Notah Begay says it and
when Notah Begay says it, sit up and take notice. He says it is Tiger’s last outing, and he’s right. It is Tiger’s swansong. There will be
no second coming after this. And Notah thinks he can win. At least one win this year and he
expects him to peak in the springtime.
It may be just a matter of getting some more tournaments under his belt
but the question remains: is this a good buddy-bolstering remark or the hard-headed
opining of a seasoned golf analyst?
And who could blame Begay if he cast aside his seasoned opinion and led
with his heart in supporting his good friend’s return to the professional
circuit after a sixteen month sojourn - for these are two people who met and
bonded at a youth tournament in California when a twelve year old Begay walked
up to a nine year old Tiger and started a lifelong friendship with the opening
remark “You’ll never be alone again”?
But Michael Jordan
thinks not and when Michael Jordan thinks not, then we need to sit up and take
a double dose of notice. As Tiger
has tightened the net on the circle of friends that remain within his close-quartered
entourage, those that remain are all we have to act as portals to the private
world of Tiger Woods. And private
he is – for this is a man who has the capacity to appear and disappear with the
stealth of a leopard and has named his boats Privacy and Solitude. While many super athletes have
personalised registrations and customised paint jobs that they like to vaunt, Tiger
has blocked the tail number on his plane.
He flies under the radar, cloaked in the solitude of his self-made
world, living in a sixty million dollar Florida home that is its own compound
and which he inhabits mostly alone since his tabloid divorce some seven years
ago. Michael Jordan is one of the
chosen who remain on the inside track and if anyone has any idea of what might
happen in Woods’ future, then it is the lot of Jordan to provide that
insight. As late as last year, he
expressed his belief that Tiger will never be great again. He cannot tell him so directly because
he loves him too much. That’s as
may be but he has put it out there in the public domain for public consumption
and, by no stroke of divine intervention, there is an unquestionable certainty
that his good friend Tiger has read it.
Michael Jordan’s take on
Tiger’s position leaves us with the distinct impression that Tiger should
entertain a period of reflection on the future success of his career. Is this the result of protracted
conversations as friends are wont to do as they burn the midnight oil – let’s
face it, there is nobody on Tiger’s horizon who is better placed to advise than
Michael Jordan as he has already weathered that storm – or the out loud musings
of a man who sees what his friend cannot see: that there comes a time in every
life where a reckoning has to be made?
Whatever the history behind his assertion, we are left with the feeling
that Michael’s musings are from a place of intimacy that few have access
to.
There is so much of
Tiger that is conundrum and conflict and the end of a career that was
foreshortened by a dramatic fall from the grace of a carefully contrived public
image has made that reckoning a tainted thing, a staining on the ideal of his
own perfection and opened his tightly held belief of destiny and glory to a
rigmarole of regrets that seemed at times to border on the edge of
festering. But Tiger’s depleted
game is not at a low point merely because of the injuries to his image. His body has taken its toll and
responded to the extreme exertions of training and workouts that he has exposed
himself to over a protracted period of time. Along with the powerful speed and impact of his swing, the
physical regimes he has expounded have taken their toll on his joints and, by
default, the healing time demanded by those injuries has detracted from his
focus, fitness and practice.
And now he is back.
And we watch.
For failure. For fear. For excitement. For a score that will signpost his route back
to success. For the win. For his fall. For the fun.
For the fascination. For
the hope re-born.
This return was prefaced
by an earlier outing at the Hero Challenge in December of last year and Tiger watchers
who have agonised over his every shot will report that he made more birdies
than anyone else. He also made
more bogeys too but the consensus says his game lacked the mark of confidence
and the stroke of genius that dominated every part of his game when he played
on stellar heyday form. There is
nobody like Tiger who can envisage a shot with such unwavering clarity that he
can will it into being. Like he
did in 2003 in the Presidents Cup with the light fading as he putted against
Els on the par-3 second hole at Fancourt Country Club. Els had five feet and Woods
fifteen. Tiger took his shot and drained
the bender into the hole. The
watchers at the hole will testify that he created it in his head and willed the
shot into form for, when he took that shot, it was almost pitch black. Those spine tingling days are long
gone.
Rust or fatigue he was
asked – and his honest reply left us in no doubt of the state of his Hero
Challenge game: poor decisions, getting his legs back, not being ferried in a
cart, and focusing for an extended period of time. His caddie backlit that statement by saying his priority was
to get him through all the rounds on his feet. There were eighteen players selected, no cut, and Tiger came
home fifteenth. This was never for
the win.
Fast forward to the PGA
tour, Torrey Pines, South Course, San Diego. It’s late January.
He’s playing and we
watch with the same fascination and hope that we experienced at the
Hero Challenge Display.
Hundreds of fans lined
up to watch Woods on the first tee.
And they lined up in their droves, outside the ropes, to follow their
hero. Tee to green, the fans, the
bewitched, the bemused, the golf aficionados followed his every move. Round the greens they swarmed like
drones to a hive, several rows deep.
