Is Tiger Woods back?
Did you see the look on his face after the ball went into the hole?
For a lot of athletes all it takes is one moment to completely turn things around.
Two years is a long time to wait for anything and I think that everything that Tiger has endured during that time will make him a better player going forward.
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As we head tonight into the Stanley Cup finals (should be a killer series between the Vancouver Canucks and Boston Bruins), time to check in again with one of hockey’s greatest playoff performers, Glenn Anderson of the mighty Edmonton Oilers.
In this clip – #8 of BP’s Anderson Series – Glenn talks about which athletes he finds most inspirational. What he says about “the greatest of the greatest” (Gretzky, Woods, Jordan, Federer) is fascinating. Anderson also substantiates the rumour that all hockey players want to be musicians (!)… and as we look ahead to this final series, it’s interesting to hear what Anderson says about which players he most values as the core of a winning team.
Makes us wonder which Canucks and Bruins will rise to the top over the next week or so… Watch this space for the final two Anderson clips as the hockey season reaches an end.
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Many basketball people people are familiar with the term “like Mike”. In fact, an entire movie was made under that name and there is a book called How to be like Mike: Life Lessons about Basketball’s Best.
But this post is not about becoming like maybe the best basketball player ever – Michael Jordan. This post is about becoming the best golfer in the world – Tiger Woods.
Huh?
Actually, this post is even more confusing than that. More vague. This post is about becoming the best player in the world in any sport, any pursuit, any thing.
Huh?
Wait, this post is even crazier because it’s not just about becoming, it’s about re-becoming; it’s about how after you were the best player in the world – at golf – and lost your game, lost your winning edge – you think back to things that got you there, to the top, to the summit and you realize that you’ve got to go back to doing what the best do.
So what actually prompted this insane post?
Well…it had to do with something that was in an article by Jim Litke from the Associated Press.
Litke is not one of those guys who thinks that Tiger Woods’ career is over. He thinks that Tiger will regain his famous focus when his marital issues and business concerns are sorted out and he believes that Tiger will recover his sharp and near perfect golf skills when he returns to his legendary practice regime.
Litke refers back to a quote from Tiger at the 2009 Memorial. Tiger talked about how much he had learned from watching (and assisting) Michael Jordan practice at his basketball skills:
“I remember the countless hours I spent with Michael in the gym feeding him balls. He would just shoot all night, and you thought that, yeah, he just showed up to the game and off he went and scored 45 and went home.”
Tiger then makes a general statement about all of the best athletes:
“I think their work ethic and how they prepare and what they have to do in the offseason and during the season — no one has any idea.”
Hmm.
So all that Tiger needs to do to be the best player in the world again is be like Mike again and like the best players ever.
Come to think of it, he just needs to get back to being like himself.
Time to get focused on golf again, Tiger. Time to practice day and night.
As Tiger says in the above video, he likes to play with Mike, practice with Mike because: “…we can relate…on so many different levels. Not too many people have gone through so many of the things we’ve had to go through…He actually did it first…because of that I’ve basically been able to cherry pick all of the knowledge that he’s accumulated over the years…”
And that’s kind of where our Big Theory is heading – toward that kind of knowledge about being the best. Finding the knowledge. Sharing the knowledge. Helping players be the best players they can be; and occasionally helping them become – the best players in the world…
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After finishing 18 over par at the Bridgestone Invitational, his worst performance as a professional golfer, it seems that the whole world wrote off Tiger Woods within a 24 hour period.
Take Andy Baggot who wrote this at Madison.com:
“Woods enters the final major of the season looking and acting like a train wreck. He played the final round of the Bridgestone in his traditional Sunday red, but gave the impression he was going through the motions, a measure of resignation in every stride and swing. No one can remember him acting that way on a golf course before. No one can remember him looking so vulnerable. No one can remember him being so out of sorts. Sure, there’s a chance Woods will seize the moment this weekend, win his 15th major and rekindle the discussion about when — not if — he’ll surpass the record of 18 by Jack Nicklaus. But there’s a much better chance of Woods falling further into a professional abyss that, for now, looks like it has no floor.”
Talk like that was everywhere in the media – even though Phil Mickelson couldn’t get the job done on the weekend to move to the top of the golf rankings. The fact is that Tiger remains the top-ranked golfer in the world and unlike Baggot, I do believe that Tiger has finally reached bottom.
Tiger is today getting ready to play in the final tournament of the golf season – the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits – and I think that he will soon figure out the magic formula to get his game back.
Jim Litke at Associated Press touches on some of the key factors which will bring the Tiger back to his perfect best:
“Those close to Woods remember a time when his practice time was almost sacrosanct, when business and everything else had to be put on hold for two weeks or more at a time, if that’s what his playing schedule demanded. No more. One guess is that it won’t change until the divorce papers are signed — whenever that is — but there’s a gauge that could be useful in the meantime. Woods has let slip that he’s practicing less, that he has more distractions than ever and as a result less and less time to prepare. Until that pendulum swings back in the other direction, my guess is that not much else about Woods’ game is going to change.”
Litke is clearly not ready to say that Tiger will be back to his best over night but he does focus on the two things which I think Tiger and his people have probably already figured out: first, getting closure on his personal life will bring back the focus he was famous for; and, second, a return to his rigorous practice regime will bring back the sharpness and perfection he was also known for.
