How the Mighty Have Fallen

Tiger Woods was, for a period of time, the most recognizable and dominate athlete in the world. It’s a good thing that we have video of everything Tiger Woods has done in his career, because without proof, in the future, no one would believe his story if you told it to them.

At three years old, he appeared on television hitting golf balls, with his father claiming that he would one day be a great professional golfer. I have a three year old right now, and I can barely get him to tell me when he needs to go use the bathroom, let alone get him to perform on live television.

Fast forward about a decade later, and that same kid is winning the US Junior Amateur. He didn’t just win it once, he won it three times in a row. He gets a scholarship to play golf at Stanford, where he goes on to win the US Amateur three consecutive times as well.  

In 1996, Tiger Woods turned pro, and in April of 1997, I watched an entire golf tournament for the first time in my life. It was the week of my spring break and I had Tiger fever just like everyone else in the world. I had been introduced to golf at a young age by my grandfather, and I loved the game. I watched with the rest of the world as a 21 year old kid dominated the field at the 1997 Masters in a way that no one had ever done before.

He won the tournament by 12 strokes, he set a scoring record of 18 under par, and he dominated one of the greatest venues of golf in a way that forced the Augusta National Golf Club to do what would have been treason to do just a few years earlier, alter a golf course that was seemingly perfect.

Think about that for a minute, when Hank Aaron was hitting 755 home runs throughout his baseball career, no one ever looked at it and said, you know what, the fences are just too close, we have to move them back.

When Michael Jordan was at the top of his game during the 90’s, no one looked at the basketball goal and said, we need to raise it a foot because this guy is doing things we never thought possible.

Tiger Woods changed golf in a way that no other professional athlete has ever changed their sport. There was a term created for what happened at Augusta and other golf courses around the country as Woods forced course after course to be altered: Tigerproofing.

It would be over two years before Woods would win another major championship. In 1999, Tiger held off Sergio Garcia to win the PGA Championship in dramatic fashion. Woods had a new swing, a new caddy, and he was poised to start an era of dominance that will never be duplicated.

Tiger ran away with the 2000 US Open, much in the same way he had the Masters in 1997. Just one month later, he became the youngest man in history to complete the career grand slam at the birthplace of the game, St. Andrew’s when he won the Open Championship.

I’m not going to recount Tiger’s entire career, but I will give you this stat: from 1997 until 2008, there were 48 major championships played. Tiger won 14 of them. That is a winning percentage of 29.1%.

Think about that for a minute. Golf is not a team sport where even the best players can have a bad night or a bad series and still win. Jordan didn’t win every playoff game by himself. Greg Maddux just did the pitching, he still needed the other players to score some runs if the Braves were going to win.

Tiger Woods went out against an entire field of players, where only one guy had to be better than him over a four day period, and won nearly 30% of the most important tournaments in the game. During the same time period, he missed only one cut at a major championship, so even when he wasn’t winning, he was at least in the conversation.

Although he wasn’t as dominate toward the middle of the 2000’s as he was at the beginning of the decade, he still provided moments that will live forever. I will never forget watching the 2005 Masters with Aimee in my dorm room at Young Harris College. The chip shot that Tiger made on the 16^th hole is one of the greatest moments in the history of the Masters.

Tiger’s last major came at the 2008 US Open when it was obvious that Tiger was injured. I was getting my hair cut the week following the 2008 US Open when the breaking news came across the screen on ESPN. Tiger Woods would miss the rest of the 2008 season while having knee surgery. Tiger had gone out and won the US Open with a torn ligament in his knee as well as a double stress fracture.

At the time, I can remember being disappointed because now it would probably be 2010 or maybe even 2011 before I would get to see my favorite golfer, and a player I had watched for his entire career, beat Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 major championships. It was inconceivable that he wouldn’t win another major championship.

18 months after winning the US Open on a broken leg, the Tiger Woods I had grown up watching, admiring, and cheering for, died. On Thanksgiving night 2009 Woods was involved in a domestic dispute with his wife at their home in Florida, and over the coming weeks, Tiger would be exposed as a serial adulterer, and a self proclaimed sex addict. He would spend time in rehab, and do a public press conference apologizing to the world for cheating on his wife.

A divorce, countless injuries, countless “comebacks,” and multiple swing changes have led us to this week and the 2015 US Open. Tiger is still relevant, something that really irks a lot of golf fans, and that is why he was put in the featured group on Thursday night, in prime time, for Fox’s coverage of their first major golf championship. Not Rory, Tiger.

What America saw was pathetic. Tiger shot +10 in the first round of the US Open, and at the end of the day, he was 16 strokes behind the leader, Dustin Johnson. Round two wasn’t much better, playing in the more favorable morning tee times, Woods managed only a +6, missing the cut at +16 for the tournament.

Tiger finished the week tied for 150^th place in a field of 156 players.

I have always assumed that there would be a rising of the ashes for Tiger Woods. I have given up on the idea that he would break Jack’s record of 18 major championships, but I thought there might be one or two more left in him. Maybe he would win the Masters again, or a PGA Championship, but that isn’t going to happen.

I want Tiger Woods to retire, and if he plays like this for the rest of the year, I think that might actually happen. I want to be left with the memories of 1997, 2005, and 2008. I don’t want to watch Tiger finish 150^th. Because of his name, we will continue to see every shot Tiger Woods hits in a tournament, because Tiger = Ratings. While other golfers can stink in anonymity,  Ricky Fowler played with Tiger and finished at +14 for the tournament but they never showed him, Tiger’s struggles will continue to be broadcast live for the world to see.

Normal people like us will never know what it must be like to be the best at the world at something, but in a way that might be a gift, because one day, you won’t be the best anymore. Tiger Woods was the best golfer in the world for 12 years, but now, his time is over, and as a fan of Tiger, I hope he walks away with a little dignity, rather than trying to recapture something that none of us will ever see again.