DAVID ISAACSON | New logo or not, Tiger is still Taylormade to win another Major

My one golfing partner, Brendan, can hit the ball a mile.

Well, obviously not literally, but reaching par-five greens in two is a possibility for him.

I’ll admit that I’m a different beast. Hitting the ball 200 metres off the tee is a possibility only if I somehow make the perfect connection, the wind is behind me and the fairway is downhill and is as hard as marble because it’s a Gauteng winter.

Brendan clears that with his four iron.

But it turns out that in golf, like the Wild West, there’s always a faster gunslinger, as we discovered while playing Pecanwood this past Sunday.

A Pretoria couple completed our four-ball and on the first or second hole we found that the lady had out-driven the lot of us — and she’d teed off from the men’s markers.

Brendan, a modern guy, was the first to chuckle about it.

And when I noticed her using what looked like a blade to play her approach shot — I use those hollow backs because they’re far more forgiving — I suspected she had to be a pro.

When I asked what her handicap was, she smiled sheepishly and admitted she played on the Sunshine Ladies Tour.

The logo and the name just don’t work for me, and even if it ends up breaking all sales records it’ll be because of Woods, not the design.

Lenanda van der Watt, the club pro at Akasia, commented that the course would suit my play better because the fairways were harder than Pecanwood.

She was testing out a new set of Taylormade clubs and they seemed to suit her pretty well. The irons, by the way, weren’t pure blades, she explained.

I too play with the same brand — at least my woods and hybrids — though they’re pretty old they’re starting to look like my late grandfather’s cane-shafted two-iron that I still have (but don’t play with).

But if I were to ever upgrade my clubs, which I won’t because they’re too expensive, I would stick to the same brand.

Taylormade and Tiger Woods released their “Sun Day Red” branding this week, a line that will feature apparel and footwear.

Maybe I’m a fuddy duddy, but the image of the supposed tiger doesn’t work. At first glance it looked like a skeleton, then I started thinking that maybe it’s supposed to be a fossil.

Woods may be 48, but his army of faithful fans believe he can still add to his 15 career Major crowns. I don’t disagree, but it’s worth remembering that only two men have achieved Major victories older than him.

Phil Mickelson was less than a month short of his 51st birthday when he took the PGA Championship in 2021 and Julius Boros was 48 years, four months and 18 days when he won the same event in 1968.

Woods can get in younger than Boros at the US Masters in April, but after that he’s in Mickelson territory.

Then again, one shouldn’t forget that Tom Watson would have won the Open at the age of 59 in 2009 had he just parred the 72nd hole.

So perhaps Woods still has more than a decade of competitiveness to go. 

But the logo and the name just don’t work for me, and even if it ends up breaking all sales records it’ll be because of Woods, not the design.

Anyway, let’s hope Woods’s performances will be far more striking.