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Getting There
One year on from the car crash that sent his life spiralling out of control, Tiger Woods talks openly to HK Golfer's Lewine Mair about his fellow professionals, the memories of his late father Earl, and the 14-hour practice sessions that will get him back to the top PHOTOGRAPHY BY GETTY IMAGES / AFP
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iger Woods has always known when to opt for a last-minute change of club and, on this occasion, he very quickly sensed that a hug was more appropriate than a handshake. The ice broken, he answered a question as to how he was making out with a quiet assurance that he was “getting there”, while the mere mention of his children brought a light to his eye. He could not wait to say that they were flourishing. It is hardly surprising that Tiger should tread warily in his dealings with people but more and more, he is finding that there is no shortage of compassion out there. No-one, least of all the golfer himself, condones what he has done. At the same time, no-one would deny that there has been plenty to admire in the way he has faced the music – not to mention golfing world at large – over the last 12 months. This was Shanghai and Tiger was about to do a photo-shoot with Lee Westwood, Phil Mickelson and Martin Kaymer on the eve of the WGC-HSBC Champions at Sheshan Golf Club. There was a reception following the photo-shoot but, prior to that, Tiger had a bit of time on his hands in which he was happy to perch on the end of a table for a chat-cum-interview. It began with a query about Westwood, the man whom he had just congratulated on overtaking him as the world's number one ranked player. Could he remember when they first met? Tiger has always raised eyebrows with his ability to reel off the achievements of even the most unlikely souls who have popped up on one of his leader-boards and, in answering the Westwood question, it was only a matter of seconds before he came up with a confident cry of “Walker Cup, 1995.” Not too many would risk contradicting someone with his all-embracing knowledge of the game but, on this score, your correspondent was pretty certain Tiger was wrong. Yes, Lee had won an England cap, but he had never done enough in either the English championship or the Amateur to catch the eye of the Walker Cup selectors. The matter was only settled when Lee was summoned from across the room. The Englishman was quick to say that Tiger’s was an entirely understandable mistake… There was a Martin Foster who, like him, comes from the northern English town of Worksop – and he was the one who had played in the match in ’95. Moving on from the Walker Cup meeting that never happened, Tiger said he had vivid memories of how he and his old friend, Mark O’Meara, had lost to Lee and Nick Faldo on the second morning of the 1997 Ryder Cup at Valderrama. “And after that,” he continued, “I remember reading about Lee’s efforts in Japan. I think he won two Taiheiyo Masters in a row and a couple of other titles over there.” He was spot on. 62
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Once dominant: Tiger will have to get used to being the world's number two ranked player, at least until the end of January when he is expected to play his first event of the 2011 PGA Tour season. Photo by AFP
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Crouching Tiger: Under the tutelage of new coach Sean Foley, Woods will be looking to start the new season with a bang.
He was right, too, with his recall of the player’s fluctuating weight: “I remember how he put weight on after Valderrama before taking it all off – and I remember, too, how he saw too many coaches before shedding them… And that was when he started to put all the different pieces together. His game was always pretty darned good but there’s no question that he’s the number one in the world right now… Noone’s been more consistent than he has over the last couple of years.” Woods would agree that he and Lee had nothing more obviously in common than good golfing fathers. Since Tiger was as an only son and Westwood was an only son, both enjoyed undivided paternal attention. John Westwood and Earl Woods proffered any amount of support and, even if Earl was maybe too hooked on the limelight for his young protégé’s ultimate good , both men knew when to stand back.
"[Westwood's] game was always pretty darned good but there's no question he's the number one in the world right now... no-one's been more consistent over the last couple of years."
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Tiger proceeded to tell of how, whenever his father put him into the hands of a coach, he would take it for granted that the coach knew more than he did. “And if,” said Tiger, “I ever rang my dad to say that I didn’t like something I was being taught, he would tell me that it was my responsibility to sort it out. He was not going to do it for me. ” At that point, I suggested to Tiger that a lot of parents had misinterpreted the Earl Woods’ way. Though they had followed him in starting their offspring early, they had failed to lock into to how much it meant to Tiger that his dad had always made the game fun. Tiger nodded. “Of all the things he did for me that stands out,” he said. “It’s what made the difference – more difference than anything I’ve ever been told by anyone.” The practice sessions Tiger has today follow much the same formula as they did in his youth. If he is working on his swing, he uses a six or seven-iron while, when it comes to warming up, he opts for his eight-iron. The usual pattern of events is that all these clubs will be worn out and ready for replacement after nine months, if not earlier. What has changed is the intensity of the work Tiger does at a tournament site. “I realised very early on that all my more focused work had to
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"It's impossible to get down to any serious stuff at a tournament because of the distractions... what I've learned is that it's better if I keep the emphasis on staying loose and fresh."
Shanghai swing: Amazingly, the WGCHSBC Champions title still eludes the 14-time Major winner, a fact that Woods is keen to change. 66
be done at home,” he said. “It’s impossible to get down to any serious stuff at a tournament because of the distractions. Steve [Williams] does his best to get me a bit of peace and space and he gets a bad rap for it, which is unfair. But that’s the way it is… What I’ve learned is that it’s better if I keep the emphasis on staying loose and fresh.” He said he enjoys a bit of banter with his peers when they set up shop beside him on the range before adding that he misses old friends such as Mark O’Meara, Mark Calcavecchia and John Cook, all of whom have moved on to the senior arena: “We used to have so many great practice rounds together,” he said. Far more than you would think, he picks up on people’s practice ground idiosyncrasies and, by way of an illustration, he opted for the contrast between Jim Furyk and Freddie Couples. “You have Jim,” he began, “who is extremely focused and doesn’t talk to me or anyone else. And then you have Freddie, who hits one ball before standing back to talk to his caddie, Joey.”
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Tiger put Vijay Singh in the Furyk bracket in terms of hard work and could remember that day at a PGA championship when he dared to empty another bucket of balls at Singh’s feet as the Fijian was on the point of wrapping up his four-hour session and taking his small son home for supper. Singh was amused; the hungry child was anything but. So how long does Tiger spend on the range when he is back home at Isleworth? “I could be out there for anything up to 14 hours,” he said, before explaining that that time might include 36 or 54 holes of “practice play”. Yet however long the day, it will be punctuated with drinks, chats and snacks. And with fresh insights into things his late father told him. “I can’t tell you how often it happens that something he said comes back to me,” he marvelled. “It’s truly uncanny.” He suspects it has to do with the way Earl would speak to him in riddles by way of making him think about what he was saying. When your correspondent asked if Tiger could recall the last time he gave a chuckle of recognition as something his father told him hit home, he opted for a day the previous week when he had been on the practice ground at Isleworth with Sam and Charlie. “In going over a few of the basics,” he said, “I could almost hear my father teaching me. Not only that, but I suddenly had this extraordinary understanding of why he said what he said all those years ago.” HKGOLFER.COM
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