Monday, June 5, 2000
Tiger touches many far beyond the golf
course
MIKE LITTWIN
Scripps Howard News Service
Tiger Woods came to town Sunday not simply to conduct a golf clinic
for disadvantaged kids, even if that's exactly what it appeared
he was doing all afternoon at Park Hill golf course.
Tiger Woods, you see, is out for something bigger much bigger,
far greater, far more ambitious.
Earl Woods, who always has helped to define his son's ambitions
for him, who thinks of Tiger in terms of his “place in history,”
put it this way: “Tiger's greatest contribution will not
be in the game of golf. It will be in the humanitarian area.”
Forgive a father's heart. Tiger put it in easier-to-accept terms,
but the theory, if not the scale, is much the same.
Ask him what he would like to hear 10 years hence from one of
the kids he had met Sunday, and he said it wouldn't be that he
had helped him with his slice. What he would love to hear, he
said, is this: “You've made an impact on my life, and I've
decided to do something about it.”
OK, maybe it's a little grandiose to suggest that spending 10
minutes with a kid on his golf shot or putting on an invitation-only
exhibition for 2,500 kids who don't get too many invitations is
going to change anyone's life in any significant way.
And yet.
In a strange way, maybe it all does mean more than anyone would
guess. And maybe someday Tiger will tackle issues greater than
golf in the inner city. The wonder of Tiger Woods is not just
in his golf game, which is wondrous enough.
It's that he has almost no concept of limitations, which is exactly
what each of us wants for our children. You have to applaud his
ambition, which, he says, he wants to take “globally.”
Golf locally, think globally. It isn't enough for Woods to have
an impact in one country. He wants to take on the world.
If that sounds like overreaching, the pity is how many in similar
positions typically underreach. Just imagine what Michael Jordan
could accomplish if his global thinking meant more than sending
Nike shoes to overseas factories.
Woods takes his time, his money, his vision to Denver less than
two weeks before the U.S. Open — as Earl says, it's like
Mark McGwire coming to Denver for a hitting clinic just before
the World Series — to put himself in the middle of other
people's lives. Woods doesn't have to do it. He doesn't need the
publicity. Ask yourself: What does Tiger Woods need?
“I'm in such a lucky position to have this opportunity to
be able to touch more than just a few people,” Woods said.
“To me, that's incredible. To me, that's what you always
want to be in a position to be able to do things like that.”
Let's face it, being Tiger Woods, he can hardly help making a
difference.
Woods isn't just a golfer, after all. He isn't just a celebrity
either. He has magic. He has the Promethean gift of fire. Being
there, when he didn't have to be there, had to mean something
to every kid he met.
Nearing the end of the day when the clinic with top junior golfers
was over and the news conference was done and the introductions
of “local heroes” were finished and after Woods had
said he would probably play at Castle Rock in the International
again this summer, Woods headed for his shot-making exhibition.
If you're a golfer, you didn't want to miss that. By the way,
Woods didn't make the million-dollar hole-in-one, but he did drop
an 85-yard sand wedge into a Coca-Cola barrel. Then flashed that
smile to prove it.
Anyway, I'm walking toward the exhibition with Carlos Garcia,
who is a senior at Denver West High School. Garcia won an invitation
to this event for an essay he had written about believing in himself.
When I asked him what it was like to chat with Woods, he said,
“It was cool. He's Tiger Woods.”
Yes, he's Tiger Woods. That says more than enough.
But if the 2,500 kids at the exhibition came to see Tiger, they
didn't get to see him right away. They saw Earl first. You can
see the roots of ambition here and can tell who is guiding whom.
“To get to Tiger,” he told the kids, laughing, “you
go through me.”
He began a lecture, starting with slave ships that brought Africans
to America. He told kids that no one cares about them — except
them.
“The only one who can do anything for you is y-o-u,”
he said.
The message wasn't about being a great golfer. It wasn't about
golf at all. The message was about possibility. Tiger Woods would
settle the Charles Barkley role-model question in his own way.
“Be your own role model,” Tiger would tell his audience,
echoing his dad's words.
Together they formed the Tiger Woods Foundation which Earl helps
to run — and Tiger, who's only 24, plans for it to grow with
him.
“I'd like to see us go global,” Tiger said. “I'd
like to see us give more money to the institutions we're involved
with, to make more of an impact than we can now. Eventually, we
should be able to donate a million or two here and there and not
think anything of it.”
If nothing else, Woods was raised to believe he could be the best
at anything he chose to be. He chose to be a golfer. You've seen
how that has worked out. He has also chosen to have a foundation.
That might just work out, too.
(Contact Mike Littwin of the Denver Rocky Mountain News at http://www.denver-rmn.com.)
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