Tuesday, August 29, 2000
Woods won't relinquish the stage
By Bill Lyon
Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT)
Probably we should have had enough of him for a while. Shouldn't
we? But just about the time you think you would be Tigered out,
he conjures up some new feat of daring and derring-do.
Get enough? How can you get enough when every time out —
every time — he is apt to do something you've never seen
before? He is the rarest thing there is in sports — you can't
put a cap, a limit, a boundary, on him.
Before he is done, surely he will “persuade that little dimpled
ball to sit up and speak.
It looked like a concert. And, of course, in a way it was.
Maestro Tiger Woods, using his 8-iron like a baton, made a grand
and sweeping pass at the ball and elevated it a distance of 169
yards. The ball plummeted out of the night sky and plopped onto
the green and stuck there like a scoop of ice cream that had slid
off the cone and onto summer pavement.
Two feet from the hole.
The maestro walked the darkening 18th fairway, trying to beat
nightfall home, and the gallery flicked on cigarette lighters
and waved them and swayed in time to its own cheers. It could
have been the Mann Center or Central Park or Woodstock.
Tiger Woods is the Fifth Beatle. And Barbra Streisand. And Arturo
Toscanini.
He is Secretariat and Walter Johnson and Ted Williams.
You say, with wistful longing and sighing regret, that you never
got to see Williams hit .400?
You will see the golf equivalent of it very soon.
The magic number in golf is 59.
That, it says here, will be the next great achievement of Tiger
Woods.
And it is not beyond belief that one day he will shoot a 58.
We're talking Putt-Putt scores.
He's been flirting with it. He shot a 61 at Firestone on Friday,
and it was ludicrously easy.
One of these days he'll get off to one of those birdie-eagle-birdie
starts and he will keep it going.
This is how you know that he is the best there has ever been:
There is not a single solitary record that he won't own.
Instead of having a crushing hangover and an understandable letdown
after winning the PGA, he skated through the elite field in the
NEC Invitational. He was so overcome with lethargy and indifference
that he could manage only 21 under par.
And then he was asked to hustle from Ohio to California and get
geared up one more time, for Monday night's mostly meaningless
prime-time match with Sergio Garcia. By now, Tiger's adrenal glands
must be empty.
There was no good reason for him to get the tingles for last night,
except of course his considerable pride and the fact that bright
lights always seem to stir the best of the performers.
Garcia was identified, hopefully, as one of those who would push
Tiger Woods, goad him to greater heights. It has become a popular
theory, that Woods needs a Palmer for his Nicklaus.
But what if he really doesn't? What if, in this regard as in so
many others, he's different?
We were reminded of how he can respond in the final round of the
PGA, when the fearless and little-known Bob May played the competitive
round of his gritty life and extended Woods into a riveting playoff.
And yet in his very next tournament, Tiger Woods had no one pushing
him and he crushed the field. Ten under is a fine score at Firestone.
Ten under against Tiger got you second.
Eleven strokes back.
In that regard, Woods reminds you of Secretariat. Big Red won
each of the Triple Crown races by ever-increasing margins, capped
by a Belmont Stakes in which he was several city blocks in front.
If there had been a fourth major race, he might have lapped the
field.
With no one to push him, the horse pushed himself. You detect
that trait in the golfer.
Where can he find his motivation? Well, winning the Grand Slam
in the same calendar year, for starters.
Then doing it a second time to prove it was no fluke.
Shooting a 59. And then a 58.
Putting up a scoring average for the entire year under 68. Oh,
wait, he's in the process of doing that right now. Well, then,
a scoring average for the entire year under 67.
What is the equivalent of that in another sport? Maybe an ERA
of under 1.00 for an entire season.
Those challenges ought to be enough to occupy him for, oh, the
next three years or so.
By then, we'll have thought up some more.
Or he will.
2000, 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.
Start or Join A Discussion about This Story
Send the URL (Address) of This Story
to A Friend:
|
