the way golf should be played - with creativity, with good shotmaking, with control, and with ability. I think Greg played in a time when Americans and others had more leisure time. We could all play and watch more golf. The modern American workweek has increased something like 15% from the time Greg Norman dominated in 1993 or whenever.