Tuesday, July 25, 2000
Is Woods `everybody's home
team'?
By Mike Kern
Knight Ridder Newspapers
ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — You stand along
the 18th fairway at the Old Course as the leaders conclude their
business at the British Open, your eyes and your senses assaulted.
It is one of the truly classic sporting vistas, streakers or no
streakers.
The Royal and Ancient clubhouse, a magnificent
pile of gray stone, frames the picture. The backs of old homes
and shops and hotels line up along one side, historic voyeurs.
People sit on their roofs and hang out of windows, but it is the
massive grandstands behind the green and the adjoining fairway
that truly add color and life to the black-and-white history.
Sunday, Tiger Woods made that walk, the
walk that everyone knew he would be making — and at the end,
he could see his mother and girlfriend sitting there on the clubhouse
steps. He made history by shooting 19-under par at the British
Open and winning the career Grand Slam at age 24.
He is rewriting the record books and redefining
the sport. But while the young lions on the PGA Tour don't seem
to know how to react, some of the veteran guys know just how special
Woods is.
“It's more than wonderful,” said
Nick Faldo, a player with victories in six major championships.
“The guy is simply in a different league. In a way, it's
fantastic for him. All credit to him. He's thrown all those old
myths out the window — that you can't physically train for
golf, you can't be strong or you are going to lose your touch
. . . The knowledge that I have after 25 years, I'd love to be
starting again. I'd like to be 15 years old again and think if
I work hard physically, technically and mentally for the next
five years . . .
“All these 15-year-olds, they have
to stop eating the doughnuts. They have to get out there. They
have an incredible opportunity now if they can grasp all this
knowledge - and, boy, they have to go out and chase.
“It's no good sitting back and thinking,
`I won't go and practice because it's raining,' “ Faldo said.
“If you are going to compete and beat Tiger, you have to
be out there and do as much, if not more.”
It would be hard to hear this call to action
over the roaring crowds Sunday. They attended this Open in record
numbers - with tons of kids among the spectators. They cheer the
guy like a rock star. They revel in his greatness.
They aren't bored by it — yet.
But when is the competition coming? Even
if a world full of 15-year-olds all simultaneously dropped their
doughnuts and picked up their 5-irons, we are years away. It's
very clear now that Woods' major adversaries in the foreseeable
future will be injury or boredom.
Will that be enough for you? Because you
are the only one who can answer the question, not some sports
writer. Right now, it is very clear that this guy is a tsunami
that everyone wants to get a look at. He is young, dashing, a
superb thinker on the course, an outrageous competitor, a guy
who never folds under the pressure, a guy who has held at least
a piece of the lead after three rounds in 17 tournaments as a
pro and won 16 of them.
Who wouldn't want to see him make the rest
of the golfing world stand still? It's a great show, and the PGA
Championship at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky., next month
will be another great show. There has to be a point, though, where
someone steps up to challenge Woods. Doesn't there?
“He is not going to do this every major,
at least I hope not,” said Mark Calcavecchia, one of Woods'
better friends on the tour. “You just have to take your hat
off to him. The way he has dominated in today's game, when there
are as many good players as there are, is really incredible.
“It wasn't that long ago I said there
would not be another Jack Nicklaus, but in fact we are looking
at one of them. He is the chosen one. He is the best player who
has played the game right now and he is only 24. Jack Nicklaus
was the greatest of all time and he has the greatest record of
all time, but when it is all said and done he still might have
the greatest record of all time.
“But if Jack was in his prime today,
I don't think he could keep up with Tiger.”
Which still begs the question: Would Jack
be Jack if he hadn't had Arnold Palmer and Gary Player and Lee
Trevino and Tom Watson? The answer is, no.
The history of this game demands stars and
competition. History. Here at St. Andrews, you can visit the graves
of Old Tom Morris and Young Tom Morris. Old Tom was the greenskeeper
at St. Andrews and a four-time winner of the Open in the 1860s.
Young Tom, his son, also won four times before drinking himself
to death at the age of 24, just three months after his wife and
baby died in childbirth.
An elegy to Young Tom was written. It begins:
Beneath the sod poor Tommy's laid
Bunkered now for good and all
A finer golfer never played
A farther or surer ball.
You can visit that cemetery today and there
will be no evidence that either of the Morrises, young or old,
turned over in their graves at Woods' accomplishment. Still, we
have crossed a line here. We are no longer talking about run-of-the-mill
sporting greatness.
“I have been secretly studying Tiger,”
Faldo said. “He has no idiosyncrasies. He just gets on with
the job. He just keeps plowing on and has never come backward
at all. It's almost as though now guys will pick events to play
in and play the Tigerless tour to have a chance to win.”
Which is fine for now, great for now. But
here's the question everyone will have to answer in the coming
years: If Yankee fans never got tired of the Yankees winning all
the time, and if Bulls fans never got tired of Michael Jordan
winning all the time, will you never get tired of Tiger Woods
winning all the time? Is he everybody's home team?
One thing is certain: He is now, even here.
(c) 2000, Philadelphia Daily
News.
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Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
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