In three years as a pro, El Tigre has now won three of the four majors. In two of those victories, he’s beaten his competition (the best golfers the rest of the world has to offer) by record margins, and set or tied records for the lowest score in the history of two of the most prestigious events in golf (The Masters and, now, the U.S. Open).
He made a mockery of a very difficult Pebble Beach course this weekend. It was like all of the conditions that negatively affected his competition – every single one of them – didn’t apply to him.
So, what makes him so special? All those other guys practice incessantly, too.
My WAG: While not particularly bulky, he is wiry, and seems to be incredibly flexible. Do you see the follow-through he gets on his shots? Makes me wonder if, as his body ages and becomes less flexible, if he will be able to keep up his dominance for as long as, say, Nicklaus did.
Tiger also breaks one of the rules we’re all taught early on: He swings pretty much as hard as he can. The announcers Sunday were saying Nick Faldo told them something to the effect of, “Screw it; I’m going to teach my young son to swing as hard as he can, like Tiger. Because apparently, if you do it long enough and perfect it, it can revolutionize your game.”
This is a phenomenon. Did you see those other golfers in interviews after the event. They all looked stunned.
I see him as a “trained-since-birth” sort of fellow, much like the Chinese acrobats. Supposedly his dad - a Green Beret - raised him to be a kick-ass golfer. And now he is.
He was trained for this but so are most of the other golfers. They learn early on that they have a gift. Tiger could be the Babe Ruth of golf, where he takes the scoring system to another level of standards. It is just unbelievable. It can’t be the clubs because the other players have access to them as well.
I buy the speed of the swing argument. John Daly was the same way and if he didn’t screw his life up, he could be right there with Tiger. I can’t think of any other variable as to why he is doing it. It is unheard of in sports for a guy that young to be so dominant. Maybe he is from the future and came back in time somehow.
In fact, I can remember when I was young, seeing Tiger on an episode of “That’s Incredible,” for hitting a golf ball a long way with perfect form at the age of 3 or 4 or something.
So there is definitely that freakishly gifted, Mozart-type thing going on here.
Tiger’s parents deserve some credit. I recall a quarterback named Todd Marinovich whose dad groomed him essentially from birth to make the NFL as a QB. He did, but he didn’t stick around long. He had very few social/life skills, got into all sorts of trouble and crashed and burned.
I have to agree with this, I remember seeing clips of him with his dad on like the Johnny Carson show when he was like 3 or something sinking putts repeatedly. He was trained to play golf and nothing else. Sorta like those Suzuki violin kids. (Feel free to correct me on this if I have the wrong impression of Suzuki violin kids. Spelling too. ;))
BTW, off topic, but does anyone remember Tiger’s term for his race? He said it on Oprah and it cracked me up. He’s like one 16th every race and made up a really funny name for it. A really cute guy, wouldn’t mind having dinner with him someday, provided he had something to talk about aside from golf!
To a certain extent, Tiger Woods is dominant because he has no weak part of his game. His long game, short iron game and putting are all excellent. This is the hallmark of the greats like Jack Nicklaus and Sam Snead.
He also is a student of the game, like many of the past greats. But unlike those greats, he has access to a vast collection of videos and studies them intently. By the time Tiger Woods tees off, the golf course holds no secrets for him.
Also, he has the confidence to take the shots that need to be made. Many players can blast the ball as far as Tiger Woods, but he knows he can put it where he wants and therefore will take the shots. John Daly was like this too, but there is a difference, Woods’ short game was better than Daly’s, especially if they get into trouble.
That brings up another point, among the players I’ve seen, on Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer can rate with Tiger Woods when it comes to making a saving shot after a bad one.
Finally Tiger Woods hates to lose. On the tour now, you can make millions of dollars by finishing in the top 15 every tournament. I think too many players play not to lose rather than to win.
Woods has raised the bar, no doubt. And I suspect that one day some golfers will catch up to him, although it may be years. But that won’t (or at least shouldn’t) diminnish what he has and is doing, it takes a giant to extend the game like he has.
