Tiger Remains As Relevant Now As Ever

Tiger Woods has played nine rounds on the PGA Tour this season and yet he still remains the PGA Tour's brightest hope of a way forward from the continuing LIV Golf fall-out. This week we saw the leading players on the Tour come together for a tight-knit meeting on the eve of this week's BMW Championship and, front and centre, was Woods.

The 15-time major winner flew in from his Jupiter home, along with Rickie Fowler (neither was playing), to Delaware for the get-together and Woods' attendance in person gave the whole thing a huge lift.

“I think he came because it was very important to him. It probably was just not something that he felt was appropriate to do over Zoom or just to call in. I think it shows how passionate he is about golf and wanting to improve it and paving the way for the next generation of young players to come out down the road,” explained his good friend Justin Thomas.

On the course Rory McIlroy is now probably the leading pied piper but even he was more than happy to acknowledge Woods' relevance in the modern game.

He said: "We're moving into a different era, and we just have to think about things a little differently. He is the hero that we've all looked up to. His voice carries further than anyone else's in the game of golf. His role is navigating us to a place where we all think we should be. I think it's pretty apparent that whenever we all get in the room there's an alpha in there, and it's not me."

Woods was rumoured to have been offered $800m to join the breakaway circuit but he has nailed his colours to the PGA Tour mast in recent months. As for what took place in the meeting the details remained fairly scant but there was plenty of positivity.

McIlroy said: "I think the one thing that came out of it, which I think was the purpose, is all the top players on this Tour are in agreement and alignment of where we should go going forward, and that was awesome. We need to get the top guys together more often than we do."

Xander Schauffele was also in attendance and, while he was coy over the detail, he was equally as upbeat.

"I'd be pretty unhappy if I saw one of those guys just blabbering to you guys what we talked about. That would be really frowned upon, and you probably wouldn't get invited back to the meeting, there's a little bit of a code there, I'd say. It was a really nice meeting. It was great. It was exciting. It was new. It was fresh. I am very hopeful with sort of what's to come."