The Tiger Effect, or Not

Editor's Note: Ryan McDermott is the editor of Takoma Park Patch and a lifelong golf fan. He'll be covering the U.S. Open from the local viewpoint this week at Congressional Country Club.

At most tournaments, the first two days are populated only by the diehard fans. Practice rounds can be boring as players hit shots, get yardages and try to sink putts from all over the green to understand the breaks and angles. There isn’t much drama and it’s a lot of inside baseball, to mix a sports metaphor.

When Tiger Woods is in town things change. People will come on any given day to see him hit drives, chip around the greens and jot notes in his yardage book. The excitement of seeing Woods overrides the excitement of the tournament -- or even of the actual sport.

But Woods in this year’s U.S. Open at And some fear that might shrink crowds. Tickets on sites like Stub Hub dropped significantly in price after Woods pulled out June 7.

Others don’t think it will make much of a difference.

“It might keep a few people from coming on the practice days,” said John Feinstein, a columnist at the Washington Post and Golf Digest and a Potomac resident. “But those people aren’t golf fans. They’re Tiger fans.”

Feinstein, who is a member at Congressional, said the U.S. Open is an event all its own.

“There were a lot of U.S. Opens played before Tiger and there will be a lot played after,” he said.

The course Monday was not as crowded as it will most likely be over the weekend, but there were decent-sized groups following PGA Tour stars like Phil Mickelson and Lee Westwood and exciting young prodigies like Rickie Fowler.

Some of Fowler’s followers even donned his trademark bright orange shirt, an homage to Fowler’s time as a collegiate athlete at Oklahoma State University.

Maybe there would have been more people had Woods not dropped out, but the fans who came out Monday, whether young or old, all had a sense of wonder as they the grounds of Congressional. For in six days, a new U.S. Open champion will be crowned, and all that we know is that it will not be Tiger Woods.

That means it could be anybody.