And here we go.
I’m sure many of you while watching the NCAA tournament noticed all the little promotional snips that CBS had for the Masters. If you aren’t a golf fan, you probably were annoyed by them. However, if you love golf seeing all those old Masters highlights and hearing the little piano tidbits should get you gushy and gooey inside as it does to me. I’m not going to lie, on occasion, when bored, I’ll go to youtube and search “Masters piano” and listen to it for a few moments. I don’t get off on it or anything. It’s just one of those curiosities that everyone has when they’re on youtube. You know. When you’re like, “Oh shit, does youtube have...” So you go and search it. I digress. But anyway, the Masters is here. And along with this year’s Masters, besides the usual anticipation of this year’s first major, comes the long awaited return of Tiger Woods.
This is hands down the biggest return to golf since Ben Hogan’s comeback from a car crash in 1950. And probably the biggest return in all of sports since Jordan’s comeback fifteen years ago. But this is different. Jordan was coming back from retirement. Tiger Woods is coming of a token sex scandal (TSS) with at least a dozen women and in an age where everyone is a member of the paparazzi and athletes are under a 24/7 microscope, you have to wonder what the hell was going through Tiger’s mind during all this. Now I don’t want to harp on Tiger’s TSS because it is old news and it shouldn’t overshadow the year’s first major. However, his comeback to the game is singular and although no man is bigger than the game of golf itself Woods’ situation right now and his way of handling it will be looked at and studied for better or worse by the future generation of athletes.
Imagine being Tiger. Imagine knowing on the first tee that everyone looking at you right now knows that you are an adulterer. You might as well pull a Hester Prynne and put on a scarlet letter.
Golf is all mental toughness. And we all know Tiger wins...A TON. On average, he wins about one out of every four tournaments he enters. That is completely absurd and really just dumb. After seeing Clash of the Titans a few days ago I would have to classify Tiger as a demigod like Perseus, which means Tiger is part human and part divine. Seriously though, in baseball terms he has a batting average of .250 right now. Some of those wins are blowouts but most of them are close, with him winning by only one or two strokes. What am I getting at? Hey, like I said, golf is all mental toughness. It’s not like other sports where you are reacting to what’s going on, it’s more like....free throws..over and over again. You see, Tiger is obviously talented, but so isn’t everyone else on tour. What separates him from the pack is his will to win but at the same time remaining level headed during pressure situations. He doesn’t choke on three foot putts, or flub easy chip shots, or pack it in because things don’t go his way. Here’s a guy who on the par five last hole of the U.S. Open in 2008 did not find the fairway on either of his first two shots but still found a way to make birdie to force a playoff. All I’m saying is in a game where 99.9% is between your ears can Tiger Woods still play at the same level after all this? Who knows? Maybe this being all out in the open was a release for him and he’ll be better than ever. I don’t know though. If it was me I think I would have trouble competing knowing everyone knew about my transgressions. But I am not Tiger Woods.
Starting tomorrow and over the next few years we will see how Tiger’s TSS effected his golf game. But no matter how he does, I think everyone agrees that it is great to have him back.
-The Diesel
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