We watch golf because we like to see the things that we can do being done at the highest level. Most of us can swing a bat, get a tennis ball over a net, make a "swoosh" or two from the foul line, and make good contact between clubface and ball. We can't do these things at the high level we see on TV or at the ballpark, arena, or pro golf tour. Few of us are entertained by watching even celebrities duff and chunk and four-putt - there's enough of that at our local muni on weekends. We love to see the spot-on wedge that sucks back to a few inches from the stick. We marvel at towering drives with 6 seconds of air time. We live for those 30 foot zig-zag putts that hit the heart of the cup, especially when The One is running after it, finger pointed, commanding it to go in. Ahh, The One... The Chosen One... The Greatest of All Time. Are we not lucky, indeed blessed to be golf fans while this kind of history is being made? And because Vardon and Jones and Hogan and Snead and Palmer and Nicklaus have gone before him, we are all the luckier for having the historical perspective. So why does Tiger Woods depress me?
First, here's what thrills me - the sheer excellence of what he does. For sure, he has the raw material - he'd be among the best if he conducted his life and his pursuit of the game like John Daly. He could roll out of bed ten minutes before tee time, and make a very nice living playing this stupid stick-and-ball game. But his raw talent combined with his disciplined pursuit of excellence is what makes him and historic figure - The One. In this way, The One is an inspiration. If all of us, any of us pursued any one thing in our lives with the focus, commitment, and single-mindedness that The One applies to golf, think of the potential we could realize. That's the "inspiration" part of the equation.
The depressing part: No matter how much discipline any of us applies to any of our interests, whether personal or professional, you will never be as good at that thing as Tiger Woods is at golf. My parents always said that they didn't care what I wanted to be "when I growed up;" that even if I wanted to be a garbage man, as long as I tried to be the best garbage man that I could be, that would be fine with them. Well, the sad truth is that I could never be as good a garbage man as Tiger Woods is a golfer. Naturally, this would be difficult to quantify - comparable measurements in the worlds of golf and sanitation are hard to come by - but even within the world of garbage collection, what would I have to do in order for my peers to declare me "the best trash picker-upper that ever lifted a can?"
Nope, I'm hard pressed to find anything that I do as well as Tiger plays golf. I can solve the "Jumble" in the newspaper within a minute-thirty 90% of the time; my privet hedge in the front yard is legendary in my neighborhood for the perfectly straight trim-job that I do (freehand, by the way;) my kids think I can fix anything that breaks around the house... In any of those things, trivial or not, can I achieve the level of excellence that approaches that of The One in his chosen profession? I'm not even going to try.
And that, my friends, is Tiger's biggest edge of the golf course - his competition feels the same way. Phil said it himself, famously, in a press conference about a year ago - as much as he will ever win, he'll never have the career that Tiger has already assembled.
Having said all that, I better get back to work.... discipline.... focus.... c'mon GolfFlogger - get inspired!
GF
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