thegolftragedy

[thegolftragedy]

Tiger’s new world

Google Tiger Woods today and the lead image that comes up is the mug shot from his May 29 arrest for driving under the influence. Not donning a green jacket. Not fist-pumping after a clutch putt or earth-shaking hole-out. Not hoisting the Wanamaker Trophy. Not hugging his dad. Not flashing that multimillion-dollar smile. We gasped. We gawked. We continue to gasp and gawk at the image of a giant laid low. But by what? Pain, mainly. There was no alcohol in his system. There were painkillers: Vicodin and Dilaudid. There was the antianxiety drug Xanax. There was the sleeping drug Ambien. All legal, all legally prescribed. There was a trace of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, not yet legal in most states. Add it up and it’s a dangerous, terrifying cocktail, one that mirrors America’s opioid addiction nightmare. 

One could say Tiger’s use of painkillers was hard-earned. Four back operations, a host of knee surgeries, elbow injuries, Achillies’ strains, even glute issues. Tiger destroyed his body in the quest to best Nicklaus. The collateral beauty of all the sacrifice was the decades of unprecedented thrills and entertainment he has bestowed on the golf world. That’s worth pondering once again as Tiger prepares to take up a headset and a golf cart and, for the second straight international team competition, the position of captain’s assistant, a role generally reserved for PGA lifers, grinders with affable personalities and perhaps a handful of career tour wins. But this is where Tiger is now, as waits to see if his body will ever recover enough to deal with the fearful symmetry of his explosive golf swing. (At last report, Tiger was hitting 60-yard wedge shots.)  Inside the ropes at the Presidents Cup, Tiger may also find some peace of mind in the heat of competition as he absorbs the latest in a Jobian string of indignities: having the PGA drop his signature tournament for lack of a sponsor. 

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There is no asterisk on any of Tiger’s achievements. Sure, he philandered. Rock stars, professional athletes, presidents, politicians, businessmen, your next door neighbor, they philander. Tiger has paid dearly for those transgressions. And he certainly shouldn’t have been behind the wheel on May 29. Fortunately, no one was injured. Tiger is paying his debt to society for that too. Beyond that, what has he done to draw judgment?

Well, there is the 2013 Masters, when he took an illegal drop on the 15th hole in the second round. He admitted as much later on and probably should have disqualified himself from the tournament. Or he should have been DQ’d for signing an incorrect scorecard. He did cross the golf gods there. But even this unfortunate episode reflected Tiger’s greatness in a couple of ways. 

First, the Masters brass, and CBS, were probably aware on that Friday night that the honorable thing to do, for the good of the game and to maintain its pristine adherence to the rules, was disqualify Tiger. But obviously that would have taken the thunder out of the tournament and killed the ratings. So instead they assigned Tiger a two-stroke penalty on the hole.

Ah, well, rules, schmules. What’s amazing about the whole mess is why Tiger had to drop in the first place. His wedge in off the slope was dialed in on the hole like a guided drone. It squared the stick about a foot up on its descent and spun back into the pond. It could just as easily have dropped in the hole for an eagle, and the sordid affair would never come about. Tiger finished the tourney four strokes behind the winner, Adam Scott. A three on the hole instead of an eight and, well … goddam golf gods. Nonetheless, Tiger won five tournaments and tour player of the year honors for 2013. The Masters would have been six wins. Last Sunday Justin Thomas nearly capped off his own phenomenal season with a sixth win at the Tour Championship in addition to his FedEx Cup championship. One of the commentators pointed out that Thomas would be just the fourth player to win at least six times in a season since 1990: Presidents Cup international team captain Nick Price (1994) and Vijay Singh (2004, nine wins!) did it once each, and Tiger did it six times.

This weekend, as Tiger drives a golf cart around Liberty National Golf, fist-bumping young stars whose path to substantial riches he paved, we can only hope that sometime in the future he will be back on the course with a club in his hand. For now let’s at least get that gnarly mug shot out of our minds and replace it with a few illustrations of the superhuman Tiger at the top of his game.

Tiger and Ali The list of athletes whose faces were the most recognizable in the whole world is very short. Probably just these two. Worldwide fame is one thing they share. Another thing they have in common: their epic battles with overachieving underdogs. When Ali was fighting the likes of Chuck Wepner, Jerry Quarry, and Ernie Shavers, you always kind of rooted for the challenger, knowing that somehow Ali would prevail. Tiger also took the best shots from a series of grinders transcending their limits at a major — Chris DiMarco, Rocco Mediate, Bob May — and he was always the one standing at the end, in the jacket, with the trophy. (Sure, Ali finally lost to Leon Spinks and Y.E. Yang outlasted Tiger at that PGA, but that’s life.)

They don’t play Tiger’s brand of golf anymore These days it seems like the guys who find the top of the leaderboard on the weekend are bombing drives center-cut, then sticking greens with wedges on 500-yard par 4s, and never finding any trouble. Very impressive but often less than dramatic. We rightly think of Phil as the great escape artist, but as Tiger was amassing his 79 wins, a lot of the time he couldn’t drive the ball straight to save his life. But whether he was in the trees, behind a courtesy tent or buried under the lip of a bunker, he refused to take a bogey. All those scrambling pars were as much a part of winning as birdies, and had to be demoralizing to the competition. It was certainly compelling to watch. Tiger’s a cutup As intense and intimidating as he was on the course, Tiger could be funny and self-deprecating too — after a “lucky” hole-out, in interviews. And he had pretty decent comic timing. Once in a while, he gave you the sense that, but for the burden of extreme greatness, he could be almost a regular guy, a goofball, a joker, a mere mortal even.