I’m sure the other golfers have VCRs as well. And I think they are just as competitive and hate to lose. It goes beyond that. Tiger is just a unique combination. How could Nolan Ryan pitch 7 no hitters and into his mid 40’s throwing heat? (rhetorical question, not trying to go off subject).
I’d be interested to see what happens in 3 years to see if anybody else gets up to his level.
The term he came up with was caublasian I think. Caucasion, black, Asian.
THe difference between being an excellent pro golfer (like David Duvall or Vijay Singh) and being out of this world (like Tiger Woods) isn’t much.
Right now, Tiger has no flaws in his game. Duval, in his post-tournament comments, said he enjoyed playing on a difficult course like Pebble Beach because it exposed what his weaknesses were. Tiger didn’t have any weaknesses this weekend, so he kicked everyone else’s butt.
In a year or so, there could be golfers just as good coming out to match Tiger. Also Tiger could come back to the pack.
There are a lot of variables. That’s why humans play the games.
I saw (on the Golf Channel interstingly enough) that Tiger Woods lives right by the place where the Golf Channel has its archives and visits it regularly. Far more often than any other golfer. In fact, far more than EVERY other golfer combined.
I did list several factors that, by themselves, only go to show why Tiger Woods is very good. Combined they add up to a unique combination, as you stated.
I was about to say that Tiger Woods lives and dies golf, but I don’t think that’s true. He lives and breathes golf. He doesn’t “die” when he loses, he becomes more determined.
Toger Woods is gaining an almost mythical reputation. But I think that detracts from the far more real and interesting story.
Babe Ruth is the quintessential example of a player whose dominance forever alters the face of his sport. I don’t have hardcopy references at hand, so bear with me if the following stats are a bit off. In his first year as a New York Yankee and a full-time outfielder (1926), Ruth swatted 47 home runs, shattering the previous record, which I believe to be less then 25. The following year, he hit 60, more then any other team in the major leagues.
However, Ruth did these things in his early 30s… DOB being 1895. A better example for mind-boggling dominance at a young age would be Wayne Gretzky. At 19 years old, he established the NHL record for points in a season with 164. He scored 137 as a rookie, and that may have been the record at the time, though I don’t believe so. At age 20, he scored 92 goals and 212 points, unbelievable figures that made a mockery of every NHL forward to ever lace up skates and hit professional ice. I believe both of those records stand today. The Great One retired with 61 NHL records to his name.
Wayne and Tiger were both young phenoms who had trained for and played their sport since conception, nearly. Ruth, however, started playing baseball at an orphanage.
I see very little in common between these three players, each of which violently tore apart all the conventions that proceeded them. And while I’m generally a strong skeptic in regards to intangibles in athletics… these three each had raw talent. At the risk of sounding like a soundbyte-machine color analyst, they were born to play their games.
I don’t know much about NBA/ABA history, but I’d bet you could make a case that Wilt Chamberlain had a similar effect on his sport.
I’m not a golfer but I enjoy an interesting show as much as the next gawker and the Tiger Woods Show at Pebble Beach has been pretty spectacular. When I asked another broker in the office the other day, who is an avid golfer, what he thought of Tiger Woods he said his golf skills are great but he has some real attitude problems.
I have never seen anything (that I remember) about Woods being a “bad boy”, getting drunk or throwing a fit on the course (etc). I didn’t have the time (nor the inclination) to grill him on this so I went on my merry way.
What is he talking about? Is Woods some kind of secret bastard behind the clubhouse doors or is this petty jealousy by also rans in the Majors?
Babe Ruth’s first fulltime year as an outfielder with the Yankees was in 1920 and he hit 54 home runs that year, breaking the previous record of 29 which he had done the year before as an OF/P for Boston (he only pitched 17 times). So, Ruth was very good at a very young age. When he was just starting out however, he was a pitcher and an extremely good one, and, barring an arm injury, could have been the greatest lefthanded pitcher ever. Babe Ruth never had an offensive equal at his peak.
