Thursday, August 16, 2001
Woods is due at PGA Championship
By Bill Lyon
Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT)
DULUTH, Ga. — There used to be a law that there couldn’t
be a major golf tournament unless it was won by
Tiger Woods. He went after them like a dog after hubcaps.
But the most dominant athlete in the world hasn’t won
anything of any kind since way back there when the 76ers
and the Lakers were committing basketball.
In the last two majors, he is 0 for 2. In the dugout, they’d
just look at one another and say: “He’s due.”
In golf, though, this drought is being treated as an apocalypse.
So then, while the keepers of dirt and toupee at Veterans
Stadium try to figure out where the zippers should go,
here on the eve of the PGA Championship, which is the last major
of the golfing year, let us consider two basic
theorems:
Golf is hard.
Tiger is human.
As to the first, we can agree that golf is pretty much impossible
most of the time and in rare instances only partly
unfathomable. The act of putting, as one example, is as excruciating
as Shaquille O’Neal sentenced to the free-throw
line.
The point is, this is not a sport any one player, no matter
how towering his genius, can hope to conquer every time
out.
As to the second part, Eldrick Woods is possessed of the same
vanities, frailties and vulnerabilities as the rest of
us. And there is increasing evidence that he has succumbed, however
temporarily, to two very human conditions:
Burnout and boredom.
Certainly he is entitled to both. Though only 25, he has lived
the equivalent of about four sporting lifetimes
already. He came out of the womb hitting a driver and has spent
virtually every waking minute tethered to the practice
range. It was inevitable that sooner or later his body would say:
“Let’s find some shade and lie down.”
You do the same thing over and over and over, especially with
the unrelenting passion that is required to assure a
place in history, then some sort of letdown is unavoidable.
Recently, Tiger has taken to treating himself to some breakaways,
mostly fishing, another sport requiring precision
and patience, a sport of solitude. More and more, he has sought
release from the range, and so it is presumed that the
time spent in waders flicking flies rather than wedges has eaten
into the quality of his game.
What we keep forgetting is that while he hasn’t won his
last four starts, he’s not exactly been shooting 85, either.
“It’s not like I have played so bad that I’ve
gone off the map,” he said. “I was just a little bit
off this summer.”
If his focus strayed, it was understandable. But there is
no reason to think that he can’t regain it.
“The great thing is, I’ve played well before in
the past, and I know once I achieve that feeling I know what it
feels
like, so I just need to get it and keep it,” he said.
One of the many peculiarities of golf is that “it”
can happen at any moment, usually without warning. The better
the
player the more frequently “it” tends to happen, “it”
being the return of the flawless repeating swing.
It would be no surprise whatsoever should “it” come
calling on Tiger at the first tee today. If “it” does,
this course,
the Highlands at Atlanta Athletic Club, will be meat for him.
It is punishingly long, at 7,213 yards, but especially so
considering that par is only 70. Tiger, if driving well, will
have a two or three club advantage on most of the field on second
shots.
The finishing hole is a legitimate monster. The 18th is 490
yards and plays to a par 5 for the members. But for this
week, it is a par 4 for the pros. In a practice round, Tiger unleashed
his driver and still was left with a howling 3-iron
to a green that is severely pinched and narrow.
He smote that 3-iron pin high.
But right.
Where there is water.
So he dropped another ball and flogged another 3-iron.
Into precisely the same liquid grave.
Because he is so unshakably confident — and with ample
reason — this did not appear to intimidate him in the
least.
“If I would have hit it on-line, it would have been all
right,” he said, shrugging.
He took the last 10 days off, which meant skipping the tournament
that is sponsored by a certain car
manufacturer for whom Eldrick Woods is a well-compensated spokesman.
(One theory making the rounds for him
being winless since June 3 is that Tiger has been kept on the
run by sponsor demands and commitments.)
“It was nice to actually go home and hang out,”
he said. “I definitely needed to do that.
“We, as golfers, don’t have home matches. I wasn’t
able to spend enough time at home. So it was nice for me to
go home and not have to look at the remote; my fingers already
knew where to go. Just hang out on the couch and
have everything dialed in just the way I like it.”
Now, he says, he feels ready to play.
It sounds somewhere between promise and warning.
———
© 2001, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Visit Philadelphia Online, the Inquirer’s World Wide
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Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
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