You da Immel-Man!

So a hearty congratulations goes out to Trevor Immelman on winning the Masters this past weekend. He played very good all 4 days and won the whole thing without much drama on Sunday.

Tiger was also consistently mediocre (by his standards), and hovered around the -4 mark for most of the tournament.

All of this begs the question: is this good for golf?

Its a proven fact that when Tiger is in contention for a Major win, the ratings are significantly higher than when he is totally out of it. And as more and more people win Majors who are not named Eldrick, is this good for the PGA?

On one hand, its the opportunity introduce America to another golfer who is obviously very talented. Would we know who Tervor Immelman is had he not won the Masters? Hell no. But click on any sports minded website and you will be able to read a feature about how much he loves his wife, how he is a dedicated family man, how he works hard to be as good as he is, that sort of thing. America will need someone to cheer for that is not Tiger, maybe we will fall in love with one of these guys.

But we have seen guys like Immelman come and go. People felt the same way when Zach Johnson won last year. Another nice guy who really deserved to win the Masters. And people were happy. And ratings were down.

Admittedly, you need someone heavily favored to really cheer for the underdog. While its fun to cheer for Davidson to beat Georgetown, cheering for Davidson to beat North Carolina Charlotte just doesn't carry the same appeal. The problem here being, Tiger isn't the type of heavily favored champ that North Carolina is. People love Tiger and want him to win every time. They enjoy his dominance, his intensity, and random shots of his wife in the crowd. How can we love the scrappy underdog when he is merely a nuisance to our true love?

So while its always nice to see someone like Immelman win every once in a while (no one who watched him give his little boy that hug after 18 could have been angry at how everything ended up), we need Tiger. Beacuse admit it, Sunday wasn't the most exciting finals at all. You need Tiger surging to victory, or dominating every hole he comes across. Tiger means the most casual fan will check in. And he means the excitement level is ratcheted up a few notches.

So let's all hope Tiger is back on his A game when the US Open starts in a couple of months.