Perspective | Tiger Woods’s genius has never been a free gift. Now his only task is to heal.
All you may assume, after seeing the image of that crushed, rolled-over car, was thank God he’s alive. But after the reduction, what got here was despondence for him, that he has to bear all of it once more, the knife and the small steps and the ceaseless questions, with the world watching and asking him for one more comeback, however not likely understanding what it takes from him and out of him.
He’s had greater than 10 surgical procedures in all now — and he’s simply 45. He’s 45, and as he instructed Jim Nantz in that hurt-sounding interview Sunday, he’s adopted a longer putter so “I don’t have to bend over as far.” Five instances surgeons have lower on his left knee, 5 instances they’ve gone into his again to dig out items of him, and Tuesday, in accordance to his agent, a surgeon labored to restore accidents to his legs from the single-car wreck within the Los Angeles scrub. “Sick to my stomach,” is how golfer Justin Thomas stated he felt when he heard, and the sentiment was certainly common.
The worst half was that even earlier than the wreck Woods sounded so uninterested in the ache. “I don’t know what the plan is,” he instructed Nantz, seeming dispirited over one more microdiscectomy surgical procedure on his again. Asked if he might make it to the Masters, he replied: “God, I hope so, but I’ve got to get there first. I got to get there first. A lot of it is based on my surgeons and my doctors and my therapists and making sure I do it correctly, because this is the only back I got.”
Ever had a unhealthy again or a damage knee? The ache can go out of your heels to the crown of your head and into the roots of your tooth. And make it unimaginable to decide up your individual child, a lot much less a golf bag. Then there are the wearying psychic accidents he’s handled: the mixture of entitlement and a robbed childhood; a case of continual insomnia; the thrilling microwave impact of consideration and but the searing boil of it; the automobile wreck and dissolution of his marriage in 2009; and the lack to do any work on himself, to have a downside, with out changing into international dialogue.
Woods spent a lot of years as a nice champion and never an particularly nice or self-aware man, one whose enablers had been nonetheless calling him “kid” at 34. But it was a pleasure to see him so totally healed, matured and exultant when he won the Masters in 2019 and grasped so shut the 2 kids who clearly adore him and provides him which means. It was a scene you hoped may very well be repeated. At this level, although, you simply need him to have the ability to rise up straight once more and revel in his life and household with a sound physique and spirit.
And possibly this time nobody wants to ask him for one more comeback, one other large feat. His identification from his adolescence onward has been wrapped up in outward success, outward trophy show. Genius isn’t a free reward — it’s a double-edged one that may sucker a man into an unhelpful projection of invincibility. If it’s rewarding, it is additionally exhausting to stick with it such pretense in entrance of thousands and thousands, to be unable to present how chances are you’ll be buckling and warping below the strain of residing up to it.
Great expertise is not an finish run round strain. On the opposite. Nobody has ever summed up the particular burden of being a nice participant extra insightfully than baseball agent Scott Boras. Last yr on a podcast with Golden State Warriors Coach Steve Kerr and Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll, Boras mentioned the hidden problems of making an attempt to assist gamers deal with nice expertise. “They know it, they feel it, they have expectations, and then they have a dedication to it,” Boras noticed. “And often they have an edge, and that edge causes really a lot of issues in their lives. … Because there is fear that goes with it, and the greatest fear is: ‘I have got to be what I should be. I’ve got to be that guy that I should be.’ And it wears them out. Because once they have the great season, the most difficult season is always the next season, because the expectation, the ease of their performance and the brilliance that the fans see, it’s like they should be able to give it and give it every day. And there is almost an internal anger about what they have to go through to repeat that greatness.”
For that uncommon creature who has been making an attempt to repeat that greatness since they had been a baby, there is a sense of remoteness, a cut-offness, an incapacity to discover related expertise or sympathy from others, that only exacerbates the strain of the joint-crumpling grind. “They see the cars and the plane, and if they don’t try, they stop there,” Andre Agassi as soon as instructed me years in the past about being a prodigy. “And it’s scary to be defined and judged that way. You just want to be seen for who you are.” There are instances when the entire thing makes you’re feeling no extra actual than your final spotlight clip. “Like I’ve been edited in,” noticed Agassi, who wound up with his personal again and psychic accidents.
No surprise Woods sounded drained. Small surprise he drove quick.
There is extra unknown than recognized about what brought about the accident and what the extent of Woods’s accidents are. But what’s sure is that Woods could have to put his greatness down, not less than for a whereas, whereas he heals but once more. May he make this lengthy, sluggish, mending stroll at his personal quiet tempo, with out obligation or burden of fame, again to blessed well being.
