Tiger Woods wins questionable Player Impact Award…and $8 million that comes with it

Awards are presented in sports all of the time. Athletes receive recognition for being the best rookie, most valuable player to his or her team, recognition for their defence and possibly even from overcoming an obstacle, just to name a few.

However on Wednesday, a golf award was presented that has every reason to be questioned. The PGA Tour named Tiger Woods as the recipient of the first Player Impact Award. This award is presented to the golfer who generates the most positive interest.

Among the five metrics that are used to determine the winner are google searches, number of times players are mentioned in news articles, television sponsorship, awareness and social media engagement. So it looks like Woods won this award, and the whopping $8 million that comes with it, from a popularity contest. Couldn’t the PGA Tour find a better and a more humanitarian way to spend its money than give $8 million of it to Tiger Woods?

Yes, the reason why Woods won this award is because of his iconic status and past golf performances, which include 15 major titles (second only to Jack Nicklaus’s 18 titles), and the most PGA Tour titles of all-time with 82 (tied with Sam Snead). But one must realize that Woods did not play one round of golf on the PGA Tour in 2021. Zero. Zippo. Now, the primary reason for his absence is because of a car accident he experienced in February of last year. The bottom line is that Woods has not won a tournament since beating Hideki Matsuyama of Japan in the 2019 Zozo Championship in Tokyo. The PGA Tour has some explaining to do.

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