That’s sad, isn’t it? But that’s the reality!

PALM BEACH GARDENS, FLORIDA – MARCH 03: Tiger Woods of Jupiter Links GC looks on before a match against The Bay Golf Club at SoFi Center on March 03, 2026 in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. (Photo by Rich Storry/TGL/TGL Golf via Getty Images)
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What a silly thought. It came in a flash, and it entailed whether sports fans in general and PGA Tour folks in particular need Eldrick Tont Woods competing like “Tiger” again.

Of course, they do.

Well, they really don’t.

Let’s start with the giddiness this week at the TGL finals in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, where Woods returned out of nowhere to competitive golf. Prior to that, he deprived the universe for more than a year of the guy who joins Sam Snead with a career-high 82 victories on the PGA Tour.

Woods also is the guy who combined his fiery competitiveness with a bunch of other things for Forbes to place his net worth at $1.5 billion.

Then Woods vanished from PGA Tour courses due to aches and pains after he played in the 2024 British Open that summer.

Even so, with Woods’ historically creaky back feeling relatively decent Monday evening, the 50-year-old legend joined his Jupiter Links team against the Los Angeles Golf Club during a match.

He did OK.

He flashed signs of the old Tiger during his five full swings, but he was his anti-vintage self after he botched a 3-foot putt on the seventh hole. He followed that with more old Tiger by slamming his putter to the ground, and afterward, his team raced toward its 9-2 loss.

As for the big picture, Tiger was back.

So was golf (you know, if you were thinking more past than present), especially with the possibility of Woods and his five green jackets competing next week at the Masters in Augusta, Georgia.

AUGUSTA, GEORGIA – APRIL 14: Tiger Woods of the United States celebrates winning the Masters during the final roubnd at Augusta National Golf Club on April 14, 2019 in Augusta, Georgia. (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)
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“I want to play. I love the tournament,” Woods told reporters after the TGL finals, and he recalled missing last year’s Masters after he ruptured his Achilles tendon a month before the April event. He also thought about The Loop, which is the short course he created near Augusta National.

“I’m going to be there either way with The Loop that’s going up there, as well as the champions dinner,” Woods said. “We’ll see how it goes. I’ll be practicing, playing at home this week and keep trying to make progress.

“This body, it doesn’t recover like it did when it was 24, 25. It doesn’t mean I’m not trying. I’ve had a couple bad injuries here over the past years that I’ve had to fight through and it’s taken some time. But I keep trying.”

Good.

Golf needs Tiger.

Then again . . .

According to Golf.com, TV ratings for the sport keep soaring due to everything from curiosity over Brooks Koepka’s return to the PGA Tour after a stint with the rival LIV Golf League to smarter scheduling of tournaments.

Whatever the reason, the American Express event in January averaged 515,000 viewers on the Golf Channel, which Golf.com said was a 125% increase over the previous year. Scottie Scheffler helped those ratings by solidifying his top spot in the Official World Golf Ranking with a victory during what was his first start of the season.

Then came the Farmers Insurance Open, which averaged 2.9 million the following week on CBS during the final round, According to Golf.com, that was a jump of about 70% over last year’s closing day.

Earlier this month, the Arnold Palmer Invitational saw a 15% increase in year-over-year TV ratings during its final round. Soon after that tournament, an average of 3.3 million fans saw Akshay Bhatia catch and defeat Daniel Berger in a playoff thriller at Bay Hill in Orlando, Florida.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLORIDA – MARCH 15: Cameron Young of the United States poses with the winner’s trophy after winning THE PLAYERS Championship 2026 at THE PLAYERS Stadium course at TPC Sawgrass on March 15, 2026 in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)… More
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The following week, the PGA Tour held its signature event called the Players Championship in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. And an interesting thing happened during Cameron Young’s late surge at TPC Sawgrass toward the first prize of $4.5 million out of the overall $25 million purse.

The TV ratings kept rising, and get this: Woods didn’t participate during any of those 2026 PGA tournaments since the golf gods were still turning the former rising prospect who won his first Masters at 21 into a declining veteran seeking just to walk properly after a seventh back surgery.

Woods hasn’t been missed this year.

Not according to the TV ratings.

In case you’re wondering, the Players Championship averaged 4.45 million viewers on NBC, and the audience spiked to 7.1 million when Young surged from behind during the last two holes for victory.

It was the most-watched final round of a Players Championship since March of 2021, and, no, Woods didn’t play in that one, either. Two months before, he amost had a fatal car accident on a Los Angeles highway, and he spent the rest of the year recovering from leg injuries.

Woods has played competitive golf sparingly since then.

Before the LA crash in January 2021, Woods made an average of 14 starts per year on the PGA Tour going back to his Master-winning season of 1997. Afterward, he dropped to an average of three.

TROON, SCOTLAND – JULY 15: Tiger Woods of the United States plays a shot on the 18th hole during a practice round prior to The 152nd Open championship at Royal Troon on July 15, 2024 in Troon, Scotland. (Photo by Stuart Kerr/R&A/R&A via Getty Images)… More
R&A via Getty Images

The last time Woods played in a PGA Tour event was that British Open two years ago, and the last time he won on the PGA Tour was at the Zozo Championship in Tokyo during October 2019.

We’re talking about the guy whose 15 major championships stand second only to the 18 by Jack Nicklaus, and the guy who Forbes says is worth all that loot “despite reportedly turning down a ‘mind-blowingly enormous’ offer from the upstart LIV Golf tour, a deal that LIV CEO Greg Norman told The Washington Post would have been in the ‘high nine digits.’”

Woods also is the guy who had “The Tiger Effect” on TV ratings by just existing during PGA Tour outings.

This was so typical: In August 2018 with the PGA Championship at Bellerive in St. Louis, CBS estimated the ratings during the third round rose 54% compared to the Saturday at Quail Hollow the year before in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Yep, Tiger.

He began roaring from behind back then during his first appearance in the final round of a PGA Championship in five years.

Consider, too, that Woods finished that 2017-2018 campaign on the PGA Tour with 18 starts, and he dropped to 12 the following season.

That was the last season Woods had double-digit starts.

You’ll see much of the same this year from Woods – even though he still works overtime to keep himself physically whole – and, no question, America would love to see more Eldrick Tont Woods.

It’s just that America isn’t obsessed with Tiger anymore.