I am not here to debate whether or not it is a sport, because as someone who played rather unsuccessfully from the ages of 7-22, I know just how hard it is. It is so hard, in fact, that I view Tiger Woods as perhaps the most fascinating and utterly amazing athlete in the world. Regardless of what you think about golf and its oft-rotund participants, Tiger Woods is an athlete.

He also might just be the most famous and influential person in all of sports.

For this reason, I am quite anxious to see how the PGA Tour and its TV ratings as well as on-course gates are affected as Tiger watches from the sidelines for a still undetermined amount of time.

Woods' nearly awe-inspiring win at the U.S. Open came with a great cost. His knee surgery(ies) has him out of action until sometime in 2009 at the earliest. Golf (before Tiger)  has always had its niche in the American sports landscape, popular largely to middle-aged males.

But since Tiger arrived, the change has been sweeping. Golf has become far more popular with young people, the crowds at events in which Tiger plays are enormous, and all other golfers have benefitted by the increased purses of the tournaments he enters.

So what will this year be like for the no-names of the PGA Tour? And I'm not talking about Mickelson, Garcia and the other mega-rich players. What will happen to the Q-school guys, the guys who, for lack of a better term, live tournament-to-tournament? Will TV ratings and crowds shrivel up and die?

Let's face it: we all need Tiger, or else golf really does turn into all the stereotypical crap that gets slung around. I don't care about a Masters final pairing of Padraig Harrington and Steve Stricker -- do you?

Get well, Tiger. And please, ask Elin to lift the restraining order.