The 2009 PGA Championship: Tiger Woods and Everybody Else

Going into the 2009 PGA Championship, which tees off tomorrow morning at the Hazeltine National Golf Club in Minnesota, there’s only one topic of conversation of everyone’s mind and that would be, dah … Tiger Woods, stupid. As he so often does, Tiger has pretty much owned the golf headlines leading into the year’s last (and least) major, first by out-dueling Paddy Harrington to win the Bridgestone Invitational on Sunday (Woods’ second tour victory in two weeks) and then by publicly criticizing a rules official at the Bridgestone and earning himself some public remonstration from the PGA. Even without recent events, however, Woods was bound to be the story heading towards Hazeltine, because the tournament provides his last chance to win a major in 2009. Should he fail in that venture, this will be his first major-less year since his two-year drought of 2003-2004. Granted, he’s coming off knee surgery, and yet that seems to be no excuse where ...