Tiger who?

Who needs Tiger Woods? Certainly not the British Open, which showed that you can have must-watch golf even without the greatest player in the world at the top of the leaderboard.

All you need is the original major championship played on a great golf course with one of the world’s nastiest finishing holes and three or four golfers charging down the stretch alternating between miracles and catastrophes.

Then boil that down to two men, one, Sergio Garcia, a popular and charismatic Spaniard with a history of choking these things away, and the other, Padraig Harringnton, a much-beloved Irishman who’s arrived at the age of 35 without winning a major. Throw them in a playoff — four holes for the Claret Jug — and, voila! Great golf is yours.

Terrific competition is what makes any sport worth watching, and that’s what this was. When Tiger goes into the final round with the lead, tournaments turn into five-hour victory laps, more coronation than contest. Fans love watching Tiger, but where’s the fun in that?

The 136th British Open had what Tiger has a hard time providing — genuine, nail-biting tension. Harrington had it won, choked it away, saved it, won it again.

Garcia had it won, choked it away, got a second life and finally succumbed in overtime.

Not having Tiger is like not having the Yankees in the World Series — always a surprise, but not a disaster if there’s an equally good plot. And Garcia provided that plot line, playing the part of the Boston Red Sox — the 1986 version in this case — the popular guy trying to break a schneid.