AUGUSTA, Ga. — The Grand Old Man of Golf, Tiger Woods, reminisced yesterday about the 10 years — yes, folks, an entire decade — he’s been coming to the Masters. It was kind of eerie, sitting there listening to him. After all, Tiger has always seemed to live in the moment — sinking this putt, bombing that drive, winning this, that and every other tournament. He’s been too young to have a past. For him, it has always been about the present … and the future.
But there he was, recalling his first visit to Augusta as a 19-year-old in 1995. The card games with Trip Kuehne in the Crow’s Nest atop the clubhouse, where the amateurs bunk. The impromptu skins game with Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer during one of the practice rounds. (As he fell behind, he worriedly asked Jack, “Do we really have to pay [up]?”)
Now, at the advancing age of 28, it’s Woods who’s mentoring the kids. Kids like Australian Nick Flanagan, the U.S. Amateur champ, who played with him Monday — and who made him feel ancient by saying he took up golf because Tiger won the Masters in 1997.
“I told him, ’It didn’t seem like it was that long ago,’” Woods said through a smile.
Yesterday he went around with Casey Wittenberg, the U.S. Amateur runner-up. Tiger told him the same story he tells all the young guys, the story of his first Masters, and how he putted the ball right off the green on the first hole.
“I missed it just on the top side,” he said, “and it kept rolling and rolling.” His message to Wittenberg and the other would-be Woodses: “No matter how bad it seems, how nervous you are, you’ll never have that experience of putting off the green on your first putt in [Masters’] competition.”
(By the way, he adds, “It was a great two-putt. I pitched it back and made the putt. So that’s a two-putt, technically, I guess.”)
Ten years. Tiger Woods has been competing at Augusta for a decade — more than a third of his life.
“Hard to believe,” he said. “Kinda goes by fast, doesn’t it?
It does, indeed. Just look at the golf course. In Woods’ first Masters as a pro, he knocked Nicklaus and Raymond Floyd out of the record book by shooting 18 under. Since then, though, the greencoats have toughened Augusta by growing rough, lengthening holes, altering bunkers, planting trees and tying the players’ shoelaces together. Tiger, a three-time champion, couldn’t even break par here last year, when he tied for 16th. And the way the course is playing this week, he says, “You’re going to see more guys shooting high numbers on the back nine than shooting 30 or 31 to win the tournament.”
While all this change has been going on, Woods has been evolving himself. He’s no longer, it would appear, quite so single-minded about his sport. There’s a lady in his life, head-turning fiance Elin Nordegren, and he’s been seen with her at Stanford basketball games — at the same time (gasp) the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am was being contested. The Beethoven of golf is growing up, branching out on his own. Next week, in fact, he’s going to “train” for four days with U.S. Army Special Forces at Fort Bragg, N.C. (a place his father Earl, a former Green Beret, passed through).
“I’ve always wanted to do something like that,” he said. “If I was never introduced to golf, that’s where I would [probably] be … doing something hopefully in the special ops area. That to me is very interesting. The physical and mental challenges, I like that.”
Some say this is good for Woods, that his life could stand to be more varied. The operative word is “balance.” His father, he says, “has always tried to tell me there’s more to life than just golf. You have to have balance, and once you obtain balance you’ll find that life is just so much better.”
Others, though, note the dropoff in Woods’ performance — from superhuman to less superhuman — and wonder if this balance business isn’t overrated, if it might not get in the way of greatness. Tiger didn’t win a major last year, and he wasn’t really in the hunt at the Players Championship last month. And now, after playing in the Masters, he’s heading off to Fort Bragg? What’s next, a trip on the Space Shuttle? A Jordanian fling with baseball?
I jest, but only slightly. Living life to the fullest is something we all aspire to, Woods no less than the rest of us. But when the best golfer in the world, maybe in all of history, wants to go off to an Army base and pretend to be a G.I. Joe action figure, well, it suggests a lot of things. And one of those things — much as I hate to bring it up — is: Tiger Woods is tired of being Tiger Woods.
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