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TIGER WOODS THE MAN AND THE LEGEND
by Vijaya Chandrasoma
I have no pretensions of being a sports writer, but the terrible high speed motor accident that nearly killed Tiger Woods last week saddened me. He was a Superhero who made me, a mediocre golfer, indulge in Walter Mitty type of impossible and fantastic daydreams of playing just one round of golf like he did. A dream as ridiculous as disappearing into a telephone booth and emerging as Superman.
Tiger had emergency surgery “to repair significant damage to his right leg and ankle”. We are thankful he is “awake, responsive and recovering in his hospital room” at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, 11 miles from the scene of his accident.
The accident occurred at 7 a.m. on Tuesday. Foul play, drugs and alcohol were immediately ruled out. Tiger was perhaps driving too fast on a section of a highway which has a reputation for being accident-prone. I have driven along that section of Hawthorne Boulevard, a monotonous grid of a city highway which transforms, as it reaches the environs of the coastal town of Palos Verdes, into a beautifully undulating scenic parkway leading up rolling hills, then dropping dramatically to the coast of the Pacific Ocean. Like all things enchanting, Hawthorne carries a glint of danger if shown disrespect.
I have no intention to make this story about myself, only an effort to describe my addiction for the game. I started playing when I was 28. I played golf just about every weekend in the 70s, usually both Saturdays and Sundays, fourballs with three close friends, legends in the sports they represented nationally. How did a mediocrity ascend to these exalted sporting circles, you may ask? The only answers I could come up with is that we were close friends and I was more than their equal at the 19th hole. Although they were no slouches themselves.
My participation in the game had dwindled by the time I decided to emigrate to the United States in 1990, but my interest had not. I followed, on TV, the feats of legendary golfers like Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson, Nick Faldo and many others. In Los Angeles, a distant second during the 90s to the enormous pride I savored in the academic achievements of my children, was the PGA Tour, which provided me some relief from a week of working at the most menial and mind-numbing jobs imaginable. The salt mines in Siberia would have made a significant improvement.
A little history on the transformation of the game Tiger loved and largely wrought. His favorite golf course was the Augusta National, the annual scene of the first of the year’s four Majors, the Masters.
The co-founders of the Club in 1932 were Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts. Roberts famously decreed, “As long as I am alive, all the members will be white and all the caddies will be black”. These black caddies were also required to wear white overalls to make them “look smarter”. This despicable tradition persisted till 1983, when players were “allowed” to use white caddies, and the demeaning white overalls ceased to be mandatory.
The first African American to be elected to the Club in 1990 was Ron Townsend, CEO of the giant marketing network Gannet. African American men can take solace in the fact that women were allowed to join the Club only in 2012, the two initial members being former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Darla Moore, a mover and shaker in America’s financial scene.
Membership lists are kept secret by Augusta, but there are currently around 300 members, of whom five or six are black, two white women and Ms Rice, who has the great good fortune to be both black and a woman.
I dwelt on the history of Augusta’s National Course because the Masters was Tiger’s favorite tournament. When he won for the first time in 1997 by a record 12 shots, Jack Nicklaus, who finished a full 29 shots behind Tiger, predicted that “Woods would win more Green Jackets than him (six) and Arnold Palmer (four) combined”.
Tiger was born Eldrick Tont Woods in December 1975. His father, Earl was a college baseball player, an army veteran who served two tours in Vietnam. Earl started playing golf in 1972 at age 42, and became captivated with the game. He claims he was “close to” being a scratch golfer, but like many of us who become better as we get older, he was probably a single handicapper. Earl Woods was Tiger’s father, coach, mentor, his best friend and biggest fan till his death in 2006. When President Clinton saw Tiger running to his father to hug him after he won the 1997 Masters, he called Tiger and said that picture was “Tiger’s best shot of the day”.
As a nine year-old, Tiger made a bold commitment to his father: I am going to be professionally excellent. As his talent unfolded, this proved to be a remarkable understatement. Tiger achieved a dominance in a sport for over a decade which hasn’t been equaled, and will likely never be equaled.
Bradman and Viv Richards, Federer and Nadal, Michael Jordan and LeBron James, Pele and Ronaldo, Usain Bolt and Carl Lewis were Superstars in their sports. But no one had to change the conditions of the games in which they excelled to blunt their talents. They didn’t doctor the pitch at Lords to stop Bradman; they didn’t wet the tracks to slow Bolt down or alter the areas of the basketball courts and soccer grounds to deter Jordan or Pele; they didn’t mow the grass differently at the Center Court in Wimbledon to contain the grace of Federer.
But after Tiger, almost all the best courses in the world had to be “Tigerproofed” to make the game more challenging for Tiger. They added yardage, built more and deeper sandtraps and water hazards, they made the greens more undulating and pin placements more demanding. These changes also made the opposition work harder to keep up with Tiger. The entire game of Golf, the courses and players, the purses and TV ratings, all benefited because of Tiger’s genius.
