A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

AMERICA AT LARGE:One man's complete ignorance has ignited an on-line debate comparing Tiger's return with that of Ali, writes GEORGE KIMBALL

AS IF to confirm that spring can’t be far away, the invitation to the Golf Writers Association of America’s annual spring dinner and awards ceremony down in Georgia arrived in yesterday’s post. The engraved invitation included a summation of the awards to be presented in Augusta the night before the Masters kicks off, and the list began: “Tiger Woods – Male Player of the Year.” My first thought was probably the same as yours: Fat Chance.

On the other hand, the thought did occur that if Tiger has read half of what’s been written on the blogosphere since last December he might, by comparison, find the company of a room full of actual journalists somewhat comforting.

Over the past 10 days Woods has been one-half of an internet debate that now threatens, as they say, to go viral. Bill Simmons, a 40-year-old teenager who writes an on-line column for ESPN.com under the nom de guerre “The Sports Guy”, probably didn’t realise how many raw nerves he was going to touch by comparing Tiger’s putative return to the USPGA Tour to Muhammad Ali’s 1970 comeback from a 43-month banishment from his chosen profession.

Simmons’ batty conclusion – it’s no contest, he maintains, because “Ali fought only every few months and had the luxury of picking cream-puff opponents”, while Tiger will face extraordinary pressure on a weekly basis – seemed so off-the-wall that had it appeared in an actual, as opposed to virtual, publication, he would have been accused of having deliberately stirred up the spit in order to sell newspapers on his bosses’ behalf.

As it is, the controversy has not only mushroomed, with thousands of readers weighing in (on both sides of the issue), but made enough noise that respected journalists from both the newspaper and television worlds have felt constrained to weigh in, turning the Tiger-Ali argument into this year’s version of the 2008 Buzz Bissinger-Will Leitch debate.

Leitch is an inveterate blogger who boasts that since his website, Deadspin.com, presents “sports news without access, favour or discretion”, it is somehow more honest (if somewhat less informed) than mainstream journalism. As Bissinger, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former newspaperman (and the author of Friday Night Lights) also pointed out, it is also free of journalistic standards and restraint, and when host Bob Costas brought them together in a studio for a HBO programme, the two locked horns in a spirited debate that concluded with Bissinger somewhat famously telling Leitch he was “full of shit”.

Like Leitch, Simmons holds himself up as “the voice of the fan”, as opposed to a professional journalist, a view that may have been coloured somewhat by the fact that his past experience with professional journalism ended somewhat unhappily.

He has, in any case, carved out his niche, and now has a contract with ESPN that pays him more annually than most newspaper columnists earn. The extent of his internet audience was illustrated last fall when his The Book of Basketball landed on the New York Times best-seller list. But, noted the Boston Globe’s Charles P Pierce, “Simmons long ago stopped being any kind of an ‘outsider’, even though he may never shut up about the fact that, long ago, the editors at the Boston Herald failed to recognise his genius”.

(By the way, those “cream-puff opponents” Ali faced in his 1970-71 comeback? They were, in order, Jerry Quarry, Oscar Bonavena and Joe Frazier. Just last month I heard George Foreman make a very good case for Quarry as the best heavyweight never to have won the title. When they fought, Bonavena knocked Frazier down twice in one round, and the Ali-Frazier trilogy may have been the most celebrated rivalry in the history of the heavyweight division.)

Pierce was also moved to join the fray occasioned by Simmons’ Ali-Tiger argument, as was MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann, who, after noting “If you’d like to read the most poorly-informed conclusion I’ve come across this year, here’s your link”, went on to say: “In the interim I am left to marvel how somebody can rise to a fairly prominent media position with no discernible insight or talent, save for an apparent ability to mix up a bowl of word salad very quickly.”

Personally, I find the whole argument rather silly, since, among other things, nobody is going to be throwing any punches back at Tiger if and when he returns to the links. But Simmons’ essay does include several smug observations that force one to wonder which sport he understands less, boxing or golf.

“The man (Woods) is coming off two significant derailments: reconstructive knee surgery (summer 2008) and self-imposed exile (winter 2009-10).”

His 1949 head-on collision with a bus left Ben Hogan with a broken pelvis, a broken leg, broken ribs and massive internal injuries. Doctors feared he might never walk again. The following year he won the US Open. The year after that he entered five events and won two of them, including the Masters and the US Open, and his epochal 1953 season was yet to come.

“Don’t discount Tiger’s advancing age (34).” See above.

Hogan was 37 when he had the accident, 41 in 1953, when he won the only three majors he entered – including the British Open at Carnoustie.

“If Tiger comes back with similar rust, I can’t imagine him being able to change his style on the fly the way Ali did.”

Yes, Ali had to compensate for diminished reflexes. Reflexes are critical to golf only when you hear somebody shouting “fore!”

“When Ali returned from his Vietnam-related exile, he had two massive groups of people pulling for him – Black America and the anti-war movement.” Yeah, and they really helped him a lot against Frazier.

“Ali had the buffer of the boxing ring and just a few fights per year. Golf? Doesn’t work that way. You’re walking among fans hole after hole.” With only the ropes, a zillion marshals and Stevie Williams to keep them away.

And, finally: “It’s no contest. When Ali actually returned in September 1970 it was a cakewalk compared to what Tiger will face. Forget about Ali. Not even (Michael) Jordan faced anything like the current sports/celebrity climate.”That’s right. ESPN.com hadn’t even been invented back then.

“Simmons holds himself up as ‘the voice of the fan’, as opposed to a professional journalist, a view that may have been coloured by the fact his experience with professional journalism ended somewhat unhappily