Tiger Tyger Burning Bright!: Tiger Woods and Elusive Perspective

ESPN ran a segment between all of their highlights, stories and prefatory match up vignettes for their July 1 (2008) show which featured a ranking of the best moments in sports through the first 6 months of the year. I felt compelled to interrupt my negative number of readers and offer them a sports alternative to my political harangue. Here is what prompted me to break my political vibe.

Iron-man Woods: The moment at the top of ESPN’s list- Tiger Woods winning the 2008 U.S. Open. Woods participated in a 19-hole playoff, thus competing for the championship for 5 successive days. He rushed back from arthroscopic surgery in order to compete in the major referenced above. He played brilliantly, as always, but this time on one leg- some commentators have opined. I watched the highlights, all of his limbs were in place. Woods is a brilliant, exciting, passionate, talented, focused, hard-working, fit competitor, whose abilities are without peer in the history of his sport. Thing is, his sport does not feature what almost any other sport, almost by definition, includes among its respective competitors- athletes.

Athletic qualifications: I am sorry, but if you are not required to slide, jump, run, dive, fall, stroke, pedal, throw or hit something using your appendages in the course of competition, then I cannot count you among the athletic. If the most noteworthy commonality between golf and other sports is that the combatants sweat, then perhaps one should not be so indignant about an opinion like mine. Golfers swing their arms and rotate their hips- like baseball players. Folks, the golf ball is sitting on the ground- a baseball can travel at speeds of between 70-100 mph and it can move perpendicularly to the ground while you are trying to hit it. If you actually do hit it, the opposing side is still legally allowed to catch your batted ball to record an out or somehow throw you out before you reach one of the four bases safely. Could I hit a golf ball 375 yards in an area, in which I had previous to striking it, actually designed for its resting place? No. I could not routinely sink 13 foot birdie putts with thousands watching in the gallery or millions on television. Golf is one of the most difficult sports there is to play. The constant battle with natural elements, landscapes, trees, club choices, distance variations, ball lies, water and sand hazards, pin placements, green slopes, etc. all contribute to my inability, or millions like me, to successfully pilot your golf ball into the hole. I am just one fairly logical dufus who writes long-winded columns for no one in particular and I have a beef with a television sports station enterprise continually kissing the hinder of the nation’s premier participant in competitive sports, with apologies to LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Alex Rodriquez, Tom Brady and Sidney Crosby.

The other possibilities: Among the other achievements not ranked as highly on ESPN’s list of best sports moments January-June of 2008: the Boston Red Sox winning the World Series, the Kansas Jayhawks winning the NCAA basketball championship, the Boston Celtics winning the NBA championship. All great accomplishments, but I would pick Tiger’s 5-day battle, post arthroscopic surgery, over those, even though the Jayhawks overcame what was an 8-10 point deficit with fewer than two minutes remaining in the game. The game was highly competitive throughout and the game was sent to overtime because Kansas’ Mario Chalmers, nailed a high-arching three-pointer over the outstretched arms of multiple defenders. The other moment, which Tiger’s accomplishment was ranked higher than by ESPN- the New York Giants- a double-digit underdog, defeating a dominating, undefeated, juggernaut of a football team, the New England Patriots, on the nation’s biggest athletic stage- the Super Bowl.

Giants v. Pats: The Giants had been largely enigmatic until the final month of the regular season. The New England Patriots were an unprecedented 18-0 entering the game and few people gave the Giants a shot at blemishing that mark. I would guess that half the people who follow golf still would have put their betting money on Woods to win the Open. The Patriots featured the league MVP, in quarterback Tom Brady, fresh off of a record-setting regular season where he threw for the most touchdowns in a single season in NFL history. He threw about half of those to one of the most talented receivers, in Randy Moss, who also broke the record for most receiving touchdowns. The Patriots scored more points than any team in the history of the league and were routinely blowing teams out by 30 points- even playoff teams. The Pats were despised by many for running up the scores of games unnecessarily because the coach has some kind of psychological inadequacy complex and took out his guilt from the Spy-gate debacle on anyone who could not commiserate with him or defend him. The Patriots were supposed to march all over the Giants on their way toward athletic football immortality. Also keep in mind that the game was one of the best Super Bowls of all time; for drama, execution, intensity and competition, there are few better playoff games in the 80+ years of NFL football. There were very few penalties and not much sloppy play, excepting the Patriots coach’s surprising inability to make any halftime adjustments. The game included one of those plays- from start to finish- that we will be seeing on sports highlight shows for the next forty years- Eli Manning’s escape from being a certain sack victim so that he might throw the ball for a first down on the game’s most important play to a guy who used his helmet to catch the ball.

