Tiger Woods announced this morning that he’d make his return to golf at the Masters in April. Woods has been away from the tour since he crashed his vehicle into a fire hydrant and then a tree near his home late last year.
Joe Posnanski, writing for Golf.com, says Woods’ planned return at the Masters “was the only logical choice.”
“Tiger Woods will play the Masters. Well, of course he will. The story had to end up at the Masters. There were people who thought that he might play Arnold Palmer’s tournament at Bay Hill next week or he might wait until later in the year to enter a tournament,” he writes.
Mike Walker of Golf.com disagrees, arguing Tiger’s return is “too much, too soon.”
“Without question, Woods at Augusta will be must-see TV, but it comes with strings attached. For every hour of the tournament on television, showing the world’s best player against those snow-white bunkers and pink-and-violet azaleas, we’ll get another 20 hours of commentary on MSESPNBCNNBS, thousands of tweets, a dozen New York Post covers and maybe another Howard Stern beauty pageant.”
Whatever the case, Richard Deitsch, who writes a media column for SI.com, says the Masters will be riveting television.
He quotes CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus – whose network will be televising the Masters – as saying that “the first tournament Tiger Woods plays again, wherever it is, will be the biggest media event other than the Obama inauguration in the past 10 or 15 years.”
