My Open Letter To Tiger Woods

It’s Masters Week again – and all eyes are on the happenings at Augusta National Golf Course.

I love this weekend – if I could, I would hang little yellow flags and green jackets on the trees and bushes in my front yard.

But this year, I feel I just have to write an open letter to my favorite golfer – Mr. Tiger Woods.


Dear Mr. Woods,

I say this with all the sincerity I can muster.

It’s very hard to watch you play this way. The way you’re playing at this time.

It’s like watching somebody that looks like you. Red shirt and black pants and Nike cap. But it’s not the Tiger Woods that changed the way golf is played or the way golf is watched.

I’m sure you’ve had your fill of advice from know it all fans, and perhaps you may simply write me off as another. I hope not.

But if I may, please don’t approach this weekend thinking that you have something to live up to. Instead, approach this weekend again as the next opportunity to show everyone how great you still are. Expect every drive to be longer than anybody else. Expect every time you find yourself in the trees that there will be another occasion to show off how incredible you are at turning trouble into opportunity.


Every amazing shot I ever watched you hit – you hit because you knew that you were going to hit it.


You need to know that again. You need to believe in yourself again.

Masters Win 2005

Perhaps you could gain some inspiration from watching the highlight reels of your own play. Highlight reels of your first Masters win, your first British Open win at St. Andrews, your US Open win at Pebble Beach. And while you watch yourself – pretend you are not that guy on the screen. Imagine you’re a fan – a guy like me – watching a guy like you – who after watching you – has to grab his golf clubs and head to the range to try to hit like you.


Then pretend to be you.


Because I know you’re still in there Tiger.


Put everybody else out of your mind. Everyone but your Caddy.


Perhaps you could start scoring your rounds differently. Instead of counting over / unders – count high fives, hand slaps, knuckle punches and fist pumps.


Play for fun again. Play to show off again. Play for the love of playing again.


You do not owe golf anything. You have paid your dues to golf like few others ever have. And golf owes nothing to you – as you have reaped rewards from golf the greatest from years gone by cannot imagine.


Your slate with golf is clean. Your debt to fans is paid and up to date.


You don’t owe anybody a damned thing. And nobody owes you.


But you owe yourself the chance to fulfill your mission – perhaps it is to hold the most Majors in a career. But I think your personal mission is to beat everybody you play against – every time you play against them. Simple and plain.


And unyielding.


Just do it.


Do it for the passion you had as a kid. Be that kid again. Find that kid again inside you.


I know I can’t imagine what you have been through this past 18 months. I can’t fathom it one iota – whatever an iota is.


You’re too damn good to simply be content to be a middle of the pack player. The guy who makes the cut to play the weekend only to finish tied for 19th. But unless you somehow change your mindset – the Sunday announcers will reduce every great shot you hit in the future to be “glimpses of the Tiger Woods of old”.


If that passion is lacking, if golf isn’t fun anymore, if that kid inside you really did grow up and is now lost to you well, that’s a different story.


If you find that you cannot put all that has happened behind you soon and move on – and get your head back to the level of focus you had before – get your intensity back to the level that only you could find – well, I would like to offer the suggestion that … well …


Then Tiger, it pains me deeply to say – it’s time to hang it up.


With all due sincerity, I’ll be rooting for you Tiger. Me and a gazillion other golf fans just like me.


We’re still out here too.

The Masters … Tiger’s First Shot At Redemption

Augusta National

It's Masters week again.

This is truly my favorite sporting event of the year.

Augusta National Golf Course is my favorite sporting venue.

Bobby Jones, the amateur golfer of the early 20^th century who won the grand slam and never earned a dime in the process as a golfer; the founder of Augusta National and the originator of the Masters tournament - is to me, the most inspirational sporting figure the world has to offer.

And Tiger Woods is back. No longer an inspiration.

Let me state this clearly. Let me make this plain and inconveniently clear.

"I am a Tiger Woods fan".

I was before this debacle, and I am today as he readies to play round one of the Masters tomorrow afternoon.

He is clearly the most talented golfer on the planet. As clear as when Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player to ever play the game. As clear as Wayne Gretzky was the greatest hockey player or Pelé the most brilliant footballer (soccer player) of all time.

My advice to anyone who will listen is that when someone is the best at anything – and they exhibit that skill in a venue for you to watch them do it – please watch them do it.

Do I condone the behavior that led to Tiger Woods fall from grace.

Goodness no.

But I am not qualified to judge other peoples personal behaviors.

Chairman Billy Payne

But when Augusta National's Chairman Billy Payne spoke in his annual address to the media today as part of the Masters Tournament tradition – he spoke the words I wish I could say to Tiger - if it were my place to do so.

"It is simply not the degree of his conduct that is so egregious here, it is the fact that he disappointed all of us, and more importantly, our kids and our grandkids. Our hero did not live up to the expectations of the role model we saw for our children."

Payne went on …

"Is there a way forward? I hope yes. I think yes," but certainly, his future will never again be measured only by his performance against par; but measured by the sincerity of his efforts to change."

