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Saturday, April 9, 2016

Throwing It All Away: Sports Edition

Thanksgiving 2009: it was not a great Thanksgiving on a personal level, as it was the first Thanksgiving since my parents made it known to me and my brothers that they were separating.  It also came at a pretty low point in my life: a time which changed a year later once I received my first paying job.  None the less, 7 years have passed and Thanksgivings since then have been quite wonderful.  This is despite my parents not being together.  Thanksgiving 2009 may have been a bad day for myself and my loved ones; yet for someone else that day was a day of no turning back.


It is now the weekend of the Masters tournament, perhaps the most impressive PGA Tour event that takes place in the United States.  The weekend also correlates with my mother's birthday, who has now turned 60 years old.  So obviously, as was the case earlier in the year when  my father turned 60, I find it more important to celebrate a milestone for my parents.  Even so, there have been times this weekend that I have been looking at the results of this year's Masters.  And it looks impressive, as right now Jordan Spieth may be on his way to a second consecutive green jacket; an impressive feat for a golfer younger than me and quite possibly destined to become much like is golfing idol, one Eldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods.

I remember when he came onto the professional golf scene back in 1996.  Woods had been the most celebrated amateur and wunderkind in the game since Bobby Jones.  Seeing an opportunity after winning three straight U.S. Amateurs and the NCAA Golf Championship, Tiger Woods turned pro in 1996 at age 20.  Immediately, Woods became the dominant golfer of his time.  I can easily remember a Sunday in 1997 when my family from my father's side and I were watching the Masters.  It was a game for the ages, when Tiger Woods won his first of 14 majors convincingly. We were all impressed  with this budding and gifted athlete and an impressive beginning to a dominant and lucrative era in golf.

As the years went on, Tiger Woods went on to define the late 1990's and 2000's in athletics.  To list his accomplishments on this blog would take a while, and by now you already know of the accomplishments.  Yet, Tiger Woods has been in a professional slump after an impressive 2013 season where he had five PGA wins.  Injuries have taken a toll, along with a younger crop of golfers and several chokes on the golf course.  Right now, Woods has 79 PGA Tour wins, second only to Sam Snead with 82; and he has won 14 Majors, second only to Jack Nicklaus.  Quite honestly, Tiger Woods would have surpassed those records by now.  And yet, those records seem more out of reach than at any point of time in his life.

So what happened?  Well, Bill Simmons in his essay collection The Book Of Basketball (2009) had mentioned in his ranking of Chris Webber as the 72nd greatest basketball player a reasoning as to why Mr Webber did not go far in his potential.  Simmons believes that at a certain point, as early as the 1993 NCAA Championship Game when Michigan lost to North Carolina, Chris Webber felt the need to have a do-over in his approach to the game .  Well, life is not like a video game; there cannot be a reset button nor even a chance to shut off the console or computer when things do not go the way it is supposed to.  I feel that Tiger Woods would like to have a do-over or rather a mulligan on that Thanksgiving night in 2009.  In particular, I think he would like to go back and not get into that car crash just outside his house after arguing with his wife and mother of his children Elin Nordgren when she found out about Woods' affairs and sex addiction.

I know when news broke of the car crash that it just seemed so bizarre and unseemly for Tiger Woods.  Many those first couple of days were asking what happened.  Well, grappling with the separation of my parents I knew what exactly happened immediately.  And so indeed did many observers.  Relations he had fell apart, and Woods was in need of putting the needs of his children first.  It is to Tiger Woods' credit that he has become a doting and important father .

Yet in the golf world and the world at large, Woods' car crash and reduction to merely good golfer and for three years now a relic and cautionary tale was unprecedented.  Now, years before I and others saw something similar with David Duval winning the Open Championship in 2001 and completely collapsing in his professional career.  We felt that golf wise, Duval had it all and he threw it away.  Perhaps we now feel the same regarding Tiger Woods.  There is surprisingly a good deal of personal similarities Duval and Woods have; not least of which is them being doting and important fathers nowadays.  I suppose though golf without Tiger Woods is becoming more and more a reality that we may need to face.

An athlete's peak and winning streak will end eventually.  None the less, I would hate to be the one that says the best golfer in my lifetime failed to live up to his potential.  Yet, what do we expect when we see our athletic greats as real life superheroes. disillusionment is inevitable when the one who can do no wrong is found to be a mere flawed human not unlike ourselves.

Catch up with you soon,

Robert

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