Insult of injury: A day or two after Woods’ admittedly impressive victory at the U.S. Open, during a Sportscenter touching upon the difficulties Woods endured on his way to the championship, the ESPN anchors reported that he would be out the rest of the year for season ending knee surgery. That night’s show featured various commentators, and his caddy, providing opinions on his guts, heart and will, which is substantial. Woods defied his doctor’s recommendation not to play in the event as his knee had not fully recovered. Pecos Bill, who in southwestern lore rode a tornado through Kansas to show how tough he was, did not have the sticktuitiveness of Woods. Unfortunate reality check, Woods walks around on a golf course and hits a ball, he is not blocked, tackled, fouled, chased, punched, shoved or pushed from his appointed rounds. So, when one of ESPN’s golf commentators (Andy North) was provided a catalogued list of video clips of athletes who had also shown the will to compete despite an injury, of course he chose Woods limping around the fairways, rough and putting greens of a golf course.

Tough guys: Just two of the astoundingly brave and even somewhat idiotic options Andy North decided to rank lower than Woods’ recent pain-defying achievement- a guy who played in the 1980 Super Bowl with a broken leg and a guy who cut off part of his pinky finger in order to keep playing football after the 1985 season. North- you have to be kidding me. I mentioned that it was Andy North, golf commentator and not Oliver North, who perhaps told a tall-tale, not necessarily about Pecos Bill, when he was questioned by congress during the Iran-Contra hearings? Ok, good. North (Andy, not Ollie) suffers from acute perspective disorder. In lieu of reason, those who are oblivious of how ridiculous their opinion is will voice it and see if it sticks. ESPN employs a number of marginally qualified sports types, whether they played- Michael Irvin, hall of fame football player, or Steven A. Smith, who thinks he can just repeat himself at higher and higher levels in order to be proven right. These people either seek to burden the minutia-loving populace with bombast or nonsense, providing sports fans with a reason to disagree for the sake of . . . of . . . huh, ah, hmmm. Comparing such unlike things without using history or logic as a guide is not really all that important because North wasn't attempting to cure cancer or feed the starving and misstating the obvious; he was merely stating the ludicrous. Somewhere a pre-teen interested in developing a love of sports may be looking to ESPN's “experts” for rational perspective- and that means not getting caught up in the momentous euphoria of an over-valued achievement.

Youngblood and Lott: Jack Youngblood, of the broken leg Youngbloods, then later played in the NFL’s Pro Bowl the following week with the broken leg. That is stupid; players now excuse themselves from that event for having a tweaked ego. Ronnie Lott is widely considered one of the best hitters in the history of the NFL and rationally made the decision to have a portion of his finger removed in order to continue playing unhampered by the prospect of further injury. Likewise, Tiger decided to compete in the U.S. Open, not because the adrenaline was fueling his passion to be gutty and succeed, but in the calm calculating world of reason which often produces more sound decisions. The incidents outlined above are comparable if only in the light of how the decision to compete was made. They are hardly comparable considering the pain someone decided to inflict on themselves for the sake of ultimately prevailing for the game they love.

Depends: This paragraph will have nothing to do with an adult diaper. When someone tells me that they would rather have their life depend on their ability to hit a golf ball for five days on an arthroscopically repaired knee or attempt to keep Terry Bradshaw, Lynn Swan, Franco Harris and the remainder of the dynastic Pittsburgh Steelers (4-time Super Bowl Champions) from ramming the football into the end zone they are defending for three hours while running after, jumping over, sliding under, shoving through, diving toward, and tackling men on a broken leg- I’ll laugh in their face.

My limited injury catalogue: A guy who is known as a good ball striker, is never going to rank ahead of a guy who decides his own finger should be cut off to avoid further injury so that he can keep playing a sport he loves as much as Woods obviously loves golf. Woods is no more driven to golf than Lott was to hit the ever-living hell out of someone. We should not forget this or at least we ought to learn it before we forget it. I have played a number of pickup football and basketball games and a number of other sports during my life- (never as well as Woods plays golf or Youngblood or Lott have played football mind you). I have run into walls, sprained ankles, had surgery on my face attempting to dive back into second base safely after the pitcher unexpectedly (unfortunately not unexpectedly for the pitcher) cut off the ball thrown in from an outfielder. I have had a completely rusted metal fence stuck in my leg; I’have been on crutches, had a patch over my eye because a guy was prevented from taking a slap-shot because my retina got in the way. I wanted to keep playing, though I could barely see and was rushed to the emergency room an hour after it happened, as soon as my mother found out about it because I stupidly came home, grabbed a wet rag and put it over the ocular portion of my skull. I dislocated a finger playing football and kept playing after popping it back into place- relatively speaking. I have slid feet first into third base wearing shorts, dove trying to steal a basketball from a friend who was dribbling it on asphalt. I have suffered the misfortune of being covered in some behemoths back sweat because of the skins v. shirts dynamic of community center hoops games. Frightening, horrible, detestable memories- not the other stuff, just the back sweat thing. The adrenaline provided by competition can certainly kick in and passion overrules reason, so that die-hards or even weekend warriors can make unsound decisions about their physical ability to continue.

