Tiger Woods can be regarded as the face of the PGA Tour, and rightfully so! Winning 15 majors and having a total of 82 wins on the PGA Tour has made Tiger Woods one of the modern living legends among golf fans. The 48-year-old is still active on the greens, even after a near-fatal accident, but he has not made the cut in the latest majors this season. In fact, ever since his car crash, he has only teed off at 8 official Tour events. Is the legendary golf star losing his popularity?
Joe Pompliano, the host of the Joe Pomp Show, shared a graph prediction on his X handle. It showed Bryson Dechambeu’s YouTube popularity, which appears to be quite exponential, while the PGA Tour’s subscribers’ hike seems extremely mediocre. He further wrote in the post, “Bryson DeChambeau is probably the world’s most popular golfer right now, outside of Tiger Woods. Much of that is due to his YouTube channel, which is currently on pace to surpass the PGA Tour’s 1.6 million subscriber count within the next 6–8 months. Pretty crazy!”
This year, Bryson DeChambeau has been nothing less than magnificent at majors. At the Masters, he finished beautifully at T6, and then at Valhalla, he shot 20 under to finish just 1 stroke behind the winner, Xander Schauffele. At the 124th US Open, he went into the final round with a stunning 7 under.
Tiger Woods’s last win was recorded in 2019, when he won the Zozo Championship. In the same year, he also won his last major and his fifth Masters, which could be regarded as the comeback of the decade. With that win, he came out of a decade-long drought, as it was back in 2008 when he last won a major, the US Open. However, his career has been in grave decline after his leg injuries and subsequent surgeries since 2008. In that decade, Woods only won about a handful of tournaments, which looks meager compared to his previous win frequency.
The New Zealand Herald stated, “The statistics paint a stark picture. It’s a bitter pill to swallow for someone who has tasted the sweet nectar of victory so many times before. As much as every golf enthusiast yearns for one last triumphant roar from Woods, it’s painfully clear that his golf game nowadays is more of a gentle murmur.” This year too, Woods finished dead-last in the Augusta showdown, and unfortunately failed to make the cut in the PGA Championship and US Open.
Despite the heartbreaking and frustrating finishes, the GOAT is still willing to persevere, but his popularity is ebbing away slowly. But how has Bryson DeChambeau managed to become more popular amongst the masses?
How is Bryson DeChambeau fairing above Woods popularity-wise?
The means and trajectory have changed with time and better connectivity through the internet. Hence, although Tiger Woods has created an almost unsurpassable record for the golfers who come after him, the present circumstances have seen others rise in the fame bar without having as many titles under their belt. Moreover, the measurement of popularity has also taken different turns. Bryson DeChambeu has won only one major and only 12 professional wins since he turned pro in 2016. Yet his presence on the greens has been something that one cannot overlook, and he is lovingly regarded as a “man of the people” too on the internet. His rise in popularity can be seen, as earlier pointed out, on YouTube. While the golfer was playing on the PGA Tour, rules did not permit him to have a YouTube channel, but LIV Golf has no such rules.
Although the 2020 US Open winner is yet to catch Tiger Woods’s massive $3.5 million followers on Instagram, the golfer is on the rise. As he is becoming the new face of golf among young enthusiasts, Tiger Woods’s poor performance at present is further pushing him back. NBC News has already declared, “Perhaps golf needs a new Tiger in its tank.”
