Tiger Woods Is Me
A decade or so ago, when Tiger Woods was dominating golf like no one else had ever done, his sponsor Nike came up with an advertising campaign where Tiger’s young admirers could join in on the TW bandwagon and utilize the same products as Tiger and used the now famous slogan “I am Tiger Woods.”
Tiger Woods was the Chosen One. The child prodigy brought up from right out of the cradle with a golf club in his hand. The World Junior Champion as a kid who was destined to conquer the big boys of golf once he got old enough to be on the pro tour. His father, Earl Woods, wanted to mold his talented child into the greatest golfer ever, a player who would be so good, he would challenge Jack Nicklaus’ all time record of 18 majors. He wanted his son to be as close to perfect as was humanly possible. As the child grew into a man’s body, Tiger Woods pretty much delivered.
The young, healthy Tiger Woods could hit the ball further, strike his irons crisper and closer, chip and pitch the ball flawlessly, not to mention he could make clutch putts better than anyone in golf. He simply scored better than all of the other golfers. He made birdies by the score. When he was not hitting on all cylinders, he would still grind out pars better than everyone else. This was a man that would NOT allow himself to make bogeys, or miss cuts, as if the making of that score, or the missing of that cut, would somehow make him seem lesser than the near god-like self image he had of himself.
EVERYONE wanted to “be like Tiger Woods,” much like they wanted to be like a superstar of previous years, Michael Jordan. When Tiger Woods would come to town to golf in that week’s event, the legions of admirers would flock to the golf tournament by the thousands to watch him perform his magic. No matter how BIG the other athletic stars were in all of the other sports, be they Tom Brady in football, Kobe Bryant in basketball, Alex Rodriguez in baseball, or Sidney Crosby in hockey, none of them was even in the same ballpark as the phenomenon that was Tiger Woods. Those others were Super Stars, HE was Super Human.
In Greek tragedy, when someone was as godlike as was Tiger Woods, they all seemed to have some kind of fatal flaw in their physical or mental makeup that would be that one key weak point or their “Achilles heel” that would be the one area of vulnerability that would lead to their demise. When Tiger Woods was playing at that spectacular level, people wondered if he even had a weakness. I told a few of my golfing friends that the only thing that could stop Tiger Woods was either a woman or a bad back. To be honest, the woman part turned out to be a complete surprise. A bad back? That is one of the inevitabilities of being a golfer.
I’m not so sure that Tiger Woods’ real Achilles’ heel was the reckless behavior with women, or the bad back condition. I think the one “fatal flaw” of Tiger Woods is the same thing that made him great — I think it’s his obsession with being that superhuman that his father wanted him to be. His obsession with having a “perfect golf swing.” His obsession with doing all of those things in a superhuman way, which is now putting a tax on his (merely human) body and all that stress is catching up with him.
There is photographic evidence of Tiger Woods swinging a golf club in the years of his heyday and comparing it with his swing of today, and the swing of today is simply trying to hit it too hard. He used to hit it farther than everyone else with his old swing, but then many of the other golfers kind of got stronger also and caught up with his distances. Tiger Woods, already a great golfer, felt he needed to be even greater to keep up his mystique of being superhuman, and he ended up changing his golf swing.
The quest to be perfect has caused Tiger Woods to change his swing at least two other times also. The old Tiger swing used to be smoother, with more tempo. The new Tiger swing has often been a faster version where he takes the club back slightly quicker in the backswing but now rushes it down on the downswing noticeably faster and his accuracy has suffered because of it. His swinging too hard also had another negative effect. The added stress of a quicker golf swing and him trying to hit the ball further than his body can handle anymore has caused him to seriously injure his left knee, both Achilles tendons, his neck and his back.
Tiger Woods’ pursuit of Jack Nicklaus’ record and golfing immortality has taken such a toll on his body that he is probably going to be an injury-prone golfer for the rest of his career. Tiger Woods does not realize that his injuries will not allow him to golf at the same pace that he did when he was in his twenties. He does not realize that his injuries have had such an impact on him that any ideas he has about crafting a “new golf swing” will inevitably be sabotaged by the limitations of his injured body — unless he adapts to “a new normal.” He doesn’t have his mentor Earl Woods around anymore to help guide him through this difficult time.
Tiger Woods can’t be the player he was ten to twelve years ago because he can’t do things the way he did ten to twelve years ago, and that is because he does not have the same body he had ten to twelve years ago. Tiger Woods has a bad back and bad knees. Those injuries will not allow him to swing the same without it inevitably causing him to “be injured again” and continue to have to do things like miss cuts and withdraw from tournaments.
Between the years of 1997 and 2005, Tiger Woods did not miss a single cut or withdraw from a single tournament due to an injury. That’s over 140 made cuts in a row. The Tiger Woods of now has played two tournaments so far in 2015. Last week in Phoenix, he shot 73 and 81 and didn’t even come close to making the cut. This week in San Diego, his bad back acted up (he was two over at the time and even par was the cut) and he had to withdraw from the tournament.
Tiger Woods needs to watch the movie “Dirty Harry.” In it, the Clint Eastwood character Harry Callahan continually makes the point, “A man’s got to know his own limitations.” Tiger seriously needs to know that he now has to deal with the limitations his now injury-prone body puts on him. The difference between a bad back, a good back and a back that is close to getting thrown out of whack is about the same as the distance between a bad disc and the nerve next to it which is about a half a millimeter. That can get thrown off at any time.
I am a golfer who deals with “bad back syndrome.” I am only as good as the bad back allows me to be. Any and every time I swing too hard and try to hit the ball more than I’m capable of, the back is likely to go out. I have to custom make my swing fit around the limitations my back puts on me. If not, the back goes out and I’m screwed, and I start missing shots, slicing the ball into the woods, and sometimes, I have to quit playing that day.
The last two weeks, Tiger Woods has had some very erratic swing problems, caused by his confused mind over conflicting swing thoughts. Are the back and injury problems causing the doubt and the bad swing thoughts? Or, are the conflicting swing thoughts causing the much too rapid swing pace and thus the injuries? Welcome to the new age. It’s time to deal with it. He needs to know his limitations and play within the framework that is now there of a man with a bad back and a bad pair of knees. He needs to get working on his short game again and be able to get up and down all the time from everywhere inside of 50 yards. It’s still a game where the person who putts best usually wins.
Tiger has been slicing tee shots into the trees, chili dipping pitch shots, duffing chip shots across the green, missing four foot putts he never missed before, and he has been putting far less effectively than he has ever putted, and has a bad back on top of that. This sounds like someone I know. Tiger Woods was once the man who was the subject of the campaign where everyone was supposed to say, “I am Tiger Woods.” Now, he is is hitting shots more like an 18 handicapper. Tiger Woods is me.
But he CAN get back to some form of greatness again, though. He’s the only person in the world who once WAS Tiger Woods.
