While many in the golf punditry gave Tiger Woods up for road kill during the past injury-plagued and emotionally charged two years, at least one golf writer knew in his heart that the former No. 1 would sweep to victory again before the next millennium. A few months back, New England Golf Monthly Magazine’s Tom Gorman flipped open a calendar, closed his eyes, and stuck his finger on the exact date, time, and place of Woods’ next victory.
Gorman — who describes himself as a “hack writer and golfer [who] would shine Tiger Woods’ shoes and wash his clubs if asked” — looked into his Magic 8-Ball and predicted that Stevie Williams’ ex-boss would “post his next ‘W’ on Sunday November 20 in the singles match of the Presidents Cup at Melbourne, Australia.”
It was an accomplishment Gorman could not let pass without seeking some virtual applause from his fellow ink-stained wretches. “Take a wild guess what NEGM writer back in August predicted the exact date, time & place of Tiger Woods next victory?” Gorman e-mailed colleagues on Monday. “Was it luck or talent?”
Granted, you can’t get much more specific than Gorman’s uncanny augury, although the crystal-gazing connection must have been a bit fuzzy since golf’s answer to Nostradamus was unable — or deemed it irrelevant — to tab Aaron Baddeley as the victim of Woods’ long-awaited triumph.
What convinced the 20-year golf-writing veteran so totally that Woods would win again? No. 51’s (despite his unofficial victory, Woods dropped a rung on the Official World Golf Rankings ladder last week) “fame and awesomeness,” of course. Combine that with the “lightweight wimps” who comprised Greg Norman’s International team and a Woods conquest was a lead-pipe cinch you could “go ahead and bet the mortgage on,” Gorman wrote in NEGM on September 6.
“No one, not even Jack Nicklaus or Ben Hogan, the two most dominant golfers of the last 60 years, recorded stretches like Woods’s five-for-six streak in consecutive majors from 1999-2001 or his six-for-14 streak from 2005-2008,” Gorman wrote. “Although the real Tiger has been in hibernation for 22 months, expect His Royal Tigerness” to notch that singles win in the Prez Cup and hoist a bunch more trophies in the years to come.
“It does matter that Woods has 71 PGA Tour wins and 12 international victories. It does matter that he needs to be healthy,” Gorman noted. “Expect the karma to return and for him to put the pieces together and start winning again. We’d be foolish to think otherwise.”
Before you start asking the prognosticator for winning lottery numbers, good bets on the Super Bowl, or even if Woods will follow up his impressive performance Down Under with success at next week’s Chevron World Challenge, you may want to take Gorman’s soothsaying with just the tiniest dash of salt. After all, the New England-based scribe also envisioned a 2011 pennant for the major league baseball team formerly known as the Boston Red Sox — and everyone knows how that turned out.
(Emily Kay is a regular contributor to New England Golf Monthly. View all her articles here. You may also follow Kay on Twitter @golfexaminer.)
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