Friday, December 29, 2000
Just 1 award to go for Woods:
Best athlete ever
By Rick Morrissey
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — In something of an upset,
Tiger Woods did not win the Associated Press' Female Athlete of
the Year award Wednesday, though the angry golfer vowed that 2001
will be different and Nike immediately announced plans for a Tiger
Woods sports bra for men.
He already has won Sports Illustrated's
Sportsman of the Year award, Reuters' Sportsman of the Year award,
SI for Kids' Athlete of the Year award and AP's Male Athlete of
the Year award, all in runaways. I like his chances for the PGA
Employee of the Month parking spot.
Woods won nine tournaments in 2000. He won
his first career Grand Slam by winning the British Open. He is
the defending champion in the U.S. Open, the British Open and
the PGA.
He turns 25 Saturday. The geezer.
Most 25-year-olds supplement their dreams
with some heavy dues-paying, others still sleep in their parents'
homes and at least one is represented in the Barnhart Dictionary
Companion. Along with recent entries “Viagra” and “dudette”
is “Tiger Woods Syndrome,” which is defined as either
a sudden increase in the number of people interested in playing
golf or the increase in the number of injuries from children accidentally
hitting each other with golf clubs.
If I may offer a third definition: no chance,
as in, “David Duval has Tiger Woods Syndrome.”
Woods is the best there is, and in five
years, we will be calling him the best there ever was. The best
athlete, that is.
That's hard for me to spit out because golf,
by its very nature, can't stand alongside football, basketball
and other sports without a titanium driver for support. Technology
allowed Jack Nicklaus to be halfway competitive on the PGA Tour
at 59.
And yet ...
And yet here is this long, lean kid, this
multiethnic conglomerate, who has absolutely blitzed his sport.
No one — not Michael Jordan, not Wayne Gretzky, not Jim Brown
— has dominated his sport the way Woods has. The only person
who comes close is Babe Ruth, whose 60 home runs in 1927 accounted
for 14 percent of all homers in the majors that season.
Woods makes it look as if everyone else
is playing in the dead-ball era. This has nothing to do with equipment,
unless you're talking about muscles and sinew, hand-eye coordination
and cantilevered power. He won the U.S. Open by 15 strokes, the
British Open by eight strokes. In hindsight, those tournaments
were about as open as NORAD.
Any other athlete who dominated like this
would face questions of whether he has had too much, too soon.
What's left for a 25-year-old who already embarrasses his elders
on a weekly basis? The short answer is the long answer: a lot.
There is history to be made, and time's a-wasting. All he wants
to do, apparently, is win. He has had the same sports psychologist
since he was 10, which tells you he has been groomed for this
and that his father is a nut.
There is nothing in Woods' makeup that says
he will drop off in any way. Did you catch Tiger's recent testimony
against a man accused of fraudulently using the golfer's identity?
This is what Woods said in response to a question about how much
he shopped:
“I hate shopping. I have never liked
it. I don't like picking out things. I'd rather go play (golf).”
This is all Woods does. He'd rather go play.
Just do it, he seems to be saying. When he swings, it's one big
swoosh. OK, he plays golf and makes money for Nike.
He makes money for almost everyone associated
with golf. TV networks have gotten richer. Purses for PGA events
have gone up 87 percent since 1997. The 125th-ranked golfer on
the Tour money list, Bob Burns, won $391,075 this year. That means
a guy who is teetering on the edge of losing his card made almost
$400,000. Say thank you to Tiger, Bob.
There are 79 Tiger Woods book titles on
Amazon.com, meaning there are lots of authors who thought it would
be a better world if only they wrote a tome about a great golfer.
And if they made a few extra dollars off it, that would be a bonus.
There is a Web site (www.tigerwoodsisgod.com)
devoted to the First Church of Tiger Woods. The tongue-in-cheek
site is “dedicated to examining the possibility that God
is walking the earth” as a golfer. This stems from Earl Woods'
assertion that Tiger is “the Chosen One.”
I know nothing of Woods' divinity. I do
know he had $9.2 million in winnings in 2000.
Is it too early for a lifetime achievement
award?
(c) 2000, Chicago Tribune.
Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://www.chicago.tribune.com/
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
Start or Join A Discussion about This Story
Send the URL (Address)
of This Story to A Friend:
|
