Why Golf Needs Rory McIlroy to Win the 2011 PGA Championship

Golf needs Rory McIlroy to win the 2011 PGA Championship in the same way that heavyweight boxing desperately needs another Muhammad Ali or Mike Tyson to emerge.

You see, individual sports are not like team sports.

While parity might be great for the NFL or NBA, golf is never more popular than when there is a dominant force in the game.

If you don’t believe that then just ask yourself this question. Which era of golf would you most like to live through if you had the chance?

A)   Bobby Jones in 1920-1930

B)   Ben Hogan in the late '40s-mid '50s

C)   Jack Nicklaus in the '60s-'70s

D)   Tiger Woods in the late '90s-late 2000s

E)   The late '80s-late '90s where parity was rampant and only a small handful of men won more than one major.

If it’s parity that your after, you would have chosen the late '80s-late '90s without hesitation.  If not, well than you have just proven my point.

This whole parity and first-time winner thing has been cool for the past couple of years.  We’ve been introduced to some new faces in the game, and we’ve seen several young players win the biggest tournaments on the face of the planet. 

However, if no one emerges as a true top dog in the next year or two, and we are still talking about parity and first-time winners three years from now, the game of golf could be in some serious trouble. 

In essence golf could be entering a period almost identical to the late '80s-late '90s, right before a dominant force emerged and took the game to another stratosphere in terms of money, television ratings, attendance and general popularity.

There are a number of good young players who could step up and take over the reins, but McIlroy is just the most interesting.

He’s a likeable character who doesn’t mind interacting with the crowd and the media.

He’s not afraid to travel long distances and play tournaments in every corner of the world, which is essential to growing the game on a global scale. 

And most importantly, he has already won a major.  One major win is a great accomplishment by a talented young player.  Two major wins in the same year at the young age of 22, and now you're looking at someone who could be evolving into the game’s next dominant force.

I consider myself both a golf purist and a realist.

Purists will tell you that golf survived before Woods and will continue to survive long after Woods is gone. 

And that may be true. 

However, a realist will tell you that there’s a big difference between surviving and thriving.

While golf was simply surviving during the late '80s-late '90s, golf thrived during the Tiger Woods era, and this was not the result of the pure diehard golf fans. 

Diehard golf fans do not move the needle. In fact, they are simply the starting point from which to measure any growth in the game’s popularity. 

Let me put it to you this way. I am by no means a heavyweight boxing fan. While growing up I played baseball, basketball, football and golf.  I never boxed nor did I have much of an interest in the sport until Mike Tyson came along, after which boxing became must-see TV.

In the weeks leading up to a Tyson fight, the planning would begin around school.  Whose house would we go to to watch the fight?

Had their parents ordered pay-per-view?

What snacks should we get for the fight?

Is there enough room for all of us to sleep over after the fight, as the fights would typically begin at 10:30 to 11 p.m., and we were only about 12 years old at the time.

I was not interested in boxing, nor was I interested in Larry Holmes or Michael Spinks. I was interested in Tyson, because his fights were the most amazing sports spectacle I had ever seen.  It was simply can’t miss ridiculously overpriced pay-per-view TV in the '80s-early '90s.

Since Tyson’s collapse I have stopped watching heavyweight boxing. 

The sport has “survived,” and true boxing fans could probably name the top-10 heavyweight fighters in the world at the drop of a hat.  But has heavyweight boxing thrived since Tyson left and those tens of millions of people, like myself, left with him?

The answer to that question is a resounding no. 

Woods has been the Tyson of professional golf for more than a decade now.

Maybe you love him or maybe you hate him, but what cannot be disputed is that Woods brought out the masses, and with that followed the money, the Golf Channel, extended television coverage, television ratings that for the first time in history rivaled mainstream sports, attendance figures through the roof, etc.

Woods may eventually regain his dominant form or he may not, but either way he probably has less than 10 years left on golf's biggest stage, and unless someone like McIlroy steps up and takes over the reins, golf might very well head down a path similar to heavyweight boxing.

Golf will survive. That is as close to a certainty as anything can be in this tumultuous world.

But the big question everyone should really be asking is, will it thrive?

And that answer to that question will likely depend on whether or not a dominant force emerges from this group of talented young players.

For more golf news, insight and analysis, check out The Tour Report.