Certain events off the course are likely to occur in the next
decade. He has become a father. His
characteristic sense
of responsibility and the strong family feelings
he has evinced as a son may cut
into his already severely rationed
playing time. Family life supposedly settles
athletes down, but Phil
Mickelson’s late summer disappearance from competition
hasn’t helped
his statistics, or his image. In the coming decade, Tiger’s own
image
will age; already, his once cherubic visage is marked by countless
competitive hours in the sun. Now, on camera, when he squints and
grimaces in
the wake of an imperfect shot, it is the creased grimace of
a fully grown man—a
veteran.
From the standpoint of the advertisers (Gillette, Nike,
Buick, Accenture) who provide most of his prodigious income, he may
still appeal
to the much-courted 20s demographic, but he is no longer
of it. The magnetic
presence he exerts in his light-hearted television
commercials depends on his
continuing to shine in golf tournaments; a
great ongoing weight of tangible and
intangible assets rests on a
slender edge, the difference between good golf and
winning golf. A few
long putts not dropping, a few more pushes off the tee, and
his
dominance could end as irrevocably as Palmer’s did after he blew a
seven-shot lead in the 1966 U. S. Open.
Perish the thought. Tiger has been sustained as a young man by a
genuine love of the game and an innocently rapacious desire to beat
everybody
else. In his book How I Play Golf, he says to the
reader, “You may find
this hard to believe but even when I’m grinding
on the final nine of a
tournament, I’m having a blast.... I believe
even the most stoic player is
having the time of his life when the game
is on. If he isn’t he shouldn’t be
playing.”
He began playing in public early, as a child prodigy performing
trick shots on television, and then as a teenage sensation racking up
an
unprecedented three consecutive U.S. Amateurs. He is a Bobby Jones
who didn’t
retire, who didn’t stay amateur, whose professional success
is corporation
scale—a private jet, a 155-foot yacht, his own golf
course design company. A
question is, how playful can a corporation
continue to be? For a curious gaiety
of relaxation—of not trying too
hard, of not trying to bully the course but
flowing along with it—is
part of golf’s incorruptible magic.
In the decade ahead, not only his body but his spirit might show
wear. Could success begin to bore him? Any golfer knows the pitfalls of
the
wandering mind, of no longer granting golf’s measured pace and
finicky
adjustments the focus they demand. Look at the greatly gifted
John Daly’s
appealing but crippling diffidence. Tiger’s triumph is that
he not only
shouldered great expectations but exceeded them. His
announced goal, to surpass
Nicklaus’ record of 18 majors (or call it
20, counting U.S. Amateurs as majors)
should be reached in the next
decade, barring calamitous infirmity or
distraction.
But the goal may be achieved in the soured, so-what atmosphere that has
clouded the successful assaults, beginning with Roger Maris and ending,
for now,
with Barry Bonds, on Babe Ruth’s epochal record of 60 home
runs in one season.
The equipment did it, or chemicals. A sentimental
vengeance is taken on those
who shatter sacred marks and dethrone old
gods. They will be forgiven if they do
it in divine style. Style is
what makes strivers into heroes. If he overtakes
Nicklaus comfortably,
as his natural right, Tiger will be certified as the
greatest golfer
since Young Tom Morris. If he struggles at it, and makes it look
laborious, he will go from being a wonder to being one more plugger in
the
lucrative workhouse of sports.