Friday, February 9, 2001
Woods' stardom requires a bigger
stage
By BERNIE LINCICOME
Scripps Howard News Service
I'm worried about Tiger. Aren't we all?
Should we not be holding prayer vigils and chanting sacred incantations,
spreading salt around the tee box, something?
Someone find that voodoo doll that has needles
sticking out of Tiger's hands. We'll probably find David Duval's
fingerprints all over it.
Tiger Woods has not won a golf tournament
in, gulp, his past six. This is like Shaquille O'Neal not making
a free throw in . . . wait, bad example. This is Pavarotti forgetting
the words to La Donna Immobile . . . wait, too pretentious. This
is Tom Hanks not being nominated for the Oscar . . . wait, too
incredible to imagine.
What I'm trying to say is, this is big.
Every Tiger failure diminishes us all. If we can't look at a leaderboard
and see Tiger's name, we have lost our center. The world becomes
a chilling and sinister place. If Tiger fails, what chance do
the rest of us have?
We have read the headline, “Tiger shoots
in 70s,” and then “Tiger doesn't break par,” and
we cringe to pick up the Saturday paper next and see “Tiger
misses cut.”
Surely, the world will just have to hug
itself in fear.
Last year at this time, at the same San
Diego tournament where Tiger shot a very ordinary first-round
70 on Thursday, Tiger was trying to convince us he might lose
a golf tournament again. But we did not believe him. Golf tournaments
might be lost, but Tiger does not lose them. Every loss came with
an invisible Tiger asterisk; such as, “Tiger lost because
the greens were bumpy.”
And when the year had ended and Tiger had
caught and passed legends, we were forced to agree he was all
his father boasted he was when he proclaimed Tiger's future influence
not in terms of Michael Jordan or of Muhammad Ali but of Mahatma
Gandhi.
Imagine sawing off a golf club, placing
it in a toddler's hands and instructing, “Go destroy the
British Empire.”
Ambition has never been a Woods deficiency.
So, losing a sixth golf tournament in a
row, as Woods did Sunday by unforgivably wallowing among the rear-end
ciphers at Pebble Beach, neither charging nor collapsing, takes
on a sizable significance.
If the world is going to set aside Sundays
for Tiger, then all the Brad Faxons and Davis Love III's, IV's
and V's aren't going to reimburse the time lost watching the most
eye-numbing sport on television, after fishing.
Tiger led in five of golf's eight measurable
categories last season. He leads in none this season and ranks
an abysmal 129th in putting. Lots of bumps on those greens.
Theories abound as to what has happened
to Tiger, from his raising the bar and making his competition
better to the odds catching up with him. Nobody takes three legs
of the Grand Slam without fate getting even, not to mention mixing
the metaphor.
Nothing like Tiger's success has happened
in golf since the nation liked Ike — that would be Eisenhower,
not Turner. Maybe both. So big has Woods become, my theory is
that he has forgotten how to play small. He requires a grander
stage, a greater audience, some historical consequence. Does Britney
Spears play strip clubs? . . . wait, too close to the truth.
How tormenting must be the prospect of losing
even one Grand Slam title, for then the season is a complete letdown.
So, may we just get on to the Masters, please? Let Tiger win it
so we can again argue over what constitutes a Grand Slam. Enough
of this dinking around such trivial pieces of real estate as Torrey
Pines and La Quinta. Small stages are cramping Woods and muddling
his myth.
If Tiger is not going to win every week,
what has to keep the legs under Tiger is the chance at the Grand
Slam. Already odds have been set, 50-1 for all four, with the
Masters at 6-5 and the other three at 5-2.
These are incredibly small odds. One of
the reasons golf has trouble gaining great popularity outside
of country clubs is that it is almost impossible for anyone not
playing to bet on. According to a casino acquaintance of mine,
Woods is simplifying the process, making golf an understandable
wager.
The four Grand Slam tournaments make an
efficient betting package. The history and romance of the game
are nice, but hard cash rules.
Woods already has the record at Augusta
and in the U.S. Open, which will be played this year in Tulsa.
The British Open will be at Royal Lytham, a forgiving track. And
Woods is the two-time defending PGA champion, the tournament to
be held this year in Atlanta.
Lots of golfers have lost six tournaments
in a row, but no golfer has ever won the Grand Slam in a single
year. Like Tiger, Ben Hogan got three legs in '53, and Jack Nicklaus
was unable to get more than two. Gandhi, as I recall, never made
the cut.
(Contact Bernie Lincicome of the Denver
Rocky Mountain News at http://www.rockymountainnews.com.)
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