Eye of the Tiger
By Dan Gleason

After winning a remarkable 11 tournaments in a row and $63,000 on the PGA Tour in 1945, Byron Nelson took a bumpy ride down to South America in a DC-3 to play a month long schedule of exhibitions for $1500. Today if you walked up to Tiger Woods and whispered, “Fifteen Hundred dollars,” he’d think you wanted a loan.

You can’t talk sports these days without getting into the money. So, let’s get that part over with. Last year, Eldrick “Tiger” Woods pocketed more than $9 million on the PGA Tour. At age 24, he’s already won more money than any other golfer who ever put on spikes, and he makes so much side money that he could write a check big enough to bail out Russia.

But you can’t use money to compare athletes from different eras. In point of fact, during his four greatest seasons, 1960 through 1963, Arnold Palmer won 29 times—actually eight more tournaments than Tiger won these past four seasons—but he pocketed just $400,000. Golfers today can win that much in a week. Beyond the money thing, it should be noted that Tiger won nine times last year and captured three of four major championships—winning the US Open, the British Open and the PGA Championship. That’s the astounding part, not the money.

Charlie Yates, an 86-year-old former British Amateur champ and a protégé of the great Bobby Jones, is quick to sing Tiger’s praises. “Except for Bob Jones, I’ve never seen anyone with so much fire who could also handle his emotions and the immense pressure of major competition the way Tiger does.”

Hard as this may be to fathom, in this money crazed world, Tiger doesn’t really play for money. He hasn’t needed money since the day he signed a five-year, $40 million contract with Nike before his rookie seas What Tiger plays for, ultimately, in addition to his foundation, is what Palmer and Nicklaus played for—the urge to compete and the desire to become the greatest golfer of all time.

It’s way too early to crown Tiger the best golfer of all time, although at 24 he’s headed in that direction with a full head of steam. And because analyzing the complications of the golf swing is about as simplistic as interpreting the nuances of a voodoo ritual, let’s just say that in that department Tiger is near perfect. Since completing an 18-month overhaul of his swing, he’s won 19 tournaments in two seasons and has his fellow Tour pros wondering whether he might have come down in a rocket ship from Krypton.

But most of us have heard all about Tiger Woods, the golfer. So what about Tiger Woods, the man? As a human being, is he worthy of all the adulation he’s getting?

I admit that during his first couple of seasons out there, I suspected he was just another one of those spoiled little snots who were totally into themselves. I have been delighted to discover that I was one hundred percent wrong.
Says Wally Goodwin, Tiger’s coach at Stanford, “Tiger has always been a fun-loving kid who made friends easily and got great grades. But he was also extraordinarily mature and well organized by the time he got to Stanford. And as great a golfer as he is, he’s an even better human being. His motto from the day he came to Stanford was ‘Care & Share.’ It’s a fabulous act of altruism to use the proceeds from a sport to give to people so that they might become better human beings. And that’s where much of his money and effort is going, to his foundation.”
Goodwin says that when Tiger was in college, he and teammate Notah Begay made a pact that once they made their mark on the pro tour they would play not for their own material gain, but to help others. In 1997, Tiger launched the Tiger Woods Foundation (TWF), which is now getting children all over the world involved in the game. Begay, a Navajo Indian who was the PGA Tour’s 1999 Rookie of the Year, kept his promise, too, and is funding programs to help his Navajo brethren.

Tiger is intent on growing TWF so that underprivileged kids might learn the great lessons that golf teaches about integrity, discipline, fellowship and good manners. But Tiger also practices what he preaches. Says Claude Harmon III, whose father, Butch Harmon, has been Tiger’s golf teacher since Tiger was 17, “Tiger is a very normal guy and he’s a lot of fun. At the same time, he’s polite and genuinely appreciative of anything anyone does for him. Rather than being full of himself, he’s completely the opposite. His focus is on other people.”

The week after winning the US Open last year, to return a favor to friend and former Stanford teammate Jerry Chang, Tiger caddied for Chang when he tried to qualify for the US Publinx Championship. “You couldn’t have a better friend than Tiger Woods,” Chang says.

The two primary reasons Tiger turned out the way he did are named Earl and Kultida, Tiger’s parents. Earl Woods served two tours of duty in Vietnam, and, while he is a rugged fellow, he is also full of love for his fellow man. Kultida is a native of Thailand who met Earl when she was working as a US Army receptionist. By the time their son Eldrick was born in 1976, Earl was retired from the military and working for McDonald-Douglas in Cypress, Calif., south of LA. He called the boy “Tiger” in memory of a South Vietnamese soldier and good friend whom he’d given that nickname to during the war.

Earl would take the boy with him for company when he hit golf balls into a net that he’d set up in his garage. One day, little Eldrick made his way down from his high-chair, picked up a club and made a pretty good pass at an imaginary ball. By the time he was two, he went on the “Mike Douglas Show” and demonstrated his putting with Bob Hope.

Before he could count to ten, he could keep a running total of how each member of Earl’s foursome stood against par during a round and could identify swing flaws of the golfers he’d see.

If you’re wondering whether Earl and Kultida pushed the boy into golf, they did not. Such was Tiger’s enthusiasm the game that they wouldn’t have had to.

Kultida, in fact, would use golf as a carrot, telling him that he couldn’t go to the golf course until all of his homework was done. Says Earl, “I think it’s the job of the parents to find out what their children want to be and nurture them in that direction. I was ready to follow Tiger any endeavor that he chose.”

