The Kids Are Alright

By Ron Sirak March 2, 2009

Admit it, when Tiger Woods was 3 down to Tim Clark in the second round of the Accenture Match Play and climbed down into that bunker on No. 14, there was a big part of you that expected him to hole it out. Which is exactly what he did. Tiger never lets us down.

And when Woods knocked his drive into the Arizona desert on the next hole, a short par-4, and you watched him trudge back to the tee to reload with only one club in his hand -- the driver -- a corner of your brain was calling out that he would drive the green, make the putt, save par and miraculously halve the hole. Which he didn't do, driving the green but missing the putt. OK, Tiger rarely lets us down.

Still, that is what Woods brings to the table: The possibility of magic. Now admit this: You can't wait to see him play again, most likely at the CA Championship at Doral next week. And admit this as well: Rory McIlroy set your heart racing with thoughts that perhaps this guy is what we ache for: A real rival for Woods.

Back in the days before the World Golf Championship events, the PGA Tour season really got going when the guys got to Florida. That was when the international players -- Greg Norman, Nick Faldo, Seve Ballesteros, Ernie Els among them -- would show up and start their run to the Masters.

The excitement of the Florida Swing has been undermined somewhat by the Accenture Match Play, which attracts the top talent to the West Coast not just for that event but for some of the other tour stops out there as well. But there is new reason to be excited about the tour as it moves east this year. Not only is Tiger back, but the kids are coming as well.

McIlroy, the 19-year-old sweet swinger from Northern Ireland who won the Dubai Desert Classic on the European Tour, was extremely impressive as he made it to the fourth round at the Accenture before losing to eventual winner Geoff Ogilvy. He not only pounds it a mile and has a deft touch around the greens, but his head seems to be screwed on properly as well. The consensus is he's the real deal.

And he is not alone. McIlroy plays this week at the Honda Classic, the following week at the CA Championship and then at the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill. Ryo Ishikawa, a 19-year old from Japan who has also won a pro event, will play the Transitions Championship and then Bay Hill before he heads to the Masters.

And when McIlroy and Ishikawa get to Augusta National, yet another teenager, Danny Lee, a Korean who is a naturalized New Zealander, will join them. At 18, Lee is the youngest winner of the U.S. Amateur. And, oh yeah, he won the Johnnie Walker Classic on the European Tour by one stroke with birdies on the last two holes.

Let's call them the Tiger Babies. When Woods won the 1997 Masters by 12 strokes, these guys -- now 17, 18 and 19 -- were 5, 6 and 7. They are the first generation of male golfers who have spent their entire life, from a golf point of view, in the Tiger Woods Era. And you kind of get the feeling they are only the beginning of a wave of talent about to sweep over the men's game.

When Woods burst on the scene people focused on his ethnicity -- his Mom is Thai and his father was African-American -- and thought he would expand the base of the game in the same way Arnold Palmer did two generations earlier. But that has not really turned out to be the case, at least not in the United States, where the game has grown as a spectator sport but has remained flat as a participatory sport. But there are two hugely significant ways Woods has impacted the game of which McIlroy, Ishikawa and Lee are representatives.

Better athletes are now playing the game of golf, and the game has grown significantly as a global sport. Both of those are reasons why there is good reason to believe golf will be successful when the International Olympic Committee decides in October which two sports to add to the 2016 Summer Games. What didn't happen in the United States has happened elsewhere.

Woods expanded the talent base of the game in three ways:

• He made the game cool. Here's a young guy who likes golf so it must be good. That's what Sven Tumba did in Sweden in the early 1970s. When folks saw a hockey player on the golf course, it gave the game credibility. Now Sweden has one of the best per-capita rates of players in the world.