Golf Has a Tiger Addiction and Masters Week Is Making It Worse

Here’s an incomplete list of things happening in golf this week:

• The Valero Texas Open tees off today with the last Masters invite on the line. Rickie Fowler, Tommy Fleetwood, Ludvig Åberg, and Hideki Matsuyama are all in the field. Tony Finau and Tom Kim are desperately trying to win their way into Augusta.
• The Augusta National Women’s Amateur started Wednesday with 72 of the best amateur women golfers in the world competing at Champions Retreat before the final round at Augusta National on Saturday.
• Gary Woodland just won the Houston Open two years after brain surgery and a battle with PTSD — one of the greatest comeback stories in recent golf history.
• Eleven LIV Golf players are in the Masters field, including Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, and Bryson DeChambeau, all chasing history at +1000 odds.
• Rory McIlroy returns as defending champion after completing the career Grand Slam last year.
• Scottie Scheffler is trying to prove his “slump” was nonsense.

And yet, what is every single golf outlet, podcast, Twitter account, and bar conversation about?

Tiger.

We Can’t Help Ourselves

I get it. I really do. Tiger Woods is the most important figure in golf history. His DUI arrest and decision to seek international treatment is genuinely significant news that deserves coverage.

But there’s a difference between covering a story and being consumed by it.

Right now, Google Trends shows “Tiger Woods” at roughly 40x the search volume of “Masters 2026.” CBS is already planning how to handle Tiger’s absence during their broadcast. The Athletic has published approximately nine thousand words analyzing whether Augusta National might have uninvited him.

Meanwhile, Fowler is about to play the most important round of his year at the Valero, and half the golf world doesn’t even know it’s this week.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Golf’s Tiger addiction isn’t just annoying — it’s actively harmful to the sport.

Every minute spent dissecting Tiger’s court filings is a minute not spent on the incredible storylines heading into the Masters. Every “Will Tiger play?” segment (he won’t, we’ve known this for days) is airtime stolen from players who are actually, you know, playing golf.

The ANWA gets a fraction of the coverage it deserves every year. This year? Even less, because Tiger’s treatment facility is apparently more interesting than 72 women competing for the chance to play Augusta National.

The International Series just kicked off its fifth season in Japan, and the race for LIV Golf cards through the Asian Tour is an interesting development for the future of professional golf. Coverage? Crickets compared to the Tiger content machine.

Golf Survived Before Tiger. It’ll Survive After.

I wrote last week that the Masters without Tiger might be what golf needs. I’m doubling down.

The sport has the deepest talent pool it’s ever had. Scheffler, McIlroy, Rahm, DeChambeau, Åberg, Morikawa, Hovland — this isn’t exactly a wasteland. Woodland’s comeback story is the kind of narrative that would lead SportsCenter for a week in any other sport.

But golf keeps looking over its shoulder for the guy who isn’t there.

What I Want to See This Week

I want coverage of Åberg’s redemption arc after his Players Championship collapse. I want someone to tell the story of the ANWA competitors who are about to walk Augusta’s fairways for the first time. I want to know if Fowler can save his Masters dream at the Valero or if it’s truly over.

I want golf to be excited about golf.

Tiger needs help, and he’s getting it. That’s the right outcome. Let’s respect his privacy, wish him well, and then — for the love of the game — let’s talk about literally anything else happening in what might be the most stacked Masters week in a decade.

The sport is bigger than one man. It’s past time we started acting like it.