The Bacon Mailbag: Rory’s major wins, Tiger changing his schedule and a rerun channel for only majors

March 5, 2014 by

Each Tuesday for the remainder of the golf season we will be rolling out a mailbag, with any and all questions invited from readers and fans around the world. Have a good question you want answered? Hit me up on Twitter at @shanebacon and we will try to get to it in the coming weeks. Here we go …

Bacon: Initially, I just want to check history to see what the chances are that Rory McIlroy could get to seven major championships before his career ends.

Only 11 players in the history of golf have won more than 6.5 major championships, so right there you would have to lean towards the under. That said, McIlroy is only 24 and already has two massive major wins, and was in contention at both the majors he has yet to win so that bodes well for his chances.

Just from Rory’s talent alone, he will win one or two more majors simply because he is hitting the ball better than anyone else in the field, so say that gets him to four majors.

My concern isn’t Rory, it’s his competitors. I feel like this generation, the post-Tiger group of golfers, will be full of one and two time major champions. Would you bet your life on Jason Dufner, Webb Simpson or Bubba Watson winning another major championships? I sure wouldn’t, and that isn’t a knock to any of those three, just my point to how hard it will be in the coming decade to win multiple major championships.

I think Rory ends at five. That has been my number for him from the start, and I’m sticking with it. I think he will win a green jacket over the next five years, and interestingly enough, will have his hardest time winning the British Open, the one major championship played on his side of the pond.

Rory is an incredible talent, and could win 8-10 majors if he really got going in his late 20s/early 30s, but I think a career like Phil Mickelson is more likely than that of Tiger Woods for Rory, and five or six majors seems like a safe bet for now.

Bacon: I can’t. I really can’t. Tiger Woods won five times last year, but if you read anything over the last week you’d think the guy is playing so bad he’s thinking of switching to left-handed.

In the general public’s eye, and I’m including passive golf fans in this, Woods is important four weeks out of the year, and that is it.

It’s insane to think how much credit we give a kid like Russell Henley when he wins his second event in two years, but when Woods wins big, big golf tournaments we brush it under the sofa and point at how long it has been since he won a major championship.

For Woods, only playing the majors would be bad for his golf game, because we’ve seen how he plays when he takes a long time away from tournament golf and it usually isn’t great, but in the sense of how he is viewed in 2014, a major win is the only way to really “win” with the public.

The funny part about all this is how much of a deal we made the Honda Classic last week with Rory McIlroy. Rory is the “next in line” player after Tiger, yet when he’s in contention at a non-major we all freak out, flip on our televisions and can’t leave the screen.

If Rory won that event it would have been huge news, but if Tiger wins last weekend it would have been, “Okay, now what are his chances at Augusta National?” He might have done this to himself by winning at such an incredible clip early in his career, but it still isn’t fair to a guy that wins multiple times each season at events with only A++ level fields.

Bacon: Pine Dunes by far, followed by Crown Colony in Lufkin and Whispering Pines if that is still considered East Texas. All three of those courses are must-plays if you are in the area.

Bacon: I have yet to play a single golf course in Ireland, a travesty if you’re a golfer, so any course there would be really special.

Also, I caddied once for a friend at Royal Melbourne but never got to play it, so that’s also on my short list of international must-plays while I’m still relatively young.

Bacon: An excellent question and one that really got me thinking. If you didn’t catch what Travolta did at the Oscars on Sunday, you can check out his butchering of Idina Menzel’s name right here.

I could see him struggling with Charl Schwartzel and Jhonattan Vegas might be a tough first name for Travolta, and while I wouldn’t rule out Louis Oosthuizen as one he might mess up, the answer is Kiradech Aphibarnrat and it isn’t even close.

Bacon: Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!!

Seriously, what golf fan isn’t randomly turning this channel on every night before he hits the sack? The Golf Channel does a great job of airing reruns of majors during major weeks, but why not take it a step further and give us an exclusive major channel that just tosses up re-run after re-run of old majors?

You’re telling me as a golf fan you aren’t flipping over to The Major Channel when I tweet out that the 1975 Masters is on? Or David Toms versus Phil Mickelson at Atlanta Athletic Club? Or Phil and Payne at Pinehurst?

This is an excellent idea, and one that wouldn’t take a ton of effort. All you’d have to do is get the video rights to all the old majors and then just slot them however you’d like.

Count me in (oh, and include the Ryder Cup while we’re at it).

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Shane Bacon is the editor of Devil Ball Golf and Busted Racquet on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shanebaconblogs@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter at @ShaneBacon!

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