2014 in Review - Familiar Face Again No. 1 Story

By: Marino Parascenzo


I expect very shortly to reach my decision on the No. 1 Thing in Golf for 2014. I say "thing" because it's not that simple this time. Usually people who make end-of-the-year rankings have it easy and pick, say, the guy who had a big year, or maybe a spectacular win. But this time - well, it could be almost anything. If choices were riches, we are red-faced with the embarrassment we have before us.

Just consider, for example, Rory McIlroy, who dropped his girlfriend and found his game. (Could it be that easy? If it is, just think of the sword hanging over wedded bliss throughout professional golf.) We have Tiger Woods, who proved by his very absence that he was barely missed, until he popped up as the centerpiece in a bit of social commentary. Then there's Tom Watson, who sent the nation into mourning as captain of the You-Know-What Cup team. And Dustin Johnson, who was going pretty good and then suddenly called in, well - you know - tired.

I confess - I'm leaning hard toward Tiger Woods, for a couple of reasons. First off, unlike the metaphysical debate on whether there's life after death, he proved to us that there is golf after Tiger Woods. He missed most of the season, recovering from back surgery. In seven starts, he finished 25th and 69th, missed three cuts and withdrew twice. And yet Western civilization survived. Although TV wasn't convinced. For TV, a shot of Woods brushing off fans was infinitely better than someone holing an 80-foot putt for eagle.

PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem called it a "mixed bag" for TV. The ratings were down, he said, partially because of Woods' absence, but also because of fewer playoffs. But ". . . we don't ever like to look at just ratings," he said, noting that although the ratings dropped, the cumulative audience - the number of people tuned in - had increased by 7 or 8 percent. This seems to be different from ratings, which are based on the number of people tuned in. Isn't it? Well, maybe not.

Then there was the huge flap over author Dan Jenkins' parody of Woods in Golf Digest. There was quite an uproar across the republic, and Woods was much perturbed, even firing back on someone else's website. Responded Jenkins: "I thought I let him off easy." But can someone really say such things about Tiger Woods? Well, if not, bag Letterman, Colbert, Black, et al., and go back and cancel out Mencken while you're at it.

(Addendum to the Tiger Woods' entry in the end-of-year contest: He did fire someone - Sean Foley - swing coach. No. 4 if you're scoring at home. Next up, as coach of course, someone named Chris Como, impressive for doing a golf swing during a leap from the high board at a swimming pool. But where do you tee it up?)

McIlroy went through the three Rs - rules, romance and recovery. (Tacky, but I couldn't resist.) He kicked off the season with a big rules flap in January at Abu Dhabi by having his big toe in the wrong place when he thought he was taking a free drop. It cost him two shots and the tournament. He lost by one. A big deal to a guy trying to find his game. This came just a few weeks after McIlroy announced his engagement to Danish tennis star Caroline Wozniacki, a match made in heaven if there ever was one, if not quite as marquee-ish as Tiger Woods-Lindsey Vonn (she skis).

But McIlroy de-marqueed the match pretty quickly. In May, soon after mailing out wedding invitations, he WD'd. "The problem is mine," McIlroy said. "The wedding invitations issued at the weekend made me realize that I wasn't ready for all that marriage entails." Before long, his game heated up. He won three straight starts: the British Open, Bridgestone Invitational and PGA Championship, his third and fourth majors. It will be recalled that McIlroy hit the doldrums shortly after changing equipment and that the slump was blamed on the equipment. Is it possible - and nothing against Caroline Wozniacki at this point - that being that close to a girlfriend, and even being threatened with marriage, was weighing him down? If so, keep your eye on the divorce charts.

Well, it's in the books that the post-Wozniacki McIlroy went on a tear and won a bunch of honors, and there's no telling where he will go from here.

Then there was the great Tom Watson, captain of the U.S. Ryder Cup team, running that proud ship aground. Yes, those upstart Europeans, who have been upstarting for a couple of decades now, beat up on the Yanks yet again. We had everything but a parade in Times Square calling for Watson's head. His sins were of the highest order, said people who weigh such things. He made bad captain's picks, made bad pairings, sat out the wrong guys, and didn't let the guys have cookies and milk before beddy-bye, none of which became clear until after the fact.

To prevent such a national tragedy from happening again, the PGA of America, which handles the American side of the Ryder Cup, created the Ryder Cup Task Force. Honest.

It's a panel of 11 experts whose task was to study this dark moment and come up with assurances that it will never happen again. The PGA, of which I'm an admirer, didn't know this, but I managed to insert a mole in the task force's think sessions, and have learned of their findings. The next U.S. Ryder Cup captain, accordingly, will give these three secret keys to his team:

1. Hit more fairways.
2. Hit more greens.
3. Make more putts.

I had briefly included Michelle Wie among the candidates for the top story of 2014. Well, I admire her immensely, but still don't think that finally doing something she'd been paid millions to do a long time ago ranks up there with these others. Wiesy won the U.S. Women's Open with a fine, gutsy finish. She attributed much of her improved play to her new putting stance. Some call it table-top, the way she bends over. Think of the center on a pro football team. Better yet, a giraffe, spread-eagling to get down for a drink.

So, I am prepared finally to reveal my winner. And the winner for the top story for 2014 is:

Tiger Woods.

Because he showed us that life without Tiger Woods is not only possible, it's painless.

And because, with a salute to the First Amendment, life with Tiger Woods can be fun.

Dan Jenkins pitched a shutout.

Finally, I'd like to leave an exciting and rewarding 2014 with a firm resolution for 2015.

One of these days I'm going to get myself some chips and drinkables and sit right down and watch "The Big Break." Can any golf fan really pass on it?

But first I have to finish "Keeping up with the Kardassians."

Marino Parascenzo can assure you that hanging around with great and famous pro golfers does nothing to help your game. They just won't give you the secret. But it makes for a dandy career. As a sportswriter with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (now retired), Parascenzo covered the whole gamut of sports - Steelers, Pirates, Penguins, Pitt, Penn State and others - but golf was his favorite. As the beat writer for the paper, he covered all the stateside majors and numerous other pro events, and as a freelancer handled reporting duties for the British Open and other tournaments overseas - in Britain, Spain, Italy, the Caribbean, South Africa, China and Malayasia. Marino has won more than 20 national golf-writing awards, along with state and regional honors. He has received the Memorial Tournament's Golf Journalism Award and the PGA of America's Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism. His writing has appeared in numerous magazines, among them Sports Illustrated, Golf Digest and Golf Magazine, and in anthologies and foreign publications. He also wrote the history of Oakmont Country Club. Parascenzo is a former president of the Golf Writers Association of America and is on its board of directors. He is the founder and chairman of the GWAA's Journalism Scholarship Program. He is a graduate of Penn State and was an adjunct instructor in journalism at Pitt.