The Hindu : Sport : Hard not to watch Tiger Woods

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Hard not to watch Tiger Woods

Woods will be hoping to get closer to Jack Nicklaus’s record , writes Rohit Brijnath

Extraordinary athletes make you watch them, they insist you watch them. They own this look, this strange calm amidst the tension, which tells us, hang on, let’s watch for a minute. They create moments of such precise beauty, and improbability, that no expertise is required to know, immediately, this man is special, that he is worth looking at. It doesn’t matter if the sport is foreign, genius translates. Cycling held no appeal for many till Lance Armstrong peda lled with the desperation of a man who was unsure of his tomorrows. How could you not watch?

An education

So it is with Tiger Woods. For an entire section of people, he’s been an education, into golf and into genius. And so when he, with 13 major victories, begins this week at the Masters his undistracted pursuit of one of sports’ holy numbers (Jack Nicklaus’s record 18 majors), people will watch. When an athlete is dedicated to becoming the best, ever, in his sport, and every pore of him is committed to this mission, you can’t look away.

The number 18 is everything for Woods the golfer, as five was for Armstrong (the record number of Tour de France races Bernard Hinault, Eddie Merckx, Miguel Indurain had won), and five was for Michael Schumacher (the record drivers championships that Juan Fangio had won). To see them chase down history was to understand their greatness, and conversely the averageness of lesser athletes/teams. These champions never wanted to win some of the time, but all of the time, which is why they won most of the time. Excellence, they understood, is a full-time job.

“The Greatest” in many sports is not always decided through numbers. Larissa Latynina won a record 18 Olympic medals, yet Carl Lewis and Paavo Nurmi admirers will dispute she is the ultimate Olympian. Pete Sampras owns 14 Grand Slam titles, Roger Federer 12, yet Rod Laver, with 11, remains pre-eminent for the former two have not won the French Open. But golf, a game replete with nuance, is oddly straightforward in this regard. If Woods goes past Nicklaus’s 18, he will be the greatest. No question.

Number 18

Everywhere Woods goes, the number 18 stalks him. Nicklaus once said when he played he never counted his majors, and that they were rarely mentioned. Yet, in this new world of a thousand inquisitive microphones, he felt some sympathy for his successor. “I feel a little sorry for Tiger from that standpoint. They started counting (his majors) before he won one.”

Woods will not mind too much. As a boy, he kept a chronology of Nicklaus’s 18 major championships pinned next to his bed, and he has become, partly out of choice, imprisoned by this number. It drives him to run five miles under a hostile sun, to bench press a fridge, to refine his swing.

Champions judge themselves purely on majors. As Sampras once said: “As long as I feel like I can win majors and contend, I’ll continue to play.” Nothing else matters. It is why Woods will decide his tournament schedule, his nappy changing, his practising of particular shots, his media commitments, his sleep times, everything, with the majors in mind.

As he emphasised this year: “I’ve always said, you want to peak four times a year. You can win every tournament for the entire year, but if you go 0 for 4 in the year in the major championships... You don’t really get remembered for number of wins in a career. It’s the number of major championships.”

Setting high standards

By saying this, by embracing this majors-or-nothing philosophy, Woods is not just telling us how high he sets his bar, he is also, inadvertently, increasing the pressure on himself. As if to say, if he doesn’t win the Masters, he has failed himself.

But maybe Woods wants this pressure, wants to keep proving his dominance, wants to keep his well-manicured, Nike-shod foot on everyone’s throats, wants to test himself. It’s why we watch him, isn’t it? He might lose this week in the Masters, yet he’ll never let us down. He gives. Everything. And which watcher can ask for more.

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