In two years at Stanford University, Tiger won 10 Collegiate events, ending with the NCAA title. He turned professional in 1996, at the age of 20. Within a year, he had won three PGA tour championships, ending in a record 12-shot win in the 1997 Masters. A year that would be a proud career record for most professionals.
From 1996 through 2009, Tiger won 59 PGA tournaments and 14 Majors. He was the dominant player of the decade, of any decade, who exploded spectator participation, both live and on TV. He also encouraged the younger generation, especially those of the African American community, to take up the game at an earlier age.
The popular joke in those golden days of Woods’ dominance was: When a black man was chased by 150 white men in the 1950s, it was the KKK. Today, it’s the PGA tour!
During those halcyon years, Tiger made the headlines whether he won a tournament or missed the cut. I remember when I got home a little late when Tiger was playing, my son greeted me with the words, perhaps with a hint of sarcasm, “Thaathi, your ‘surrogate son’ just made a birdie!”. When I visited Salem, Oregon for the pre-nuptial celebrations of my son in the April of 2005, I had to leave while the final round of the Masters was in progress to catch my plane to Phoenix. Tiger was in contention. I was on the freeway, when my son excitedly called me, exulting about that long, 90-degree break putt Tiger made on the 16th hole to tie for the lead with Chris DiMarco, and then beat him in a playoff. A putt no golfer will ever forget.
Then, from 2009 to 2012, there was a drought. What happened? Tiger had an acrimonious divorce from his wife in 2006. His multiple infidelities became tabloid fodder for the mainly white base of a game accessible to only the rich. These mainly white golf fans resented the dominance of a black man and reveled in his fall from grace. Tiger was booed at tournaments, reviled by the tabloids, rejected by his sponsors, forced to publicly apologize and to admit that he was seeking rehabilitation for sex addiction. This from a country which boasts the greatest number of sexual partners per capita and the highest divorce rates in the world. A country which has double standards for everyone, especially athletes and politicians, depending on skin color.
Shades of President Obama. Only, Obama did not fall from grace. His impeccable, scandal-free two term presidency infuriated even more the white supremacist supporters of the ignorant, immoral crook who succeeded him.
But, to the great glee of these racists, Tiger did fall. He was publicly and devastatingly shamed when his consensual “crimes” (which evoked secret admiration from most of us) became sanctimonious and hypocritical cannon fodder for the most sexually promiscuous nation in the world.
Hypocrisy which now rules the American political scene.
Because of public shaming of his “scandal” and health problems (Tiger has had back and knee surgeries approaching double digits), Tiger has won one Major (his epic Masters comeback in 2019) since 2008. Just one in over a decade, having won 14 in the decade immediately preceding! It’s not as if he didn’t have back and leg surgeries from 1997 to 2008. And golf is not a game which becomes unplayable with age. After all, Jack Nicklaus was 46 when he won his last Major at Augusta in 1986. Tom Watson was nearly 60 when he lost the British Open in a playoff in 2009.
The ridicule heaped on Tiger by the media and the white fans, compounded by health problems, adversely affected his performance and almost certainly robbed him from achieving his stated ambition of beating Nicklaus’ record of winning 18 Majors. Though he does hold the record, jointly with Sam Snead, of 82 PGA Tour victories, nine more than Nicklaus.
Tiger is 45 now. He will never again achieve the domination he enjoyed at the turn of the century. There are outstanding talents, like Rory McIlroy, Brooks Koepka and Jordon Spieth lurking in the wings, adding a depth of talent the game has probably never seen before. But no one will dominate the game as Tiger did for over a decade.
Tiger is the doting father of two beautiful children, 13-year-old daughter Sam, a soccer player, and son Charlie, 11, an up and coming golfer. Sam’s name is really Sam, not short for anything. Tiger describes why he picked that name for his first-born: “My father had always called me Sam from the day I was born. … I would ask him, ‘Why don’t you ever call me Tiger?’ He says, ‘Well, you look more like a Sam’”. Charlie was named after Charlie Sifford, the first African American to play on the PGA tour.
Anyone who saw Tiger win the US Open at Torrey Pines in 2008, battling the excruciating pain of a torn Achilles tendon, will have no doubts about his resilience. He is responding well to his surgery after last Tuesday’s car accident. I have no doubt he will be back, if not for the Masters in April, then sooner rather than later. Whatever awaits him in the future, Tiger’s legend is for the ages.
President Obama said it best: “Sending my prayers to Tiger Woods and his family tonight – here’s to a speedy recovery for the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) of golf. If we’ve learned anything over the years, IT’S TO NEVER COUNT TIGER OUT.