While Earl was the pal who orchestrated Tiger’s life, Kultida was the educator and disciplinarian who encouraging Tiger to have a good time along the way. She imparted much of the positive philosophy from her Buddhist upbringing to him, a philosophy that emphasizes the spiritual over the material—the caring and sharing part.

“If all parents raised their kids the way Earl and Kultida raised Tiger, and spent that much time working with them,” offers Goodwin, “this would be a much different world, and a much better one, too.”

Tiger’s parents indulged his golf, but they didn’t spoil him. They’d drive him to his golf tournaments, but he had to make all of the phone calls for hotel reservations and the like. He became a responsible kid. By the time he was 18, he also became the youngest golfer ever to win the US Amateur title, and two years later he became the first person to win it three straight years.

Tiger launched his foundation following his second full season on the Tour, in 1997, with Earl as its president. Tiger doesn’t just put his money into TWF, he puts in his time. He traveled from city to city to put on 21 golf clinics, exhibitions and workshops last year. He gives kids tips about how to swing the club, but he also speaks to them about the importance of doing their homework, mentoring younger students, following their dreams and reaching their potential.

TWF encourages youngsters to dream big dreams, and it engages the communities to help kids toward that end. “Our plan is to create access to more developmental opportunities in society and to acquaint youngsters with the power that they possess to improve their own circumstances,” Tiger says. “As much as anything, we encourage them to care about and share with others.”

Last year, TWF donated $200,000, through Target House, to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. It also provided money to fund an array of scholarship programs, a homeless shelter program, a Girl Scout program and various junior golf programs. This past fall, with the backing of Target stores, TWF created “Start Something,” which is designed to change behavior among young people by rewarding academic achievement, good sportsmanship, community involvement and role modeling among children in kindergarten through junior high. Ultimately, they can win college scholarships.

Two annual “Tiger Jam” concert fundraisers add money to the foundation, as does the Williams World Challenge, a PGA sanctioned tournament held at the end of the season at Sherwood Country Club, a private golf development in Thousand Oaks, Calif. The tournament, which offers a $1 million first prize, is a shootout among a handful of the top players in the world, Tiger being the most prominent. Explains Tiger, “Golf is merely a vehicle to reach kids. Nothing more. Maybe they’ll get something more out of it, maybe not. I’ve learned about discipline, integrity and honesty through golf, and I want to share this with kids, because it can help them reach for their dreams. Athletes shouldn’t be the number one role models for kids; it should be the parents. But I think we can all contribute along the way.”

Observes Earl, “I think that Tiger’s greatest contribution to the world won’t be in the game of golf. It will be in the humanitarian area.”

Based on his contributions to his sport and to the world in general, Sports Illustrated named Tiger its “Sportsman of the Year, 2000,” an award it also bestowed upon him in 1997.

Indeed, who could be a better role model for kids than this charismatic Pied Piper who possesses the same kind of magnetism that Arnold Palmer used when he brought the masses to golf 40 years ago? Tiger has made it cool for kids to play golf, especially inner city kids. He is the most popular and recognized athlete in the world, and being a combination of Oriental, African American, Caucasian and Native American, he also crosses color lines. The late Payne Stewart often called Tiger “the chosen one.”

Whether he will end up being the greatest golfer of all time well, only time will tell. He’s got a long way to go to top his hero, Nicklaus, who won 70 PGA Tour events and 18 major championships and sustained his greatness for nearly three decades. Just as you can’t use money as a measuring stick, you can’t use the scoring records Tiger is breaking. The ball today goes farther, the high-tech equipment is far better and the Tour courses are in unbelievably better condition than they were 20 or 30 years ago.

While the overall field is better than it ever was, week in and week out Nicklaus
had to heat probably the best top ten ever—hall-of-fame players that included Arnie, Lee Trevino, Billy Casper, Tom Watson, Gary Player, Hale Irwin, Johnny Miller, Ben Crenshaw and Ray Floyd. Nicklaus won his first US Open in 1962 and his last Masters 24 years later at the age of 46. Even at age 58, in 1998, Jack was in contention to win the Masters going into the last few holes.

But Tiger has so much talent, smarts and discipline and such a great work ethic that there are only a few that might stop him from his quest. He could become distracted when he gets a family of his own or he could get involved in a bad marriage and a sticky divorce. Or someone like the talented, 20 year old Sergio Garcia could come and plant a few seeds of doubt in his mind, the way Nicklaus did with Palmer.

But right now, Tiger is so unbelievably great that you can’t really put it into words. He puts me in mind of the old Santa Fe El Capitan when it would come rolling through my little southern Iowa town in the middle of the night. Some of us kids liked to go out near a steep grade and wait for it. We’d hear it in the distance and the noise would build and one of my buddies would call out, “Here she comes.”

Then the lights flashed, the tracks shook, the white gravel and black ash flew, and the hair stood straight up on my dog’s back as the train blew by like a tornado. And as the red lights disappeared into the clickity-clack of the darkness, somebody else would call out, “And there she goes.”

He’s Tiger Woods, and you can’t really define him. All you can do is point at him when he goes winging by and listen for the ricochet.


For more information about the Tiger Woods Foundation, call 714-816-1806
Log onto www.tigerwoods.com or
www.twfound.org.

 


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