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Premature start to the season gets uninspired winners

Steve Stricker kicked his season off with a win © Getty Images

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It's tempting to suggest that an unnecessarily early start to the golf season on both sides of the Atlantic produced two winners the events deserved.

In South Africa, at the East London Golf Course (which conjures exactly the right impression of the event it hosts, if not its surroundings), former Open champion Louis Oosthuizen defended his Africa Open crown with a strong performance against a field that, himself omitted, included no player inside the world's top 50.

In the United States, meanwhile, Steve Stricker came through a slight final round wobble to complete another PGA Tour triumph at the Tournament of Champions in beautiful Kapalua. While only 2011 tournament winners were invited to Hawaii to kick off the season, not all of them - specifically, those who have played the tournament a few times before, or don't need the money or early season sunshine - could be persuaded to make the trip.

Stricker, up to No. 5 in the world rankings, is a fine player who has had almost Vijay Singh-levels of success in maintaining his career well into his forties. But it is a measure of the man that he has contended at majors barely a handful of times in his life (2nd at the 1998 US PGA, behind Singh, being his best finish).

Stricker is a steady, workmanlike professional - but little more than that. He is an uninspiring winner of an uninspired, ridiculously early curtain-raiser.

His approach to the game underlines that, even if it may well be the secret to his success.

"You know, I feel good," Stricker said after his victory. "I just try to do my own thing. I tried to compare myself to guys when I was playing well back in the mid '90s when I was playing well, and you know, I got into some bad things.

Tiger's demise - read all about it?

What will we learn about Tiger? © PA Photos

• This week came with the announcement that Tiger Woods' former coach, Hank Haney, is set to release a book about his time with the former world No. 1. Readers expecting a tell-all on how Woods' personal life fell apart are set to be disappointed, however.
• "My last tournament was the Masters [in 2010], and that was his first tournament back from the scandal," Haney was quoted as saying. "I didn't know anything about the girls. Everything I comment on is what I observed and the facts I knew.
• "If he reads it, I don't think it will be a book that bothers him. It's hard to say."
• A book about Woods from Haney's perspective should be interesting, regardless of what it omits. But if, as Haney suggests, Woods - a notoriously grouchy character - will not be offended by it in any way, then that suggests it might not be the revelatory account we might wish for.

"I'm happy the way with what I do. We just go about and do our thing. It may not be the flashiest thing at times, but I do other things well. I chip and putt well; I'm driving the ball well. So I mean everybody has got a little bit different game, and that's the way I just kind of look at mine and do the things that we know how to do the best."

The fact that Webb Simpson finished near the top of the leaderboard may indicate the American is ready for another stellar year, but the truth is little can really be inferred from what was basically the early-season equivalent of the Chevron World Challenge that Tiger Woods won at the end of 2011.

Yet, while the Chevron's existence makes some sense - late season golf tournaments are often lucrative, and retain some of the public interest from the major months - the reason tournaments have to start again in January is less clear.

Hardly anyone outside Africa cared about Oosthuizen's victory - as will be the case with almost whoever triumphs at this week's Joburg Open - while the Tournament of Champions was scheduled from Friday to Monday in an attempt to ensure the crunch-time action avoided clashing with the omnipresent NFL Playoffs in the all-important television ratings war.

Of course, that meant Monday's final round came as everyone in America was either finishing work or watching the build-up to the BCS National Championship (the extremely popular college football equivalent to the Super Bowl) - so that really worked as a gameplan.

The lack of an obvious place - or need - for such events in the sporting calendar is perhaps symptomatic of the fact none of the major players turned up for the tournaments.

It's a running joke within golf that the professional season doesn't really get going until the Masters in April. This season that might not be quite true - after Tiger revealed his intention to play in the Pebble Beach pro-am - but the suggestion has merit. Even post-crash Tiger would never countenance playing an event in January without the promise of a bumper appearance fee.

The same goes for Rory McIlroy, Luke Donald and Phil Mickelson. But hey, having Steve Stricker claim the first tournament of the season is surely a real winner for the tour.

In the end, perhaps it comes down to a simple question: If the biggest and best names can't be bothered to turn up then what, exactly, is the point of starting the season so soon at all?

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