The start of Tiger's domination?

As most of you might know by now, Tiger Woods won the British Open yesterday by a margin of 5 strokes. In fact, he led from wire-to-wire without looking like *not* winning at any stage of the tournament. From my previous posts, it was apparent that I was rooting for a Tiger victory before the tournament began. But, after the victory and also looking at the way he won it, I am left pretty downcast over the whole scenario. As I have stated previously in this blog, the primary reason I root for Tiger is because of the basic human nature potrayed in his story that no man can be perfect. After utterly demolishing all competition around him during the period 1999-2003, he did not win a major for a long long time and people began to wonder if the Tiger era is over. Seeing him re-emerge from the slumps would have (and has indeed now) made for a great story. And, my allegiance with Tiger was basically to experience the vicarious pleasure of being able to emerge champion once again, fighting off the competition that had managed to chip away at his dominance.

The beginning of the year held great promises with Vijay Singh coming off a great season in which he had stolen the No. 1 ranking from Woods, and with Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson in the form of their life, there was great anticipation from the "Big Four". But, now it looks like Tiger is once again back to his dominant best and the other three have failed to provide any opposition. Tiger was challenged by Chris DiMarco and Michael Campbell, in the Masters and the US Open, respectively, both of whom were in all probability just one-off wonders. So, if Tiger is once again going to dominate every tournament, winning majors by such huge margins, there clearly isn't much motivation left to follow the game. Golf would become pretty much like what F1 was last year with the dominance of Schumacher/Ferrari making the whole season a farce. Who would want to follow a sport in which there is no competition? Let's hope that is not going to be the case and Vijay/Ernie/Mickelson can wake up soon.

BTW, here's an article in today's Indian Express precisely expressing my emotions. I hadn't realized the time when I would not be rooting for a Tiger victory would come so soon!

Cheers,
Harsha