Tiger Woods missed the cut two months ago in the Byron Nelson Classic. It was his first early exit in more than seven years, a record streak that spanned 142 tournaments. It’s his response to this misfortune, though, that tells you all you need to know about the Greatest Living Golfer. In his four events since, he’s finished T-3 (Memorial), second (U.S. Open), second (Western Open) and first (British Open).
Tiger Woods is who he is because, as much as anything, he refuses to be deterred. Nothing, it seems, is going to keep him from his rendezvous with destiny. A bump in the road like a missed cut merely spurs him to one of his best runs in ages. And now he’s off again on his singular odyssey, pushing the bar ever higher for anyone who dares to follow.
The secret of every great golfer, Ben Hogan once told a friend, is control. “First off, you must control yourself, your mind,” he said. “Then you control your muscles, you control your club. And if you can control your club, you can control your ball. That’s all golf is: control.”
Never was Tiger’s self-control more evident than during the third round at St. Andrews. Faced with the prospect of blowing a four-stroke lead and dropping into a tie with Jose Maria Olazabal, he drained a 15-foot par putt on 17 — the knee-knocking Road Hole — and followed that with a birdie on 18 to give himself a two-shot cushion heading into the final day.
Sheer willpower, folks. The kind of willpower that has enabled him to rework his swing not once but twice in his young career — and not get lost in the process. His swing wasn’t broken and didn’t really need fixing, but Tiger was convinced there was a Better Way, and judging from the results he may have found it. Were it not for a couple of late bogeys at Pinehurst last month, he might be shooting for the Grand Slam.
As it is, his list of accomplishments is reaching ridiculous lengths. In just 10 years on the tour, he has won 44 tournaments and 10 major titles — all before his 30th birthday. To put this in perspective, Jack Nicklaus won 30 events and seven majors in his 20s, and Arnold Palmer won 13 events and one major. Ben Hogan? He didn’t win a major until he was 33. Walter Hagen? Ah, now we’re getting close.
“The Haig” — how quickly we forget — won all 11 of his majors (two U.S. Opens, four British and five PGAs) by the age of 26. And Bobby Jones, of course, won 13, including five Amateurs, before retiring at 28. Yes, there are still a few players worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence with Tiger, but only a few, only the Mount Rushmore types.
Jones, Hagen, Nicklaus, Woods and, OK, Hogan — those are your Big Five. (Ben’s record in majors was truly extraordinary. From 1940 to ’56, he never finished out of the top 10 in the Masters or the U.S. Open). And Tiger’s right there with them, has even outdone them in some respects. Throw in his eight World Golf Championships, his Players Championship, his three Memorials and his three Western Opens and … yikes. No Miami Four-Balls on this fellow’s resume.
It all comes down to control, as Hogan said — control and, maybe, appetite. Tiger ranks right up there with Takeru Kobayashi, inhaler of hot dogs, in the latter department. He’s like the guy at the party who picks all the cashews out of the mixed nuts; only his cashews are green jackets and claret jugs and Wanamaker Trophies.
It’s at times like these that you realize how great a gap there is between Tiger and his alleged rivals — Phil Mickelson, for instance. Not only has Mickelson won only one major, he has been absolutely abominable in the British Open, coming in 40th or worse nine times in 13 tries. Can you imagine Tiger, history buff that he is, tolerating that for very long? Lefty thinks he’s going the extra mile by playing in the Scottish Open the week before the British. Heck, Tiger would move to Scotland, if that’s what it took, to improve his performance in the Open. (Or at the very least, he’d commute from wife Elin’s homestead in Sweden.)
Rest assured he’d come up with some strategy to give himself a shot. He wouldn’t just schlep to the clubhouse, year after year, 15 strokes off the pace.
But then, we’ve known from the beginning that Tiger was different from other golfers. Not just better, different — more driven, more single-minded, more self-possessed. What’s scary, as the Big Three-O approaches, is that the graph of his career may still he headed upward. There was no slowing down, after all, for Nicklaus and Hogan.
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