Tiger enjoys trappings of fame
By LORNE RUBENSTEIN / Toronto Globe and Mail
ORLANDO, Fla. -- It's always possible to run into a golf legend
at the Bay Hill Club and Lodge because it's where Arnold Palmer
spends his winters. Palmer was there recently on a gray December
day. He planned to play in a multi-group shootout around noon,
with each golfer throwing in some money before the golf and needling
was to begin. The shootout is a fixture at Bay Hill in the winter.
There was a second legend at Bay Hill that day, although legend
seems absurd when the subject is 21. But Tiger Woods was the PGA
Tour's leading money-winner in 1997, the Masters champion by 12
shots, the winner of four events on Tour. He was at Bay Hill for
a three-hour roundtable discussion with 12 writers, followed by
some golf.
The event was organized by the International Management Group,
which has looked after Woods' business affairs since he turned
pro little more than a year ago after winning his third consecutive
U.S. Amateur. Woods won two PGA Tour events at the end of 1996,
and followed with a fantastic 1997 season, even if he did tail
off in the last half.
Woods, who turns 22 on Tuesday, was the golf story of the year.
He is already Tiger to everybody, a measure of how familiar
he is to golf fans. It took the public years to feel comfortable
calling Jack Nicklaus by his first name, and many fans still don't.
Even Palmer wasn't Arnie to everybody as quickly as Woods has
become Tiger.
Woods acknowledges things have not always gone smoothly between
him and the press, and the recent meeting was a chance for him
to meet chosen writers in a setting more relaxed than a tournament.
"It's been kind of a whirlwind and I haven't gotten to
know you," Woods said to begin his talk. The group is sitting
at a long table with Woods at the head of one end; Bay Hill's
big practice putting green is just outside the room, with the
attractive course spreading beyond. "I've known some of you
guys since college days, but some of you I've only met in passing.
I really don't know you very well and you don't know me."
Woods' pro career has been well chronicled: The way he dominated
the game after turning pro; how he went 22-under par the last
63 holes after opening with a four-over par 40 on the front nine
of the Masters last April. Anything seemed possible.
The result was that Woods found himself in the middle of a
golf world gone crazy. The PGA Tour assigned extra security staff
to him at every tournament, and when he won the Masters there
was talk of a Grand Slam. Pundits thought it possible he could
follow up with wins in the U.S. Open, British Open and PGA Championship.
But he faltered in the last half of the season, when he felt exhausted.
He had won four times on the PGA Tour by early July, but would
not win again in 1997.
"People don't understand that you have to be intense for
four hours on the course," Woods said. "Physically you're
fine. I've never had a problem with being tired physically after
a round. I'm used to playing 36 holes a day in college, carrying
my own sticks, so this (playing 18 holes a day on the PGA Tour,
with a caddie) is easy for me.
"But the fatigue factor is definitely something people
don't understand, especially when you're dealing with the things
that come with being who I am, what I have to deal with on the
golf course, and then, if I go into town, I'm not left alone at
dinner, so then that kind of wears on you. Then people will follow
me home to hotels and wait in the lobbies for autographs and pictures.
That starts to add up. So if you look at that from the moment
I get up to the moment I come home, that's a busy day."
He is speaking evenly, not arrogantly, and there is consternation
in his face.
At the same time, Woods is well aware that the tradeoff has
hardly been all that bad. Sure, he misses spending time with his
college buddies, and will sometimes fly them into tournaments.
Many an evening he and his pals will play Ping-Pong for four hours
at a time. That was the case during the Masters and also during
the British Open, where Woods arranged for a Ping-Pong table to
be brought to the house where he was staying.
The trappings of fame are stupendous. Woods is all smiles when
he says that he enjoys hanging out with his pals Michael Jordan
and Charles Barkley, whom he calls M.J. and C.B. What 21-year-old
sports fan wouldn't enjoy that?
Woods' friendship with Mark O'Meara, his neighbor at the exclusive
Isleworth community in Orlando, is also important to him; he calls
O'Meara "Marco." O'Meara is 19 years older than Tiger
but has helped him deal with Tour life, while Jordan and Barkley
have chatted with him about fame and celebrity. Woods has been
on the cover of the National Enquirer, and as he said, "How
many PGA Tour players can say that?" But he'd rather follow
his basketball friends in their exploits, anytime. And he particularly
enjoys getting free tickets to Orlando Magic or Chicago Bulls
games.
Still, Woods has been affected by some of the more difficult
aspects of celebrity in our culture. The topic of maintaining
a personal life comes up often; he wishes he could draw a line
about what is permissible, and what is not.
"The hard part of the year was that after a while the
public didn't want to hear about how good I hit a five-iron,"
he said. "They don't want to hear that any more. They want
to know what I do off the course, things I do with people ...
that part of it, my dad calls it Ôgoing horizontal' because
you're no longer in the game but you're spread out, it's been
more difficult than I thought it would be."
