Tiger Woods has won, some would say, enough—61 times on the PGA
Tour, and each of the four majors more than once, a feat only Jack Nicklaus has
equaled. He took some of those majors by record margins: by 12 strokes at the
1997 Masters 10 years ago, opening the Tiger Epoch with a roar; by 15 at the
2000 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, breaking a mark set by Old Tom Morris in the
1862 British Open. Seeing Tiger lap the field is sweet; but also sweet, for his
enormous couch-potato gallery, are his eked-out victories, as in the 1999 PGA
Championship at Medinah or the 2006 British Open at Royal Liverpool.
I fondly remember, from a few years back, a Sunday round in some
tournament, maybe the Bay Hill Invitational, where, on an hour’s sleep and with
a stomach bug that kept sending him into the bushes, he managed to win. “I had
to,” he told his father at the end. After the 2007 Tour Championship, his World Golf Ranking, which takes into account tournaments played abroad,
numbered 24.36, more than twice that of second-place Phil. And he will be voted by his fellow players, for the ninth time, the Golfer of
the Year.
He is Goliath; nevertheless we root for him. Is it because he is,
sort of, a black man, dominating a sport where black men have customarily shined
the shoes left in the club locker room? Is it his sweet, only slightly wary
interview smile, and his bearing up with so much graceful modesty under all the
pressure the sports world can inflict?
As with Arnold Palmer before him, his body English and facial
expressions let us into his game. He hits miracle shots when he is hot, and
grinds out those chips and five-foot putts when he is not. He brings to golf an
intensity and a reverence that its august history and perennial difficulty
deserve.
So what is he going to do for us in the next decade? The 30s are
usually a golfer’s prime, as Woods has pointed out in interviews. He was a
pioneer of vigorous physical conditioning, which in the good old days of golf
consisted mostly of bellying up to the bar; he is not apt to get slushy in the
abdomen. Still, the golf swing, with its demand for extension and torque, exacts
wear and tear on the human frame, and his swing—let’s face it—is not effortless.
He appears to goose the ball at the last nanosecond and to nearly jump out of
his shoes. Vijay Singh and Ernie Els are prettier.
Though a bigger man than Ben Hogan, Tiger has Hogan’s fast hips
and slashing, all-out manner, rather than Snead’s durable ease. He has already
come through a knee operation and disconcerting spells of wildness off the tee,
which his valiant scrambling ability and steely putting nerves have done much to
offset. Still, there is something precarious at the heart of his swing that
keeps his swing doctors, the ones he hires and the millions of unpaid
diagnosticians, on the job. It might catch up to him, along with the swarm of
younger golfers pouring out of the colleges and the British dominions. Golf has
become a very attractive career in the Tiger era.