Unknown injuries: Many other athletes would rank ahead of Woods if their stories of pain were as well-chronicled- not mine mind you, but I have often played better in subsequent minutes and hours after having suffered an injury than prior to it. You become more focused, more stubborn, more aggressive, and I am qualified enough to compare the injuries suffered by professional athletes because I have played injured. I am surprised I have the strength to keep writing on this topic given how tired my ears are at the incessant laudation of every one of Woods' accomplishments, which are many. I have separated my shoulder many times patting myself on the back after feeling as if I had thought of a great line to be used in my never-ending political diatribe. Some people become proud at their own mediocrity. Perhaps I have this in common with Andy North, whose perspective is barely mediocre. Hockey players every week are smacked across their wrists with stick-weapons, take slap-shots to the face, lose their teeth or bleed from their cheek all over the ice, get stitched up in the dressing room and come out and play minutes later.

Tough call: Now, I am not sure if Woods invests in ESPN, is part owner, or is thinking of negotiating on behalf of ESPN, with the PGA, for a lower rights to broadcast contract, but people, let us gain a little perspective. Simply because the two gruesome tales I would rank ahead of Woods’ accomplishments occurred more than 28 years ago is no reason to rank a golfer ahead of any football player on a list where one’s toughness is at issue.

One more thing: Tiger is a fantastic competitor, but calling him an athlete is like calling me an athlete when I chase my three-year-old through the aisles at Target before he has played with all of the toys. I could not do one thing better than Woods on the golf course, but it is not prowess that is at issue. I do not have to have been a world class athlete to have an informed opinion- in fact that prerequisite can seem somewhat unnecessary considering the ideas of some of those who are paid to give it. ESPN should ask Mike Golic or Mark Schlereth, former NFL defensive and offensive linemen, respectively, for their opinion on who the tougher competitor is, given an athlete's pathological adoration of pain and their ability to succeed despite it. A few golfers have made mention of Tiger's aura of invincibility and actually admitted they feel like they might defeat him in a tournament here and there, usually after genuflecting at their own mention of his name. That, according to golf pundits and Tiger himself, is considered sacrilegious and unacceptable. Heaven forbid that other participants in the sport of golf might provide themselves with positive reinforcement within earshot of the reporters who prompted them by asking the leading question, particularly of those with rabbit ears over at ESPN. I love ESPN, but their narcissism and their building of a god, who has never lost a major when he has been leading or tied for the lead heading into the last round, feeds my iconoclasm, something I usually do not need any help with.

Isn't that Romantic: I had planned on tying in some famous verse, in an elaborate theme-ridden attempt to equate athletics to literature. The below will have to incompletely serve that function. The Romantic age's most mystical poet- William Blake, who, in roughly 1790 penned his most famous poem, boasting some of the most famous lines in literature in a poem he titled- "The Tyger":

"Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame they fearful symmetry?"

Irony: Ironically enough, the collection of poems headlined by "The Tyger" is called "Songs of Experience". Having experience means a person has gained a bit more perspective in life. An experienced person might ask the tough questions and sometimes provide the right answers. In respect to Blake and Woods, I could attempt to tie in gnosticism and how to hit a ball with back-spin with a downhill lie; I could write about the social condition of London at the end of the eighteenth century; or how "The Tyger" is considered a type of sequel to Blake's earlier offering- "The Lamb"; how a lamb is a young sheep, a sheep is what our youth might devolve into if provided with enough of the misguided direction of "experts," without our having objectively bestowed upon them the proper history of athletics, upon their reaching a more discriminating age; how Blake was a mature artist, a mystic, jaded and hopeful and wild and subdued by all that he knew, had seen or could guess. I could write about the juxtaposition of the lamb and tyger as poetic symbols, how the Tyger's "fearful symmetry" was perhaps fashioned by a god (and that perhaps the same god "who made the Lamb [made] thee" (i.e. the tyger); I could then ridicule the most recognizable athlete on the planet, for if you read carefully, I have not actually done that. My objective is to simply be critical of how favorably he has been treated in comparison with other athletes entitled to just as much fanfare, or more in certain areas, than he has. In short, I could have connected Blake's constant seeking after divinity and that divinity which too many offer to Tiger, far too often. It would be little effort for me to note that a common synonym for Tiger's last name is among the words I just quoted above. But that sounds like a lot of work, especially considering that I have probably made my point without going through all that. I have shrubs to water and fireworks to light.

P.S.: Contending that my inability to hit a fairway more than half the time precludes the merit of my opinion on golf is like saying I can’t wear a polo shirt because I cannot operate an iron very well. Apparently, participating in a sport where one is then considered an athlete, is not a matter of course. Being well compensated by a major sports network employing some caddy-like suck-ups who have little sense of perspective would also be on par with today’s fans who have no sense of history, even from an athletic point of view. Those who applaud Woods above others I have mentioned in terms of grittiness is . . . are there any golf metaphors remaining? Woods, perhaps should continue to complain about the birdies that distract his precious concentration, that fly among the trees over his head, who have more right to the natural environment he competes in than does he. May those who have the audacity to question Woods' eminence concerning the perpetual right to every golf trophy to be handed out over the next 20 years- please continue- for whoever makes a Tyger should be challenged- even the Tiger who makes of himself all he needs to be. This Tiger, while being an incredible talent, is no lamb. Snap a picture of him during his back-swing and find out.