It's a bear to be Tiger
By BART WRIGHT
Scripps Howard News Service
REDMOND, Wash. - They come here as champions, all of them.
It might be on their home course back in Minnesota or Colorado,
where they serve as teaching professionals. It might be a double
champion like Mark O'Meara, who came to Sahalee Country Club this
week trying to become the first winner of three major tournaments
in one year since Ben Hogan in 1953.
It might be Davis Love III, who shot three rounds of 66 last
year to win the PGA Championship and is here looking to be the
first to ever win it back-to-back since it went to a stroke-play
format in 1958.
They might be chasing club-pro dreams, or history of one form
or another, but what they're all really chasing is far more urgent
and real.
They're all chasing Tiger Woods.
His fluid, efficient course-record round Thursday - a 4-under
66 for a two-stroke lead - wasn't a surprise so much as it was
a reminder of what's real about the world of big-money golf at
the end of the century.
"I saw a lot of rough and a lot of trees out there today,"
Woods said soon after his tournament-leading round. "But
overall, I saw a lot of putts go in the hole and that's definitely
not a bad thing."
Woods on top in a course full of trees - why should any of
this come as a surprise?
It shouldn't, but it does because we hold him up to a savagely
unrealistic standard. When your genes are a multicultural cocktail
that give you an appearance we aren't used to seeing in the country-club
atmosphere and when you win the Masters at a younger age than
anyone ever has, we want you to prove it again next week.
And at the next major tournament, and the one after that, like
Pete Sampras when he's on a roll.
The dirty little secret that the rest of the touring pros know
well and the rest of the golfing public is slowly beginning to
realize, is that Tiger Woods raised the bar for everyone out here
on the tour when he burst on the scene a year ago.
This guy isn't content to make big money, finish high and pull
off the occasional win. He wants to win every week.
Has anyone else studied the game so thoroughly at such a young
age? Has anyone else spent as much time tuning himself physically
for the particular, eccentric rhythms of this game?
All on the tour have endeavored to raise their games since
Tiger Woods started showing up. His youth and raw talent may have
been a slap in the face early on, but it has evolved into one
of those "thanks, I needed that" slaps.
He hasn't been winning every week, but this isn't tennis, and
there are indications that he's better now than he was a year
ago when he won five times. He was a big hitter who crushed his
driver and found a way to get close to holes.
On Thursday, on a course everyone says you must negotiate with
length and accuracy, Woods didn't strike a ball with a driver
even once.
He was patient, and more.
"It's a more mature Tiger (Thursday) than you saw last
year at this time," he said. "I've got more shots, I
understand my game. I understand how to hit shots when I'm not
really feeling really well over the ball; how to get the ball
out there and keep it in play.
"It's just one of those things," he said, "where,
over time, you just mature and you learn how to play golf."
The long-ball hitter who sometimes seemed to win without the
subtle touch a year ago made six putts of more than 15 feet Thursday.
He birdied three of the four par-3 holes.
"He had a wonderful round," said Jeff Sluman, one
of Woods' playing partners. "He made some key putts when
he needed them ... (he did) what you're supposed to do."
No, it isn't tennis. You don't play against some opponent you
can drive an overhand serve past anytime you want. You play against
an opponent that never tires out, always makes you pause, think,
plot and second-guess yourself. They keep making these courses
- the real opponent - more challenging all the time.
When you're Tiger Woods, your talent is the tide that makes
all competitors' boats rise. When you're Tiger Woods, it is part
of your reality to see that you are listed No. 1 in this week's
world golf rankings, and to hear people wonder out loud why you
seem to be in such a playing slump.
Then you go out and shoot a course-record 66 to lead the pack
of the world's best golfers at the last major tournament of the
year and you feel as though you did your job.
Everyone else wonders if you can do it again, and again and
again.
(Bart Wright writes for The Sun in Bremerton, Wash.)
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