And I for one think that will be great to see. I just hate to see talent go down the tubes and greatness die. And I think that in that regard I’m like a lot of fans.
As Pete Barth at USAToday says:
“Make no mistake, the golf world is still Woods’ World, scandals and scattershot play be damned. Whether he shoots 67 or 77, he is the main draw, the headliner, the big ticket, the Beatles, Muhammad Ali, Justin Bieber, the reason all but the most hard-core fans of the sport watch pro golf.”
Tiger as big as the Beatles? As big as Ali? I guess we’ll see. We’ll see what history will write. Both the Beatles and Ali had their fair share of challenges and drama along the way too.
Maybe this whole episode – the sex scandal and the year of winless, bad golf – will simply add richness and depth to the incredible story of Tiger Woods. Especially when Tiger starts to win again.
Could he have it all? The greatest number of victories, of majors, in golf history – as well as the kind of dramatic elements that introduced Yoko Ono and draft dodging into the stories of the Beatles and Ali?
I think so. Tiger had it all. Lost it all. He hit rock bottom (last weekend). And he will rise again. He will have it all again.
He remains, for me, the best player in the world. Dot com.
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“Fair is foul, and foul is fair / Hover through the fog and filthy air.”
If you look hard at last week’s golf clips on youtube, you’ll see the Weird Sisters in the trees behind the gallery at Firestone, cackling as Tiger Woods self-destructed in Shakespearean fashion. Fairway shots flew foul; fate found the golfer whose every foul deed once landed fair – and there was Tiger, swinging in a fog, cursing the very air around him.
Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel / Which smoked with bloody execution / carv'd out his passage...
But what of it? Who can be as surprised as the talking heads on sports networks pretend to be as they foam about how maybe it’s better if Tiger takes the rest of the season off to “regroup” and “work on his head.” Which of us doesn’t in some way get what’s going on – especially if we’ve spent any time on the course ourselves, or the racquets court, or the slopes, the field, the rink, etc and so forth.
What’s going on is pressure: social pressure, moral pressure, mental pressure. The pressure to perform – and for Tiger, the pressure to act out the role of the penitent, doing his best to reform, taking the sex-addiction rehab classes, saying (some of) the right things. Who knows what he’s thinking or feeling – if he really feels sorry about anything other than the fact that the witches caught up with him and there he is hacking his way out of bunkers and ponds, winding up 18 over par. Who really knows?
So – the pressure. Even weekend warriors know that all it takes is a little this way, a little that way, to turn an average day into one of your classic games for the ages, or into a debacle that can’t end soon enough. If you’re out just five per cent – if your timing or your concentration or god help you, your fitness – if any of these things is out just a tad, you’re going to fail. If you’re playing a team sport like soccer, hockey, or rugby, you can work a little harder to counter your hands of stone, feet of clay, your propensity to mess up whenever skill is required. A little more effort goes some way toward mitigating this kind of misery. But if you’re a golfer, well then – you might as well head for the clubhouse, yes? No amount of exertion can save the day for you.
Duffers of the world, try this: Imagine yourself in the middle of one of those crap rounds where every 3-wood off the tee ends up in the rough, every 5-iron overshoots the green and draws angry stares from the group ahead at the next tee, where every putt becomes two and your smug brother-in-law says yet again, “so – another 7?” Take that day and put it onstage in front of the world. Give it TV cameras from every network on the planet, commentary courtesy of everyone from Jack Nicklaus to Mary Hart, and more column inches than…well, let’s leave measuring inches out of it for now. You get the picture. You were once the Best Player in the World. Maybe you still are. But not now, not today – because today, it seems more important for you to be the Best Actor in the World. If in fact you’re acting. And if you’re not – well then, the problem may be more serious…
"Five... It took me FIVE strokes to reach the green - but - but - I could swear the woods moved..."
So what should Tiger do? Elsewhere on this blog, it’s suggested that he should return to his profligate ways – that to regain his swagger & skill on the course, he’s got to strut off the course as well, go back to being invincible, unrepentant Tiger. Could be. All we can say is that whatever he’s doing now isn’t working.
Me? I feel for the guy, as an athlete, at least. I don’t like the prurient interest the world took in his sexploits, and is now taking in his travails on the course. I hope he gets his game back (though I suspect he won’t, not in any consistent way). And I hope that the next Best Player in the World (Mickelson, Stricker, or whoever else) gets the credit he deserves, and doesn’t have the shadow of the emasculated Tiger forever hanging over his reign.
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OK – today’s 5-year-old prodigy is golfer Kyle Lograsso, profiled below in the first of a two-part video series (you can find part two online, naturally). There are quite a few videos about little Kyle on youtube, and more than one calls him “the next Tiger Woods,” inevitably. But he reminds us more of Slammin’ Sam Snead. Either way, he’s a special kid – check out his website and see for yourself.
Kyle’s rise to fame speaks directly to the question we at BP have been wrestling with, namely, how important – or advisable – is it to “encourage” a talented child athlete with lessons, standardized training, professional coaching, etc.?
This kid’s game is amazing. Especially his swing, which he learned and perfected – ready for this? – at 3 years old, by watching TV. So, friends – if you’ve dropped thousands on the golf pro and hundreds more on books and instructional videos, watch this one…and weep.
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