Chamberlain and Russell combined to transform basketball relatively early in their pro careers because they were both mobile big men who were dominating presences on both the offensive and defensive ends. (Chamberlain more so on offense and Russell more so on defense.)
Tiger Woods’ feats are indeed Ruthian. Chamberlain/Russell were not quite as dominant in their sport.
Tiger is young, in a field of mostly older men. He is likely more flexible and has better reflexes, and his senses are probably more acute. And there’s the starting-at-an-early-age thing too (I tend to think of talent as mostly practice). I’m not saying that Tiger has it easy, but gymnastics (and to a lesser extent figure skating) have been dominated by teens for a long time, due to the quality of the body’s strength and flexibility at such young ages. There is no sport where older people have any significant advantage. - MC
As noted already, Chamberlain, for his 100 point game and all, wasn’t even considered by many to be the best player of his era. ESPN Sportcentury named Bill Russell the athlete of the 1960’s. The “Big O” Oscar Robertson averaged a triple double over the course of a season. Chamberlain had peers in his era.
It’s quite reliable to state that the NBA has not had a player on par with Gretzky/Ruth/Woods. They have certainly had players who have dominated the sport in their era (Chamberlain and Michael Jordan among them) but no individual has played at such a level as to change the very nature of the sport. One might conjecture that this honor belongs as much to George Mikan, who’s dominance caused several rules changes in the early days of teh NBA, as anyone else.
SB Morse, who founded Pebble Beach, put a covenant on the books that no black person could own property in PB. It was still on the books in the 80’s although I don’t know if they paid attention. Kinda funny when you see Tiger winning the Open…which is probably why he got a lot of attention, too.
Also, someone told me that the announcers, like J Miller [has a house near here on Asilomar] wasn’t very nice describing Tiger’s play compared to the others. Is that right?
Sour grapes. And the fact that when someone younger and different (read: Claubasian) comes along, they have to meet a much higher standard than anyone before them. Since Tiger has remade the standards on the course, his off course behavior is alway under the microscope.
Case in point-- At some time during the last day of the Open, Tiger hit a (for him) bad shot. His reaction could be heard very clearly on the T.V… I think it was “Fucking shit!” The announcers then went on about Tiger out growing his immaturity.
Come on now, do you mean to tell me that other pro golfers don’t react that way? He’s also been accused of not being humble enough. Granted, I don’t follow pro golf the way that I follow basketball, but is humbleness a trait of all pro golfers? What, exactly does Tiger need to be humble about?
Still this perception of Tiger as an attitude problem persists. Anyone have any more examples of bad behavior?
The first year and a half on tour, Tiger was an outwardly emotional player. So if he made a great shot, you got the fist pump; a bad shot and you got potty mouth and/or club slamming, etc. Arnold Palmer took him aside and told him he needed to chill because he was such a focal point in just about any tournament he played in. If you follow golf, you’ll notice in the last year Tiger has really toned down his emotional displays no matter what happens. As the spotlight is always upon him now, any thing he does is scrutinized and amplified unlike the other players. Heck, Davis Love III last year at Arnold’s tournament slammed a club after hitting a bad shot and broke off a sprinkler head, flooding a greenside bunker before they could get the water shut off. Hardly a peep in the press 'bout that one.
Tiger Woods is dominant because golf is fixed. He’s the current media favorite, so he gets to win most of the time. He’s winning by record margins because that’s the only way to get people interested in golf.
I mean, seriously, how hard would it be to fix golf? Everyone watches it on TV anyway, and you can’t tell where the ball’s going. Just edit it down to the “correct” number of shots and you’re good to go.
(Look for this to be debunked by snopes in about six months.)
Spelling’s OK, but I will try to correct the impression of Suzuki training. The kids can do some impressing playing, but the purpose of the Suzuki method is precisly the opposite of get-results-at-any-cost. One of the quotes from Suzuki himself is that “The purpose of music training is to produce noble, sensitive human beings.”
Note: I’m not into Suzuki myself, and my kids don’t learn using this method. But I do like the Eastern way of melding practical learning with personal development.