Tiger Woods

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Comment by The insider on May 9, 2008 at 3:46pm

Heart Of A Champion



Eldrick “Tiger” Woods is like no other golfer the world has ever seen. He has changed the game completely and attracted an audience that would have never considered watching golf in the past. Even the other golfers from the PGA benefit from Tiger playing in the tour along side them. The winnings have increased dramatically since Tiger entered the PGA tour and the worldwide exposure the players get today is more in line with other athletes in major sports. When Tiger left the amateur ranks in August of 1996 to turn pro, he immediately signed a total of 60 million dollars in endorsement deals with forty coming from Nike and another twenty from Titleist before he approached his first tee as a pro. Some felt that the large amount of endorsement money he received wasn’t fair since other golfers who have won PGA matches didn’t attract anywhere near the endorsement money that this yet to be proven “rookie” was making. If you flash forward eleven years to today, all are in agreement that Tiger has proven to the critics that he should be judged by a different set of standards.

He is on his way to becoming the best golfer the world has ever seen. Critics say that the field is weaker than it was when the previous golfing phenom Jack Nicklaus dominated the field in the seventies. "Jack had to play against, Arnold Palmer, Curtis Strange, Lee Trevino and other formidable opponents which make his dominance in the seventies and early eighties that much more impressive," the critics argue. Now to be clear, a golfer can’t pick the players that happen to come up at the same time as he did, but if you remember earlier in Tiger’s career, there were names that were arguably as intimidating as the ones that Jack Nicklaus played against until they met a steamroller named Tiger. Names like Greg Norman and Fuzzy Zoeller were on their way out when Tiger was coming in but his dominance accelerated their move to the “Champions” tour or senior circuit, whichever you prefer. The other players that are supposed to be his contemporaries rarely provide any competition for Tiger. Names like Phil Mickelson, a threat until he became more famous for choking rather than a real challenge. Sergio Garcia, the young Spanish hope that has yet to win a major eight years into his professional career. Does anyone know what happened to David Duval’s career? It’s not that these guys are bad golfers, it’s just that they were unfortunate to come up at the same time as Mr. Eldrick “Tiger” Woods. Vijay Singh and Ernie Els still do a decent job of not crumbling under pressure when they face Tiger but most of the time, he beats them as well.

One could argue that no other athlete dominates his or her sport to the level that Tiger dominates golf. When the competition isn’t pushing him he tries to beat the course like he did at the Masters tournament at the tender age of 21. Tiger won his first major championship, the Masters, in Augusta Georgia by an amazing 12 strokes, the widest margin of victory the tournament has ever seen, which set a record. Not only was Tiger the youngest Masters winner ever, he was the first black player to not only win it but to crush the course. He went on to win three other PGA events within a year and achieved the No. 1 ranking in only his 42nd week as a pro. Some felt that this dominance was just a fluke but it kept on happening. Each time they change the course to “Tiger-proof” it, he changed his game and continued to win. As of March 2007, Woods has won 56 official money events on the PGA Tour At the close of his first eleven seasons, Tiger's 54 wins and 12 major wins had eclipsed the all time eleven-season PGA Tour total win record of 52 (set by Byron Nelson) and total majors record of 11 (set by Jack Nicklaus).

We know about Michael Jordan’s basketball dominance during the late eighties and nineties. We watched the great Pittsburgh Steelers teams of the seventies do their thing and claim four championship rings, even though they never got the “One for the thumb” as Mean Joe Greene said. We even saw Jack Nicklaus, the Golden Bear, get his legendary status in golf during the seventies and eighties but we have never seen anything like this before. In an individual sport, unlike team sports, the athlete performs alone and has no one to blame but themselves for failure. In the game of golf, you are by yourself when you are out there on the greens and all eyes are on you along with all the pressure. One thing I know is even though I don’t claim to be a big golfer, I know greatness when I see it and this is the most dominating and arguably the most poised athlete I’ve ever seen. It’s no wonder that he may become the first billion dollar athlete ever. They say he has the heart of a champion. His heart continues to grow because he seems to take a piece of every opponent's heart that he faces.