"I hope he now realizes that every kid he passes on the course wants his swing, but would settle for his smile."

I have a friend at work who told me the story of travelling over to the Buick Open last fall with a young nephew. As he tells the story, they got to the course – Warwick Hills in Grand Blanc, Michigan very early. Tiger Woods was practicing his putting on the practice green.

My friend approached Woods to ask if he would sign an autograph or have a picture taken with the young boy. No one else was around. Tiger looked past my friend, and simply said:

"I'm not doing that today".

End of story.

You might be justified in saying my friend intruded on Tigers private practice time. But really, how inconvenienced was he. Would it have been a great sacrifice to pause for a second to accommodate a fan and a young boy who idolized him as a hero.

As I see it – from very far away – but after great consideration – I believe that Tiger Woods went through a transformation. He went from a little boy who wanted to be great – to a human corporation founded on the basis of greatness.

And corporations have to succeed.

The person Tiger Woods became was the same selfish executive leaders we have seen recently exposed for their greed - like ENRON CEO Kenneth May. Only Tiger's greed was realized as lust.

There's not one of us alive that wouldn't want a second chance to prove themselves.

Not on the golf course … but as a person.

And while it's easy to want to see the great ones fall to Earth after being held up so high, think that you can be the better person for once ...

... better than Tiger Woods …

... and a allow Tiger his second chance to prove to you that he is indeed once again a human being, and no longer the tyrannical self-absorbed womanizing sexual deviant he was exposed to be over the last five months.

Imagine that, if it was you, your worst demons and most embarrassing intimacies published and fodder for gossip, convicted without a word in your own defence (not that he has a defence) – would you deal with it nearly with nearly the poise he has shown?

At least when he was visible to be seen ...
So this week, as this grand tournament unfolds on the most beautiful golf course in the world, the tournament most revered by players of this most beautiful game – and the camera cuts to Tiger Woods on the tee box, or fairway, or on the green leaning over a putt for birdie … I ask only that you consider Mr. Payne's closing words :

"We at Augusta hope and pray that our great champion will begin his new life here tomorrow in a positive, hopeful and constructive manner, but this time, with a significant difference from the past. This year, it will not be just for him, but for all of us who believe in second chances."

I hope Tiger wins the damn thing.

But first I hope Tiger revists the legend of Bobby Jones. And remembers what the Masters really means.

 (photo credit Reuters)
(Billy Payne Excerpts taken from TheGlobeAndMail.com article "Tiger Gets A Scolding")

Masters Week

Of all the sporting events the world has to offer, my favorite is the week The Masters is held at Augusta National.

The Masters is to golf what Wimbledon is to tennis. What the Kentucky Derby is to horse racing. What Indianapolis is to auto racing.

Augusta National is a spectacle to behold. It is in my opinion the most beautiful setting for a sporting event that there is to offer.

The perfection of the fairways.

The perfection of the greens.

The lush landscaping of flowers, most notably azaleas.

The history is widely known, and nothing I could state would extend your knowledge of the place. But the fact that it was founded by Bobby Jones, arguably the greatest golfer to ever play the game. As arguably great as Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, or even Tiger Woods. Arguably so because Bobby Jones remained an amateur throughout his career.

Bobby Jones is the only player to win all four major events in the same calendar year. He won the U.S. Amateur, U.S. Open, British Amateur, and British Open in 1930. It is true that in those days – before the modern Open era – that only an amateur could accomplish such a feat. Professionals are not allowed in amateur events.

My family lived in Georgia from 1975 to 1980. It is a beautiful state. But back then, I did not know anything about golf. I had probably heard of the Masters, but gave it no second thought as it was a game for old men in funny clothes. Our Dad tried to convince my brother Paul and I to give golf a go. But it did not interest us at that time.

What a mistake.

Once we left Georgia, we both took up the game with a passion.

To see the Masters played at Augusta National is one of the hardest tickets to get. There is a waiting list I am told to be ten years long. They say the entrance to Augusta National is as beautiful as the course. A long entrance road between two perfect rows of Magnolia trees arrives at the front steps of the building. I don't know. I have never been there. I have seen pictures. But I have only visited Augusta National in my dreams.

The only players invited to play in the Masters are those that have won on the PGA tour, or those in the very top of it's rankings. The greatest come from around the world. The greatest come to play what some say is the most difficult course, under the most beautiful setting. And the player that wins the Master automatically becomes a member of Augusta National. They are invited back to play every year until they decide to hang up their clubs. They can visit and play the course anytime they please.

Who needs to win a purse when the prize includes an open invitation to play Augusta National anytime you like?

The events begin with a Champions dinner, where all past champions gather for a dinner hand-picked by last years Champion. They wear their green jackets. They talk about things that green jacket wearers talk about. What that could be, I could only guess.

Wednesday is the par-three tournament – a fun event I believe held in pro-am style. The cardinal rule of this event is not to win. No player ever to have won the par-three contest has ever gone on to win the Masters.

If there was ever an event to behold in high-definition television, it is the Masters. But I will be sitting in front of my old primitive analog TV, watching every stroke that I can, and it will still be beautiful.