Why Jordan Spieth's Masters Meltdown Makes Us Further Appreciate Tiger Woods

There’s an old saying that anything becomes normal if it happens often enough.

Tiger Woods may have initially shocked the world his 12 stroke victory at the 1997 Masters and then four consecutive major titles between 2000 and 2001. But as he continued to rack up one major championship win after another, somewhere along the line Woods’ absurd domination of the professional game started to become normal.

During the 2000s, we simply expected Woods to win, or at the very least contend, virtually every time he teed it up because, well, that’s what he had always done.

Being that Woods finished within the top-20 at 38 of the 46 majors he attended between 1997 and 2008, it was almost a forgone conclusion that he would be in the mix on every single major championship Sunday.

And when Woods did happen hold the 54-hole lead at a major, well, then we all got our Sunday afternoons back because the outcome of the tournament was already decided.

Some enjoyed watching one player completely dominate the game while others viewed this period of time as somewhat boring due to the lack of any real competition for a player that was quite possibly head-and-shoulders above anyone that had ever played the game.

But what very few of us did was take the time to truly appreciate what we were witnessing each and every time Woods stepped onto the golf course between 1997 and the late 2000s.

His brilliance was ultimately taken for granted and perhaps it will take this next generation of young stars to make us truly comprehend what Woods was able to accomplish during the prime of his career.

When Jordan Spieth held a five stroke lead with nine holes to play at last Sunday’s Masters, many were undoubtedly ready to flip the channel and turn back a couple of hours later to see how Spieth, as the defending champion, would manage to place a second green jacket on himself at the awards ceremony.

This feeling of inevitability likely came as a residual effect of the Woods era where the game’s top player simply did not squander 54-hole leads let alone a five stroke lead with nine holes to play.

And throughout the first few years of Spieth career he had given us no indication that his steely nerves and strong course management skills were at all prone to Sunday afternoon meltdowns.

But as the 22-year-old Texan managed to throw away five stroke lead by shedding six strokes around Amen Corner, one couldn’t help but think that what we had witness with Spieth was nothing short of unthinkable during the Woods era.  

Spieth was of course not the first star of this next generation to meltdown at Augusta.

David J. Phillip/Associated Press

Four years ago Rory McIlroy took a four stroke lead into the final round of the Masters and still held a one-stroke lead at the turn before also shedding six strokes on holes 10-12 and carding a 43 on the back-nine which eventually landed him in a tie for 15th.

Woods went an incredible 12 years and 14 majors without ever blowing a 54-hole lead. That mind-boggling stat was something that became accepted during Woods’ career, but is an accomplishment that we may begin to hold in much higher regard as we watch one rising star after another suffer epic major championship meltdowns.

At the start of last week’s Masters many experts had put Rickie Fowler on their short list of potential contenders.

But after an opening round score of 80, Fowler was headed back home on Friday night.

This was Fowler’s fifth missed cut at a major and the 35th time he has missed a cut at a PGA Tour sanctioned event during his short career.

Woods missed one major championship cut between 1997 and 2008 and has missed just 15 cuts in his entire PGA Tour career.

On a weekly basis when players such as Spieth (16 missed cuts), Fowler (35 missed cuts), Day (35 missed cuts) and McIlroy (36 missed cuts between the PGA and European Tours) don’t play well, they miss the cut, go home and start preparing for their next tournament.

Woods, on the other hand, went nearly seven years and 142 PGA Tour events between 1998 and 2005 events without missing a single cut.

Last year we were quick to bestow praise upon Day for continuing to chip away and finally breaking through for his first major championship title at the age of 27.

Analysts will also often discuss how Dustin Johnson (31 years old) is inching his way towards that elusive first major title.

If this seems like a glacial pace of development to some, that’s because it is. At least compared to Woods who had won 10 majors before his 30th birthday.

Right now the top spot in the World Golf Rankings is flipping faster than a Las Vegas slot machine.

A player will get hot for a few weeks, move into the No. 1 position in the World Golf Rankings only to cool off and be taken over by another player in the midst of a hot streak.

Woods’ consistent domination of the game gave him an almost permanent position atop the World Golf Rankings during his prime. He spent 683 weeks as the No. 1 ranked player in the world, which is six years longer than the next longest streak (Greg Norman).

Now make no mistake, professional golf has become extremely exciting over the past few years. This is largely due to the fact that the game is devoid of a dominant force and we now have a group of young stars battling it out on a somewhat consistent basis. As such, the outcomes of tournaments are not forgone conclusions as they were so often during the Woods era.

But as great as this next generation of young stars are, each missed cut, major championship meltdown and changing of the guard atop the World Golf Rankings is going to make us appreciate Woods’ accomplishments more than ever.

Anything becomes normal if it happens often enough, and it typically takes a significant change in circumstances to realize that what we had previously perceived as “normal” actually wasn’t normal at all.

So while the genius of Woods may have been overlooked to some degree during the 15 years he spent building arguably the greatest career in the history of the game, Woods will one day be able to thank the likes of Spieth, Day, Fowler and Johnson for making us all realize just how special he was on the golf course.