Photo by Keith Allison, via Flickr
ESPN announced in a press release yesterday that part of its coverage of the upcoming British Open would include a live feed on one of its ESPN3 channels of Tiger Woods in each round that he plays. Woods is making his first major start of the year (back surgery kept him out of the Masters and U.S. Open), so this is sort of ingenious—to an extent.Tiger remains wildly popular even though he no longer dominates the world's golf courses, wielding a five iron like an expert club-wielder, soaring over fairways, and so on. He no longer seems capable of doing all those imaginative golf things, cursed to be perpetually trying to get some kinks out of his game. That said, on a practical level, all of Tiger's shots are going to be shown on the main broadcast anyway no matter how he is doing, so this seems like a pointless exercise that is being undertaken simply because it can be. How you experience a sporting event in the privacy of your own home is up to you, though, so if you the viewer really wants to see Tiger snipe at whoever his caddy is now as he struggles to finish three-over-par, they totally have that option available to them.This live feed looks like the work of people who know what they're doing if and only if Woods makes the cut and is in contention in the final day, but that's just unlikely at this point in his career. He hasn't taken a major tournament since the U.S. Open in 2008 and he's never won the British Open, so what are the odds he regains form? Take the action on "slim."Golf has seen a good number of players step into the gap created by Tiger's fall from the top. None of them may deserve dedicated channels of their own, but at least that would make sense.