Thursday, June 14, 2001
Putting Woods' drive for five in perspective
By GARY SHELTON
St. Petersburg Times
TULSA, Okla. — The shadow arrives long before the player.
It darkens the tee box and creeps toward the fairway, engulfing
everyone else, obscuring everything else.
Tiger Woods is approaching. You can see nothing else, and why
would you bother to look? Nothing else matters. All the other
golfers are nondescript shapes. All other discussion is irrelevant.
Such is the world of Tiger and his shadow, which casts over all
things in golf. He is bigger than the field, bigger than the event,
perhaps bigger than the sport, and still he grows. His legend
is everywhere, in the hearts of the fans and in the heads of his
competitors.
Ask around. Look into the eyes of his competitors, who seem to
have accepted their fate. Listen to the voices of the legends,
who acknowledge that at 25, Woods has surpassed them. If you made
a movie of the PGA Tour, it would be called Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Challenger.
The thing is, as big as Tiger has become, he is still growing.
This weekend he chases his fifth consecutive major title. In a
sport where winning one major carries the mark of greatness —
ask Tommy Bolt, Tom Kite, Tom Weiskopf — Woods has made winning
the big tournaments look as easy as walking outside and picking
up the morning paper.
Five. Think about it. Winning one major is a dream. Two is validation
the first one wasn't a fluke. Three makes you special. Four makes
you a legend. Tiger is going for five.
In a row.
Do not be fooled by the ease with which Woods has slammed the
rest of the tour. In his victories in the U.S. Open, British,
PGA and Masters, he has been a combined 65 strokes under par.
The nearest competitors were 20 strokes behind. He has won on
long courses and tight courses and foreign courses. He has led
wire to wire, and he has come from behind. He has won because
of his length, because of his short game, because of his putter.
Five. It sounds like a small number. It isn't. Winning four in
a row has included 16 rounds, 288 holes and 1,083 strokes. That's
a lot of chances to mess up. What can stop him? Well, his father
suggests, perhaps a wife.
Five. How big would five be?
It would be bigger than the Dolphins' 17-0 season. Yes, Miami
was perfect. But it had a few gimmie putts. There are no gimmie
putts in a major championship.
Five wouldn't be as big Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak,
a remarkable individual achievement in the middle of a remarkable
team achievement (five straight world championships by the Yankees).
Woods would be better, however, than Pete Rose's 44-game streak.
Five would be bigger than Johnny Unitas' 47-game streak of throwing
a touchdown pass. Unitas is my all-time favorite athlete, but
have you ever seen films of football in those days? There were
two coverages, one of which consisted of chasing Lenny Moore across
the goal line.
But five wouldn't be as big as Michael Jordan winning six NBA
titles his last six full seasons of play. When you consider how
Jordan carried those teams, it's still better. To equal it, Woods
would have to win this tournament and the British Open.
Five would be bigger than Mark McGwire's 70 home runs. Nothing
against McGwire, but a lot of his home runs came against bad pitchers.
Besides, Woods is playing for championships.
But five wouldn't be as big as Rocky Marciano going 49-0 with
43 knockouts. If you remember, Marciano fought before Don King
invented the palooka.
Five would be bigger than the 11 straight tournaments Byron Nelson
won in 1945. Come on. Only 16 people in America played golf that
year, tops. Just kidding. But Nelson's streak did not include
a slam. So it wasn't as good.
But five wouldn't be bigger than the Celtics winning 10 of 12
NBA titles, eight of them in a row.
It would be bigger than Pete Sampras' seven Wimbledon titles.
Sampras was created for grass. Winning one tournament a lot of
times isn't as good as winning a lot of tournaments in a row.
But five wouldn't be as big as Jackie Robinson kicking down the
damn door in '47.
In other words, it would be bigger than Hannibal but not as big
as Attila, bigger than the Rolling Stones but not as big as the
Beatles, bigger than Lindbergh but not as big as Armstrong.
It would be bigger than Batman but still a couple of tournaments
short of Superman. It would be the best thing golf has seen. But
when you think of the future, it might not be the biggest thing
golf will see.
No one questions anymore whether Woods can perform such miracles.
More and more, it seems the only person who can beat Woods is
Woods. When he says he is hitting the ball well, you can almost
feel the others shudder.
The legends chuckle when they talk about him. Tom Watson says
Woods has the field intimidated and that it's getting worse. Younger
players try not to admit it, but they are reduced to talking about
playing perfectly and hoping he does not.
Hal Sutton was quoted the other day as saying he was lying in
bed, thinking about Tiger and how Tiger can be beaten. But Sutton
missed the point. He was lying in bed thinking about Tiger. What
does that tell you?
Do you think Tiger was in bed thinking about Hal Sutton? Or anyone
else, for that matter?
The question, then, is not whether Woods can win this U.S. Open.
It's whether he can win from now until the next one.
And this: Who is going to stop him?
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com.)
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