Tiger will return to glory
As the comic filmmaker Mel Brooks says, "It's good to be king."
The flip side of that truism comes from the fable about the emperor's new clothes. What happens to the king when his subjects realize he's naked?
While performance is what sports is all about, sometimes success is tied as much to perception as it is to reality. Some athletes, some teams, have their skills enhanced by the myth of invincibility that grows from their success.
Remember when it was felt that a post-season game was over when Mariano Rivera entered a game for the New York Yankees? Remember when it was assumed that the engraver could get to work on the championship trophy when Tiger Woods took a lead into the final round of a PGA Tour event?
The once and future king of golf was exposed again Sunday at the Tour Championship as what he has become: Just another goose among a gaggle of good players. And that goose was no match for The Goose.
One of the attributes of greatness, one of the hallmarks of a champion is the rock-solid belief that they are going to win. After the way in which Woods limped into the offseason you have to wonder exactly how badly that belief in self has been shattered. It wasn't so much that Woods finished second at East Lake to Retief Goosen in the season-ending event as it was the way in which that outcome came to be. Woods started the final round tied for first with 50-year-old Jay Haas, four strokes ahead of Goosen, Mike Weir and Stephen Ames. Only twice in Woods' eight-year professional career had he been tied or leading after 54 holes and not won. Make that three now.
That Woods closed with a rather ordinary 72 was made all the more mind-boggling by the fact that Goosen signed a scorecard that accounted for only 64 strokes. A four-stroke lead for Woods had become a four-stroke deficit. While this is not exactly on par with Greg Norman losing 11 shots to Nick Faldo in the final round of the 1996 Masters, it is exactly the kind of turn of events that was unimaginable back when Tiger was Tiger. But it has become rather commonplace now. Woods has now gone 20 stroke-play events without winning -- his only victory this year was in the Accenture Match Play Championship -- and has finished second in three of his last four events.
There seems to be an issue developing here about closing the deal.
And closing the deal is what Woods has always been all about. For his career, Woods had a record of 30-2 when taking at least a tie for the lead into the final round, his only losses coming to Ed Fiori in the 1996 Quad Cities Classic (only Woods' third event as a pro) and the 2000 Tour Championship, when Phil Mickelson chased him down.
Woods had gone 14 consecutive events without squandering a final-round lead. That was before Sunday. But Sunday showed what is different with Woods now, and it has as much to do with perception as reality. Tiger is no longer in the heads of the top players. They believe they can beat him. And, perhaps even more importantly, it seems as if Woods also believes that he can be beaten.
As well as Goosen played -- very quietly this two-time U.S. Open champion has emerged as one of the top-five players in the world -- the Tour Championship should have been over early and the Goose should never have been allowed to move into position to win. With Haas playing like a 50-year-old guy who hasn't won in 11 years (he closed with a 75 to finish seven back), the tournament was right there waiting for Woods to wrap it up in a bow. Instead, a highly suspect putter contributed to three bogeys in the first seven holes -- allowing Goosen back into the contest -- and then when it became miracle time Woods revealed that he is no longer a miracle maker. Trailing by two strokes with three holes to play -- a perfect set-up for some Woods magic -- Tiger made a three-putt bogey on No. 16 and drove into a bunker and made another bogey on No. 17. Game, set and match. A four-shot advantage over Goosen had turned into a four-shot deficit.
Perhaps as disturbing as the fact that Woods managed only one victory this year -- he had had at least five wins each year since 1998 -- was the fact that he had so many chances to win without getting the job done. Tiger's second-place finish at the Tour Championship was the ninth time this year that he finished in the top four without winning. Any tour player will tell you that the key to winning is putting yourself in position to win. Woods managed the first part of the equation quite nicely this year, but has fallen short making things add up on the money side of the matter. He put himself in position enough times this year to have come out victorious more times than he did.
There is this caveat to the single-win season Woods has recorded. The only other time in his professional career that Woods has won only once in a year was in 1998 when he was working on swing changes, a process he says he is going through again right now. Woods followed that one-win season in 1998 with a stretch of golf that began in 1999 and ended with the 2002 U.S. Open that is likely the best anyone has ever played for that long, winning 25 times, including seven major championships.
It could well be that he spoiled us then and maybe what we need to do now is look back on that stretch with greater appreciation. We thought he would always play like that and it was an absurd assumption because no one else ever had.
Tiger may never return to that level of play, but he will become a version of Tiger again. He is simply too talented, too smart and too determined not to have that happen. And in many ways when Woods starts winning again with regularity it will be even more impressive because this time he will achieve that success not as a young man wearing the crown of king but rather as the emperor who has been exposed as naked. Woods now is playing the game facing the same demon every recreational golfer faces when they tee it up: Self doubt.
Woods is a mere mortal now, an undressed emperor. And because he has been revealed as all too human, victory will taste all that much more sweeter. He is no longer the kid who thought only of winning but has aged into a man who understands the pain of losing.
Ron Sirak is the Executive Editor of Golf World magazine.
