The denouement of a decade invariably means drawing together disparate threads to weave a onesie that provides everyone a warm, comforting feeling about the future. In a year like 2019, when Tiger Woods reasserted himself, that onesie feels like cashmere. At other times, it is fashioned from a burlap sack.
Such was the case in 2009, when the first decade of the 21st century drew to a close with a season of major winners whose dreariness didn’t diminish their deservedness.
At the Masters, Angel Cabrera’s translator was about as compelling in the Butler Cabin interview than anything we might have heard from either man who lost that playoff, Kenny Perry or Chad Campbell. Lucas Glover won a sodden U.S. Open at Bethpage Black — supposedly golf’s toughest major on its toughest course — by going 6 iron-9 iron up the 18th. Tom Watson was within a putt of winning the Open Championship but left us all with that Cinking feeling. Y.E. Yang downed Woods at the PGA Championship, which at least provides him an eye-catching opening sentence when writing sponsors exemption requests for the PGA Tour Champions in a couple of years.
That decade ended with Woods’s car accident, which imploded his marriage, his image and, for a time, his career. All in all, an ignominious end to an inglorious year.
If the second chapter of this century opened with Woods’s fall, it closes with his resurrection. As Greeks like to say at Easter, Christos anesti. It was the now 44-year-old Woods who ensured ’19 was a standout year and whose late-season resurgence makes ’20 all the more tantalizing. This was a year that promises a coming rich bounty compared to the fallowness of a decade ago.
Consider the principal players. Woods is again the Tour’s alpha silverback, no matter how much Brooks Koepka tweaks his peers. Rory McIlroy is mining a rich seam of form and with Koepka has created golf’s first rivalry since the days when Greg Norman was known more for losing his nerve than his drawers, a duel that is only heightened by Koepka’s denial that it exists. Jordan Spieth’s crash landing from that early supernova status makes him the most interesting man in the game, from the neck up.
Phil Mickelson is continuing to find ways to keep himself at least on the undercard as the wins have become more sparse, from money matches to dress shirts to hitting moving balls to cute Instagram videos (perhaps he’ll post a funny from one of Saudi Arabia’s roughly 150 annual beheadings when he’s there next month on a cash grab).
Other players have administered a fatal dose of sodium pentothal to a marketing image that had long been on life support: that every golfer is honorable and part of one happy Tour family. Both Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau dispensed with the latter artifice — Brooks by trash-talking his rivals while never letting his heart rate get above Hannibal Lecter levels, the Scientist with a screw y’all defense of his slow play. At last Bryson’s reputation is one that can be shaken.
The parable of the honorable golfer was laid bare by Sergio Garcia and Patrick Reed. Clearly, their offenses weren’t of similar gravity — at least Sergio’s unprofessional dislodging of sand in a bunker came after his ball had been struck — but both have given golf fans the option long enjoyed by those in other sports, that of rooting for or against the morally ambiguous antihero. The pashas in Ponte Vedra may squirm at the notion, but the PGA Tour will only benefit from the presence of villains, and will suffer only if its custodians attempt to gaslight fans with an alternate reality.
From the aching disappointment that was 2009, this decade draws to a close with a season that instead teases the halcyon era we’ve ached for since, well, since Tiger’s first reign ended 10 years ago.
