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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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