September 6, 2006
Tiger Woods Posted by John Steele Gordon at 10:00 AM EST I don’t play golf. If I did, I would have a handicap of about 800, owing to the fact that, as my brother once said after a particularly inept athletic performance on my part, I have “the hand-eye coordination of a blind snake.”
But this summer I have been watching a fair amount of golf on television. It’s a beautiful sport, as there are few landscapes as pleasant as a world-class golf course. And golf is a sport made for television, with its ability to zoom in close to the action, leap about the course, do instant replays, and view the various holes in their entirety from a blimp overhead. Plus there is the wonder of watching a great player make an absolutely impossible shot—and, of course, the occasional dose of schadenfreude when a great player blows a two-foot putt or takes three strokes to get out of a bunker, just like the average duffer.
But I have also been watching golf this summer for the sheer pleasure of seeing one of the ornaments of our age, the greatest golfer who has ever lived and perhaps will ever live, Tiger Woods. The statistics are nothing short of staggering. He has been a professional for 10 years and is only 30, but he has already won 53 PGA tournaments and twelve majors. (Jack Nicklaus had won 33 tournaments and eight majors by the time he was thirty.) This year Tiger has won seven tournaments, including two majors, and has won the last five tournaments he entered. (Byron Nelson’s record of winning eleven consecutive tournaments has stood since 1945. I wouldn’t count on its lasting much longer.) With 53 tournament wins, Tiger is number five on the all-time list, behind Sam Snead (82), Jack Nicklaus (73), Ben Hogan (64) and Arnold Palmer (62). At his current pace, he will be number one in another six years, with years of playing ahead of him.
And then, of course, there’s the money. He has won over $55 million in PGA tournaments. In his last five tournament wins this summer he has been earning prize money at the rate of $2,400 per stroke. And that doesn’t include the vast ancillary income from endorsements, advertisements, etc. (Note to corporations: If you would like to put your logo on a baseball cap and have me wear it, my head rents for a lot less than Tiger’s.)
Watching Tiger Woods play golf is like going to the opening of a new Shakespeare play, reading the latest novel by Charles Dickens, listening to Mozart’s latest opera. It is art in the highest sense. The reason is simple. Asked what his greatest asset as a golfer was, Tiger flashed his incomparable smile, tapped the side of his head, and said, “my mind.”
|
