Tiger's desire rubs off on veterans
By CHUCK STARK
Scripps Howard News Service
REDMOND, Wash. - "Tiger, you da man!"
The familiar golf cry from Tuesday's huge gallery, as annoying
as it is, somehow seems appropriate when it's directed at Eldrick
"Tiger" Woods. Any way you shake a 2-iron at him, he
is the man. A young man at 22, but still the man.
Fans, as they've done at Sahalee Country Club, follow him as
if he were a messiah. His fellow players - Mark O'Meara, Lee Janzen,
Tom Lehman - paid him the highest respect as preparation continued
for the 80th PGA Championship. They said Woods' incredible play
since joining the PGA Tour 14 months ago caused them and others
to raise their level of play.
"I think, first of all, he's got great talent," Janzen
said. "But I think in his mind he expects a lot of himself
and I think he also thinks he can do just about anything.
"And I think this challenged the rest of us to maybe start
thinking a little higher and setting higher goals."
O'Meara, Janzen and Woods all live and play at Isleworth, a
golf club outside of Orlando, Fla.
"Just playing with him at Isleworth, I've realized I can
be better than I was," Janzen said. "Just mentally.
Just by desire alone. I think his desire is great.
"He just wants to be the greatest player whoever lived
and when you see somebody with those kind of aspirations, you
think, well, I certainly can expect more of myself."
Woods didn't foresee anything like that when he joined the
tour in 1996 after winning his third straight U.S. Amateur. Woods
won three of the eight events he entered that year, earning Sports
Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year honor in the process. He became
the youngest golfer to win the Masters in 1997, setting tournament
records for score (18-under-par) and margin of victory (12 strokes).
Woods won three other tournaments a year ago and a record $2,066,833
in earnings.
The impact was felt around the world. Suddenly, it was cool
to be a golfer.
Suddenly, touring pros like O'Meara and Janzen were getting
into fitness vans and gyms.
"They're trying to get stronger and more fit and watching
what they eat and become athletes," Woods said. "And
when golfers become athletes, obviously the scores are going to
get better."
Woods said his arrival kick-started a stagnant tour, and compared
it to the effect Michael Jordan had on the NBA.
"Guys started to raise their games up," Woods said.
"I think it happens in any sport. New blood has always tended
to do that and I think it always will."
Tiger's blood, however, made some of his fellow players boil.
Part of it, surely, was jealousy, but part of it was a real
anger toward a dominant young player who didn't totally grasp
the golf hierarchy. Seattle's Fred Couples touched on it Tuesday
when asked about Tiger's chances this week.
"Tiger's swinging very well," Couples said. "He
feels good and he's had a great year. He's won one time (the BellSouth
in May), but he's had a lot of chances to win.
"You just can't win three or four and five times every
year. ... It's not that easy.
"And I think he's great for the tour. ... (He) no longer
says he's winning tournaments with a 'C-game.' "
Keeping up with Woods has been easier this year. His pal O'Meara,
a 41-year-old "big brother" figure who'd never won a
major, busted through with victories in the Masters and British
Open. Janzen, who turns 34 later this month, ended a two-year
victory drought by winning the U.S. Open last month in San Francisco.
Despite Woods' claims that he's "much more consistent,"
this year - he's fourth on the money list with $1.37 million going
into Sahalee - there's still a perception that he's not living
up to expectations.
Even 90-year-old Paul Runyan, the PGA's Distinguished Award
Winner who won two PGA Championships and later served as Sahalee's
first club pro, touched on the so-called decline of Tiger.
"Well, I think unquestionably that Tiger Woods is the
best player in the world today," Runyan said. "But I
do think that he's not as good a player now as he was six or seven
months or a year ago. ... I think he's making a grave error in
diversifying this wonderful talent and forgetting what really
made him good. He's got too many irons in the fire."
Runyan referred to Woods' endorsement deals with Nike, Rolex
and American Express, worth close to $100 million. Woods has been
taken to task for his salty language and how his galleries behave.
He's even been criticized for hanging out with Ken Griffey, Jr.,
an Islesworth neighbor, and Michael Jordan.
He admits he might have gotten a little full of himself after
everything he touched seemingly turned to gold.
"I think one of the things I was guilty of last year was
reading some of the press clippings and watching on TV what people
were saying about me," he said.
"This year I've stayed away from the press - sorry - but
I don't like to read the clippings anymore. ... From there I can
go out and just play my game instead of having to - I don't know,
get nit-picked a little bit on what I didn't do, what I should
have done. ...
"Maybe the press overlooks certain things and maybe they
get too hard on certain things. Sometimes they nail it right on,
but when I started to listen to myself a little bit more, that's
when my game really stepped up and started to become more consistent."
His game has been perfect in the Northwest. He won his third
straight U.S. Amateur at Portland's Pumpkin Ridge in 1996. He
won the third of three straight U.S. Junior Amateurs at Portland's
Waverley Country Club in 1993. In 1994, Woods won the Pacific
Northwest Golf Associations' Men's Amateur at Royal Oaks Country
Club in Vancouver.
"It's nice to have that kind of positive memory going
into an area in which these courses all look the same with wooded,
tree-lined fairways and tough greens to putt," he said. "I
get a real comfort feeling. It's like being back at home."
Woods arrived at Sahalee encouraged by his third-place finish
at the British Open and a fourth place at last week's Buick Open.
And after playing 27 practice holes Monday and Tuesday, he's feeling
even better about his chances to win his second major.
Smart players won't hit a driver on more than three or four
holes at Sahalee. Woods, one of the tour's longest hitters, doesn't
mind leaving his driving in his bag.
"I think this golf course sets up perfect for me because
while a lot of guys are hitting 3-woods and possible drivers,
I can hit my 2-iron out there at 240 and 280 (yards) and it's
perfect," he said. "I love hitting my 2-iron off the
tee.
"Normally, under the gun, when I get a little nervous,
I like to drop down to a 2-iron anyways."
Nervous? When's the last time Tiger felt nervous on a golf
course?
"Probably when I was 16," he said, recalling his
first PGA Tour event - the Los Angeles Open.
"I was pretty nervous out there," he said. "I
hit a 3-wood right down the middle, hit a 3-wood onto the green
and 2-putted for birdie."
Even then, people were probably shouting, "Tiger, you
da man."
(Chuck Stark writes for The Sun in Bremerton, Wash.)
|
