By Art Spander
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Nobody moves the needle like Tiger Woods, and it doesn’t matter how many majors Rory McIlroy or Darren Clarke win. He’s still the man.
Tiger has been stopped, maybe only temporarily, one hopes. Perhaps permanently.
Sinatra sang it. “Flying High in April, shot down in May.’’ That’s life. That’s sports. That’s what it’s all about. And to the disbelief of so many who thought he had it all, that’s Tiger Woods.
He could do no wrong. Now, it seems he can never do right.
The kid. That’s how I viewed Tiger from the days he was at Stanford in the mid-90s. They said he was going to be great. He was great. He was fantastic. Then he was all too human.
People in sports are wary. Careers can end in an instant. Athletes have self-confidence but also a lot of superstitions. You rarely hear a golfer say, “I got it,’’ or a football player boast, “Nothing can stop me.’’ Because something invariably does stop him.
Nearly two years of torment, some of his own causing, and it does little good to disinter the sordid headlines that beginning some two years ago became public knowledge.
Yet there was the personal stuff – and he’s hardly the first public figure to get trapped by loose moral standards, for which he alone is to blame – and there is the golf and everything connected.
Or since he just dropped long-time caddie Steve Williams, disconnected.
The PGA Championship, the year’s last major, will be played the second week in August. Indications are Tiger still won’t have recovered enough from the knee injury to play.
You can’t criticize someone because he’s injured, but you can ask when and if he’s ever not going to be injured.
Queen Elizabeth of England once reviewing 12 months of national difficulties, used the term “Annus Horribilis,’’ a horrible year.
By any measure, it has been for Woods, Tiger being dropped by Golf Digest as an instruction editor, being fined for spitting during a tournament in Dubai, twisting his knee in the third round of the Masters, being forced to quit because of the injury the first round of The Players, not playing any event
since May, zapping Williams and, according to the latest rumor, possibly ending his brief association with new coach Sean Foley.
Tiger haters are gloating. Karma, they call it. What goes up must come down, they remind, finding satisfaction in the misery of others. The option here is not to knock a man who has been humbled, but to wonder why this all came about, virtually overnight.
Is this a warning from the sporting gods that at any moment someone so talented, so idolized, can symbolically tumble off the cliff? That there are no guarantees? That what you accomplished is what you accomplished and has no bearing on the future?
Steve Williams was Tiger’s Bad Cop, surly, rude. He tossed a spectator’s camera into a pond at the Skins Game in Palm Desert , grabbed a press photographer’s camera during the 2004 U.S. Open at Shinnecock, tactics that wouldn’t have been accepted except he was affiliated with the then No. 1
personality in the game, indeed in any game.
Now Williams is as bitter as the people who through the years he mistreated, many of them journalists, saying on a web site, “After 13 years of loyal service needless (the firing) came as a shock. Given the circumstances of the past 18 months, working through Tiger’s scandal, a new coach and with it a
major swing change and Tiger battling through injuries, I am very disappointed to end our very successful partnership at this time.’’
The key phrase is “at this time.’’ Tiger has separated himself from others during his career, former teachers Butch Harmon and Hank Haney – although Haney is the one who in May 2010 said he was leaving Tiger – former caddie Fluff Cowan and former agent Hughes Norton, who previously had been pushed aside by Greg Norman.
With rare exceptions – Phil Mickelson and Bones MacKay come to mind – pros and their caddies do not stay united more than a few years. Tiger and Williams made it more than a decade.
As Tiger’s troubles grew, starting with that infamous Thanksgiving 2009 car crash, Williams’ work decreased and his negative remarks about Woods and his lifestyle became more frequent.
In press rooms, maybe in locker rooms and caddie quarters, the idea that Woods would be changing his bag man was heard again and again. And now he has done exactly that.
During the British Open a couple of weeks back, Williams was carrying for Adam Scott. He’ll survive. Will Tiger?
The golf gossip web sites continue to be crammed with Tiger items: He’s finished for the year; his ex-wife, Elin, is dating a multimillionaire; he’s been seen at parties in Florida and Las Vegas.
Tiger wants to get back. Desperately. He sent Clarke, a longtime friend, congratulatory text messages on his British Open win. He was full of praise for McIlroy’s U.S. Open triumph.
They’re where Tiger used to be, flying high. Oh so long ago.
© RealClearSports 2011
