The decline of Tiger Woods, evident on the sporting level, has moved to the internet. For the first time in the last 20 years, the Californian, who this month concludes a season to forget, in which the recurring ailments of a very punished body have limited his appearances on the course to almost the minimum expression, has ceased to be the most viral golfer.
Tiger Woods, results
For two decades, no figure, be it Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler, Jason Day or Dustin Johnson, to name just a few of the most media-savvy, was able to dispute the throne of the search engines with Tiger. Until the arrival of Scottie Scheffler, who has beaten him in 2024. By a mere 0.9% in search percentage, according to data provided to Golf Digest by Google, but he has beaten him in the end. This is the first time this has happened since 2004, when Google Trends was born and with it, this type of metrics, times when Tiger was number one in the rankings and already had eight majors in his showcases.
Scheffler’s rise in cyber popularity has occurred on the back of a spectacular season, in which he has won seven tournaments, including his second Masters and The Players, and the Olympic gold. Sporting achievements to which we must add the soap opera of his arrest during the PGA Championship for an alleged attack on authority that came to nothing. That, combined with Tiger’s ever-decreasing public exposure, explains the overtaking.
Other curiosities include the appearance, sadly tragic, in the top-5 of searches of Grayson Murray, who committed suicide last May after years of fighting alcoholism and depression. The only female presence, in a course that in sporting terms has little to envy Scheffler’s, is that of Nelly Korda, in a new example of the transformative potential for women’s golf that it has in terms of generating interest.
As for the most searched terms related to golf, nothing was googled more than “golf courses near me”, which speaks well of the growth of the hobby for this sport since pandemic times. In that segment, LIV appears in third position. As for the most popular courses, the first place, to no one’s surprise, falls to Augusta National, with Torrey Pines and Sawgrass completing the podium.
