The On Deck Circle

This article has been submitted by this week’s Podcast guest, Trevor Smith.

“Some things are forever, some things are not / It’s the things we remember that gave the world shock”- Nas

Scary news for the PGA Tour: the greatest golfer ever is playing better than ever right now. The planet-destroying, soul-collecting entity known as Tiger Woods is embarrassing the rest of the tour at the moment (actually, he has been for over a decade now). One can envision El Tigre walking into the clubhouse last weekend, looking at a room full of timid, overweight white guys and asking which one of them is playing for second. In winning the Accenture Match Play Championship by crushing Stewart Cink 8 and 7 Sunday in a match that was not even as close as that ridiculous score, Woods put the sporting world on notice that he is primed to give us all a summer of golf to remember forever. Consider yourself warned sports historians: Tiger Woods is coming to burn your house down (metaphorically speaking, at least). From grinding out a win in Round 1 to trampling Cink on Sunday, Tiger demonstrated that he is not just the best player in the game, but the best player at every individual aspect of golf: power, toughness, putting, and short-game precision. To suggest he is the best golfer ever at this point is a non-issue; all that is unsettled now is whether he is the greatest athlete ever.

If you are keeping track at home, True Believer, this makes three straight World Golf Champions for Tiger, five of the last six, and seven of the last ten. The WGCs are supposed to bring together the world’s greatest players at some of the best courses to form a kind of mini-major, akin to The Players Championship and with a longer history of prestige than the FedEx Cup. Realistically though, each of these events has served as more of a coronation than a competition. For example, in 117 holes at the Match Play, Woods made 45 birdies and two eagles. His dominating performance in Arizona last weekend gave him his 63rd career victory, moving him past Arnold Palmer (yes, that Arnold Palmer) for fourth place alone on the PGA Tour’s career list. His next victory will tie him with the immortal Ben Hogan. Eldrick is currently getting the kind of breaks that suggest he may accomplish feats that even for him would be truly extraordinary, feats that would better those from 2000, when he won three majors and set practically every single season record possible. Where Tiger has been is unprecedented. Where he might be going looks to be even more astonishing.

“Switch your style up and if they hate, then let ‘em hate and watch the money pile up”- 50 Cent

Tiger reached this point because he never stopped working, never rested on his success. He was not afraid to turn to Butch Harmon to retool his swing after embarrassing the course in winning the Masters in 1997. He went even further in his dedication to excellence a few years later. After completing the best season in golf history, he rebuilt his near flawless form yet again. Woods’ remained among the top competitors on the tour while undertaking those swing changes, but they resulted in him losing his dominating edge. Yet never did he waver from his long-term goals. That he had the kind of foresight and perspective to allow him to take a step back in the name of later taking two steps forward is remarkable. And step back he did. Woods famously did not win a major in 2003 or 2004, causing the Chicken Little in all of us to assume the sky was falling and that the Reign of Tiger was ending. He fell to second in the PGA Tour money list in 2003 and an unheard of fourth in 2004, the same year his record streak of 264 consecutive weeks as the world’s number-one ranked golfer came to an end. The changes Tiger was making to his swing were done in the hopes of saving his surgically repaired left knee from wearing out with stress. The pundit in all of us voiced concern over his decision to leave Harmon, but he assured anyone that would listen that once the swing adjustments were set, he would be able to dominate for a much longer period of time and with higher consistency. Some thought this was hubris; now we know that Tiger might actually have been underselling himself.

What other pro athlete would have the patience to undergo that level of devotion when they were already clearly at the top of their profession? The reason he did is that Tiger Woods has never been competing again the rest of the tour, or even against the course. He is vying with history, with the shadow of Arnie, the spirit of Player, and the ghost of Jack. On Wednesday, when Woods was 3-down with five holes to play against J.B. Holmes, he wasn’t thinking about his competitor at hand. He was thinking about how the Golden Bear would never have allowed himself to lose in the First Round of a match play event. Simply put, Jack would have willed himself to win, and if Tiger is to earn the title of Greatest Ever, he must do the same. With that in mind, all he did was go birdie, birdie, birdie, eagle to send Holmes home and take one more step towards history.

