With Tiger Woods out for the year, we are about to get a heavy dose of what the sport of golf is going to look like in about, oh say 15 years or so. That is, what life in the PGA will look like without the 800 pound gorilla in the room. We will be “treated” to two major championships and countless other tournaments with “the field” and no Tiger Woods. What we see (if we even watch) will give us a pretty good preview for what will happen in the future when Eldrick Tont Woods leaves the sport.

Baseball and football have (for the most part) been immune from the disease of the superstar athlete taking over the sport, growing it to unseen heights, becoming an icon that represents what the sport is, then retiring and leaving it in ruins. Those sports are built upon team identity, and neither is a particularly individualist sport. As such, its very difficult for one person to become the entire face of the sport, and thus dominate it to such a degree that their presence (or lack therof) could so drastically help or hurt the sport.

We do, however, have a few examples to draw upon, to see what may be in store for golf.

The National Baskeball Association

Michael Jordan was basketball. We all know that. From the moment he stepped on the court, the NBA exploded. Television ratings increased beyond anything the sport had ever seen before, road attendance for Bulls games skyrocketed, shoes started to don a silhouette of a jumping man and casual suburban fans became die hards.

Under Jordan, the sport of basketball enjoyed a renaissance that it will probably never see again in our lifetime. Incredibly, it began to compete with America’s “big two” sports - baseball and football - for the hearts and minds of sports fans. Before Jordan it had been a distant third, and even sometimes fourth behind hockey when Gretzky was around. His presence alone made that much of an impact - and if anyone tries to tell you otherwise, they are full of it.

So what happened when Jordan retired? Well, retired for real I guess.

In 1998 TimeWarner investigated the financial wake the Jordan owned in the sport (increased ratings, attendance, shoe deals, endorsements, media, etc) and placed his value at roughly ten billion dollars. While I think that figure is a bit out of proportion, his loss was staggering - so much so that the league is just NOW coming out of its funk. Viewership during the Jordan period averaged around a 4.8 Nielsen rating, and steadily declined, and as of 2006 stood at a whopping 2.2 rating. The NBA Finals? In Jordan’s last (real) year of 1998, the first game of the finals hit an 18.0 rating. 2006? 7.8.

The league also went through an identity crisis - it went from a league that middle America identified with to one that identified with thuggish young kids covered in tattoos, dressed in camping tents, smoking weed and going to jail. There was no one of Jordan’s ilk to replace the vacuum he left behind, and America didn’t really like what was left.

Even during the high point of Laker dominance during their three-pete, ratings, revenue, attendance and attention didn’t come anywhere near what it had been before.

The NBA has only recently come out of the doldrums, let it still has not come anywhere near the Jordan years, and shows no signs that it can reach that level again.

Boxing

Boxing has gone through a similar set of peaks and valleys, only it has repeated the process several times. More than almost any sport, it is at the mercy of singular personalities - after all it is a sport of single man vs. single man, and if a dominant boxer emerges he can completely take over the sport. Add in charisma and style and one single person can take the sport from almost unwatchable to being the buzz of water coolers all over the country.

The most recent examples of this phenomenal rise, and titanic fall are the careers of Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson.

Before Mike Tyson became a household name, most Americans would rather watch documentaries on the dung beetle than pay for fights on pay-per-view. But soon, Tyson was crushing people in the first round, had a video game that every kid in the United States owned, and was getting covered in sports magazines and on television as though he were Mohammed Ali.

Similarly, Evander Holyfield shared a similar rise once Tyson went to jail. Where Tyson was power, flash and the titan of the sport, Holyfield was the everyman’s champion, and was able to impose his dominance on a post-Tyson sport. Indeed, this helped to keep the sport chugging along through the 1990s, as Tyson was released and worked his way back up to an inevitable face-off with Holyfield.

During this time men everywhere would purchase boxing matches and invite friends over to “watch the fight” over beers, beef jerkey and sour cream and onion chips.

But, soon enough Tyson became washed up, and Holyfield was as well. In their absence, the sport has not only meandered through obscurity, it has virtually collapsed. Boxing today is so irrelevant that it takes five or six minutes to find the boxing section on ESPN.com - if you’re lucky. It has been supplanted (easily) by mixed martial arts, and today looks to be on the verge of never again rising into prominence.

That is, until the next Tyson or Holyfield comes along and “saves the sport”.

The National Hockey League

You are aware that the NHL still exists, aren’t you?

Yeah - I know, its tough to remember the days when it was actually relevant. Its been a long time.

Hockey is a lot like basketball. Technically it is a team sport, but that “team” is only five people, and those five people are usually dominated by a singular star player that is the unquestioned best player there. The NHL is a fantastically individual sport in terms of the public’s perception of it (in reality, hockey really is a team sport that requires all five parts to work as a whole) - and has historically thrived during times when there was a dominant presence on the ice.

No time was that more true that during the time of Wayne Gretzky.

Gretzky was to the NHL what Jordan was to the NBA. Once he departed the sport, ratings, attendance, revenue, sponsorships and overall interest in the sport all declined. Today, the NHL is crawling out of a virtual black hole that nearly destroyed the sport. Yes, the lockout had a lot to do with that - its never good when your sport doesn’t play for a year, especially the year after a team from the swamp wins your championship trophy - but its been a downward spiral since the icon of hockey retired.

Luckily for the sport, it finally has some new icons in training - only time will tell if that will revitalize the sport, but if it does, it kind proves the thesis of this article, doesn’t it?

What this means for Golf

Well, we’re about to see a preview of this for the next six months or so. Golf is now left with a handful of also-rans who the casual fan is barely aware of. Consider this - there is a very real possibility that even though Woods has only played in seven tournaments thus far, he could very well still end up being the player of the year, and ranked #1.

How ridiculous is that?

Anyway, back on topic, when you look at the world golf rankings this is what you see:

1. Tiger Woods
2. Phil Mickelson
3. Adam Scott
4. Geoff Ogilvy
5. Ernie Els
6. Sergio García
7. Justin Rose
8. Steve Stricker
9. Vijay Singh
10. Jim Furyk

Casual fans probably recognize about half those names, but are interested in none of them except for maybe Phil Mickelson. But even interest in him is not enough to get Joe six pack to tune in on a Sunday afternoon. There is already talk about golf viewership (especially for the majors) going down 30% or more during this Tiger-less period, and I believe it.

Its the quintessential problem in an individual sport like golf - when the icon of your sport is there, good things happen for you. When he is gone, hold on tight. The only think you can really do is ride the wave that a superstar of his level creates, and hopefully set yourself up for a future that does not involve him.

Right now golf has not done a very good job of that. There is no real draw besides Tiger in the sport, so when he isn’t around, the sport suffers. A lot.

Unless the PGA can produce an heir (or preferably several) to his throne, golf will go through exactly what the NBA, NHL and boxing have gone through. It will go through being on the minds of everyday Americans as they chat at the office, to being nearly forgotten. Luckily for the sport its particular fan base will keep it alive (unlike boxing), but for the long term health of the sport, it will clearly need more than just surviving.

Now, excuse me, I have a future phenom PGA champion to cook dinner for.