He managed to hold par on the first nine. As he made the turn, even the workers at the Scripps Clinic at
Torrey Pines came out on the balcony and lined the glass-fronted building. But Tiger let it slip away during a six-hole
stretch on the back nine, finishing the day on a 4-over, 76. Next day on the easier North course, he
made par when he needed to make sixty-eight. His round was inconspicuous and he was never any threat.
While his short game
might have had some merit, his new swing never hit the mark. He likes to play off a fade but he
never looked like he knew how to execute one. Even Tiger himself looked
relieved when he managed to keep it out of hazards and the rough, while his
putting lacked the shine and accuracy that we expect of him. His body language spoke silently but
loudly. Gone was the loping stride
of his six foot- one frame. The
set face, so long familiar to us with the starched stiffness of supreme focus,
had disappeared. In its place were
a variety of expressions that ran the gamut from frown to smile and covered
every shade of emotion between. Tiger
has long been as much an actor as a golfer and the persona he projected on his
red-and-black garbed winning Sundays was designed to intimidate his every
foe. You could not envision him
wearing those colours today. He
ended Friday on the North course with a birdie and a smile but that was
all. He missed the cut in his
first competitive field of professional golfers.
Now here’s the rub.
Tiger is still
wounded. Deep down, those
scars are still there. It’s not in
the adjusted swing that it shows - for Tiger has sported three different swings
in his career so far. It shows in
his favoured fade shot and it is painfully clear he is no longer in control of
that long ball. Notah Begay says
that he swung by Tiger’s place fairly recently and watched his old mate beat out
those balls in a continuous stream of precision but even the least experienced
golfer knows there is a huge difference between hacking a bad ball off the
grass when you can unswervingly follow it with a stream of others that allow
you to correct your error immediately.
Any predictions of Tiger’s return to a major win in the next year based
on range and practice tactics is a far cry from the failed fade we have
recently witnessed out there on the course. With fifteen minutes between shots, there is time for the
worrying pinprick of a minor fail to mushroom into a cascading faucet of
self-doubt. And it is here, when
Tiger’s A-plan has flown out the window, that we can see the rot evident and
the wounds revealing themselves. There
is no fall-back plan.
Tiger got on his plane
and headed for Omega Dubai Desert Classic, European Tour. It’s early February.
We are watching again,
looking for something glorious that would mark him out for success. The hope in us is now dwindling towards
the dying of the light.
Woods shot an opening round
of five over, 77 – a round which sported five bogeys and no birdies. It was inglorious and his worst score
outside of the US in a non-major since 1996. The television announcers commented on his physical condition
on almost every hole. Tiger walked
slowly, very slowly. By the fifth
hole, the Twitter army were speculating on a withdrawal. His look was pained, although he later
denied that pain. Tiger did not
withdraw and he even began to warm up, but he remained aloof throughout the
round and made minimal conversation with his fellow players. His look was fragile, intent, and he
had the air of a man who knows he has lost his cloak of invincibility.
Tiger is fit. He can walk the course. He would not be out there if his orthopaedic
team had withheld its approval. The
word on the street says he is exercising twice a day. That is no bad thing but it is the type of exercise that
counts here: a return to the old, demanding regimes or a new programme designed
to accommodate the damaged back?
The question remains inadequately answered but the hope must be for sense and
sensibility to prevail and a physio team to monitor his every move. Sean Foley was hired as Tiger’s coach
in 2010. Under Foley’s tutelage,
Tiger’s swing became steeper and he regained the distance of his younger years
but Brandel Chamblee has a distinct take on this. Reviewing Woods’ progress at Dubai, Chamblee remarked that
Tiger’s swing could be dangerous to his health. Woods admits that his current swing is designed to avoid
another injury but Chamblee is of the opinion that this swing is a remnant of
the golf swing he had seven years ago and he sees this as the cause of Tiger’s
injuries.
On the second day of
Omega Dubai Desert Classic, Tiger Woods withdrew.
At the outset of this
comeback, Tiger said he was physically fit and his golf was getting there. In 322 tournaments played, he has been
forced to withdraw five times but four of theses have been in the past nineteen
months. He has reached a point
where his body looks like it is something he no longer trusts but, more
tellingly, he no longer seems to trust his golf either. It doesn’t leave him much to play with but
the greatest sadness of all is watching a fabled professional golfer searching
for something out there that he no longer knows how to find.
Nor do we – and somewhere
on the Dubai golf course, our hope expired.
As the freak storm
descended on day two of the Desert Classic and stopped play, Tiger put on his
cloak of invisibility and slipped quietly away. He did not face the media or his fans but left that duty to
his agent, Mark Steinberg. His
leaving, like his life, proves that a leopard never changes his spots, or a
tiger his stripes.
We wait for his next
appearance without the shred of hope.
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