“Your naïve confidence gets crushed by my dominance”- LL Cool J

This is the third time Woods has won at least four straight PGA Tour events. He also won in Dubai three weeks ago on the European tour by coming back from a four-shot deficit. He has won six of his last seven PGA Tour events and 16 of his last 30 over the last two years. In Vegas right now, if you were taking The Field instead of Tiger, you’d need weighty odds. “I think this is the best stretch I’ve ever played,” Woods said. One wonders what Rory Sabbatini thinks of all of this. It was the poor, misguided Sabbatini, of course, who called Tiger out at the Wachovia Championship in May 2007. After leading the field by one stroke after Saturday, he proclaimed that Tiger was “more beatable than ever.” To no one’s surprise but his own he gave up five strokes to Eldrick to lose the tournament on Sunday. When Rory lead the field by one after three days at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational a few months later, Tiger donned his Sunday red and demolished the course to beat Sabbatini by a ho-hum eight stroke margin. Golf may not be a contact sport, but that day Tiger sent a pretty clear uppercut to Rory’s off-jab. Evidently he had a message to send the golfing world: you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry. The man seems to be Bruce Banner, only his version of the Hulk Smash involves 350 yard drives up the fairway and 30 foot putts for eagle. One must assume that Woods was designed and engineered somewhere in a lab for the sole purpose of dominating this game. He rips his competitor’s heart out right from the opening tee block so that more often than not the back nine is predetermined and completely dispensable.

Last summer, Nike ran a very clever ad in which Woods was the voiceover that highlighted his good pal Roger Fedderer’s career highlights before acknowledging that he was still ahead of the Swiss prodigy in terms of major victories. Humorous as the spot was, it underscored a very real truth that we have already acknowledged: Tiger’s only competition lies either outside his sport or outside his era. There is a long-standing debate of who is the more dominant within his own sport between Woods and Mr. Wimbledon. In itself this debate proves the level of dominance Tiger holds over his competition and if it doesn’t, this unequivocally does: there is mounting speculation that Tiger will tie Byron Nelson’s record of 11 consecutive PGA Tour victories when he wins the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in June. Even entertaining that thought is a testament to golf’s Robert Neville: Tiger is Legend.

“Don’t compare me to them, I’m on a different budget.”- Lil’ Wayne

Woods earned $1.35 million last Sunday, giving him over $19.8 million for his career at WGC events. That is more than Tom Lehman has earned in more than 430 career tour starts. Tiger’s 15 wins in WGC events is the same number as Fred Couples, a surefire Hall of Famer, has in his entire PGA Tour career. It could easily be said that Tiger’s records and statistics are video game-like in their absurdity. The problem is that no one I know could even be so successful in a virtual simulated world.

Rarely does society recognize and acknowledge true genius when it is current; typically we need the benefit of time, analysis and consideration to gain the right amount of perspective for us to see real brilliance. This is not the case with Tiger. To see him play is to understand intrinsically that this is golfing perfection. Woods said before the season began that he felt the feat of winning all four major championships was “easily within reason.” Woods won four straight major championships from the 2000 U.S. Open through the 2001 Masters in what is affectionately known as the Tiger Slam. In 2002, he became the first player since Nicklaus 30 years earlier to win the Masters and the U.S. Open in the same year. Of Tiger’s intention to win the official Grand Slam this season, the Golden Bear himself said, “For a guy like Tiger, I wouldn’t put it past him.” Will he win all four majors? Will he do the unthinkable and better his year from 2000? Only time will tell us, but we can at least be certain of one truth: it will sure be fun each Sunday afternoon to watch him try.

This article has been submitted by this week’s Podcast guest, Trevor Smith.