But haven't Palmer and Nicklaus accepted celebrity's burdens
along with its rewards? A tableau presents itself outside the
window, where Palmer, under a darkening sky, is putting on the
practice green and chatting with people, always gracious, always
smiling.
"I watched Arnold walk from here to the practice range
(during the Bay Hill Classic last March) and not one person was
going to knock him down," Tiger recalled. "It's because
of the respect level for an older person. I mean, I have grandmas
grabbing me, saying, sign this for me now, you're the same age
as my grandkid. You don't see that kind of reaction towards a
Jack Nicklaus or an Arnold Palmer because they're much older than
me. People respect them."
Woods pointed out that his generation "is a little more
aggressive. We naturally are. Then you bring all of them to a
golf course, they don't know how to react, they have that football,
basketball mentality, screaming and yelling, ÔOh God, I
can get his autograph, he's right there in front of me ... when
you get a crush the way I do, that many people fighting and knocking
each other over, kids get hurt sometimes. That's when I have a
problem, and when I stop signing, when adults trample kids. I've
seen that. One little kid was crying his heart out at the Australian
Open, because he was getting crushed up against this fence. Guys
were pushing this kid away, knocking him down trying to get my
autograph."
But then it can all stop, just like that. This happens when
Woods reaches the practice range. He has a powerful, sinuous swing
that unleashes with such controlled power at the ball.
"I look forward to playing more than I ever have,"
Woods said before arriving on the range. "It's evolved into
more of a love than I had before. I thought that was impossible,
but I love playing golf more than I ever have. No one can get
to me out there. You can't wait to get on there, to warm up. Ah,
peace at last."
A season of following Woods produces memories. There was the
Saturday evening at Royal Troon, site of the British Open, when
he was practicing alone on the range; Woods was eight shots behind
leader Jesper Parnevik but believed he could win. And so he was
pounding drivers into the soft summer sky, while behind him Scottish
golf fans filled the bleachers. Tiger was all business, but when
he was done he took a baseball stance and batted a few balls with
his driver. The crowd loved it. So did Woods, who was in his element
doing his thing.
Then there was a shot that Woods elected to play during the
U.S. Open at Congressional in June. He chipped a three-wood 10
yards up a closely mowed slope to the hole cut in the rear left
portion of the 11th green. The ball scooted up the slope, on to
the green and into the hole. Nobody can teach that shot. And only
a few gifted players have the touch to get the ball anywhere near
the hole, let alone make the shot. This was more than luck; this
was golfing grace.
At the same time Woods hit plenty of shots that went awry during
the season, especially during the last half. He tried to cut the
corner at the par-five 13th hole at Royal Montreal during the
second round of the Canadian Open, but went too far left into
rough so thick he could not see his ball until he was on top of
it. Woods could only whack a sand wedge out.
Woods missed the cut at Royal Montreal, the only cut he has
missed as a pro. He showed he is human.
Woods can do much more than hit the ball a long way. He would
not have won three U.S. junior championships in a row and then
his three consecutive U.S. Amateurs, or the six Tour events so
far, without being strong mentally; he said he really believes
he can will the ball in the hole sometimes, and that Nicklaus
and all the great players are able to do this. But the will fades
as the mind tires. That, Woods said, was one effect of the fatigue
he felt from July on. There's so much to the mental game, though.
Woods warms to speaking about it. At one point, he is asked if
he can smell fear in another player.
"Oh yeah, you can," he answered, his face lighting
up. "You just look at their eyes, they can't hide their feelings
behind their eyes. This area here (he points to the upper half
of the eyes) tells the whole story, the way they're squinting,
if the eyes are wide open, bulging, if they're looking around.
You can always tell."
Woods spoke about how players sometimes change under pressure,
and tells of how Greg Norman seemed different that fateful early
afternoon of the final round of the 1996 Masters. Norman held
a six-shot lead over Nick Faldo after three rounds.
"Before the round, it was the first time all year Greg
was actually laughing and joking with Butch (Harmon, Norman's
teacher then and Woods' teacher)," Woods remembered. "He's
never done that. He was so nervous he had to release it somehow."
This isn't to say that Woods won't admit to being nervous when
in contention. But he monitors his feelings closely. For one thing,
he often doesn't speak even to his housemates before a round,
and certainly not to the press.
"I hate to say it, but I'd say, the guys who are doing
well on tour, they don't talk before a round because they're already
focused on what they have to do. You can judge a lot by a person
in the locker room, you can judge a lot about a guy before he
plays, whether he's talking to somebody or is not talking to somebody,
how he's acting. You just watch him, and that (his behavior) usually
determines how he's going to play."
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)
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