If we are lucky, we have seen the birth of a golfing rivalry
By Bill Lyon
Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT)
PHILADELPHIA — We have seen the future of golf, and it crackles
with thunderous, wondrous possibility.
Between them, the prodigies Eldrick Woods and Sergio Garcia are
42 years old. Which is 17 years younger than Jack Nicklaus. And
27 years younger than Arnold Palmer.
In the last major competition of this century, Tiger Woods, the
23-year-old luminously talented multi-ethnic, and Sergio Garcia,
the nerveless and engaging 19-year-old swashbuckling Spaniard,
finished 1-2 in the PGA championship and in the process gave us
a Sunday stroll that we can only hope is a portent of things to
come.
They could do for golf what Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa are doing
for a sport in which you do not have to go find your foul balls
and then play them.
Woods won and looked positively spent at the end. No signature
fist pump, no Tiger whoop. When the last putt fell, his knees
did a little shimmy on their own, and he walked off bathed not
so much in triumph as in relief. It was his second major title
and it had been a long time in coming. Longer, some sniffed, than
it should have been.
So along the way, he has come to learn that there's more to this
legend business than meets the casual eye.
At this age, Nicklaus had, in eight starts, won three majors as
a professional, on his way to 18. Woods now has two in a dozen
starts, this one infinitely more of a struggle than the '97 Masters
in which he humbled the field.
Two things became clear to him. The first is, there is always
somebody younger and once you have been around a while - once
the novelty wears off - people can be fickle and hurtful and even
turn on you. The second is, he has a worthy opponent, someone
to help define him, motivate him. He already had David Duval,
but this kid from Spain looks to have a special flair, and Sunday's
gallery fell instantly in love with him. Woods and Garcia could
be Ali and Frazier for each other.
Their dramatic emergence is good all the way around. First, the
matter of youth. Golf, like all sports, like all things, needs
replenishing, recycling. It would be nice if Woods and Garcia
could grow old together and give us Nicklaus-Palmer, The Sequel.
Only better.
Golf's appeal is now widened. It becomes more a rainbow sport,
less a parade of faceless blond automatons. And Woods and Garcia,
the way they play, with such improvisation and creativity and
cheerful willingness to risk it all, transport golf out of the
realm of just a good walk spoiled.
I'm not just suggesting that Tiger Woods is Michael Jordan walking
on the wind, but did you see the man take a 2-iron and, from a
downhill, hillside, guaranteed-hook lie, fashion a gorgeous 269-yard
fade dead to the green? That shot doesn't exist anywhere else
except inside an incredible imagination.
And maybe Sergio Garcia isn't Barry Sanders doing his hiccup stutter-step,
but did you see the kid take a 6-iron and, while everyone was
imploring him to play safe, to just punch out, somehow gouge the
ball out from between two roots, in a devilish spot only half
a foot from the tree itself, and negotiate the ball onto the green?
Not only that, but as replays and still photos clearly show, he
had his eyes closed, probably in equal parts trepidation and prayer,
just before impact.
And then the image that will blink forever in memory banks: the
kid on the dead run out of the woods, sensing he had wrought something
fairly miraculous and wanting to see for himself, sprinting up
a hill, leaping in mid-stride like a deer bounding over a fence.
Did it turn out good, did it, huh, huh, huh?
Such appealing exuberance, such impetuosity, such simple joy at
a thing done well in the midst of suffocating pressure. How could
you not whisper: “Kid, I hope you have knocked it stiff.”
Well, it was about 65 feet beyond the hole, but then he flirted
with draining that. Rarely has a 4 been so artfully crafted, or
par so charmingly saved. He is a nervy and flamboyant scrambler,
like his mentor, Seve Ballesteros.
The galleries used to go ga-ga over Tiger like they did over Sergio,
and this is not to suggest that Tigermania has burned out. But
on Sunday he heard voices pulling mightily for the kid, and some
other voices - petty, spiteful, moronic - suggesting they wouldn't
mind if Tiger's own golf ball found its way into water or sand,
or both.
“They were saying some pretty tough things out there,”
he said, and he couldn't hide the surprise, or the hurt.
The simple, sad fact is, no matter how good you may be, there
will always be a segment that resents you or is envious of you.
Palmer acolytes hurled “Fat Jack” invective at the early
Nicklaus. Before he became the most gracious loser in history,
in any sport, Greg Norman walked purposefully over to the gallery
ropes to invite profane hecklers out to the parking lot, and more
than once. And if you want to talk about how small and hateful
and boorish spectators can be, check with Colin Montgomerie.
Woods will find, as he probably already has, that some will consider
him wildly overcompensated and tiresomely overpromoted. The best
way to rebut that is with your play, as Jordan proved over and
over and over.
A couple of weeks ago, Woods and Duval played each other in a
head-to-head, No. 1 in the world against No. 2 in the world match
that was good in that it gave golf prime-time exposure, but bad
in that the format was contrived; the loser still was guaranteed
$400,000.
Woods and Garcia on Sunday had much more theater; they harkened
some of the duels between Nicklaus and Tom Watson.
Even though he is only 23, Woods finds himself the old man alongside
the kid. Only Hollywood equals sports in being pitiless where
age is concerned.
With his second-place finish in the PGA, Garcia secured a place
on the European team for the Ryder Cup next month. Here is a delicious
possibility: Woods against Garcia in September.
And, if we're lucky, for a couple of decades to come.
(c) 1999, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Visit Philadelphia Online, the Inquirer's World Wide Web site,
at http://www.philly.com/
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
|
