[ad_1]
Why is Tiger Woods' victory at The Tour Championship so exciting for the golf world? USA TODAY, Dan Wolken puts into perspective Woods' first win in five years.
USA TODAY Sports
Tiger Woods laughs as he leaves the first tee with Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth in a practice session.(Photo: Ian Rutherford, USA TODAY HUI Sports)
Tiger Woods has been walking with us all Sunday afternoon. Perhaps you have noticed while strolling in the 18th fairway of the East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, a delirious crowd in its wake.
When he reached the sand trap where he had plugged his approach shot, it was all he could do to stay still.
Think of the weight he must have felt, about the story he had to bear at that time, a decade later his last major triumph, half a decade after his last victory on the PGA Tour, a life removed from his old life. Not that he understood who it was. Not that we did either.
All we saw at the time was victory. Shots Explosions on the fairway. The arched parables that settled near the cup. Putts. Oh, putts.
It all started on Sunday, as Woods beat the best players in the world to win the Tour Championship, before the Ryder Cup in Paris, where he will play as a player from Friday.
Has anyone thought it would be possible this time last year?
More: This is why the United States will win the Ryder Cup in Europe for the first time since 1993
In the history of modern American sport, no other athlete has conquered our imagination to torpedo it, in the middle of its heyday.
Woods was a generational talent sent by the moons of Saturn, packed as if he were a god, deployed to mortals as a postmodern ideal, a portrait of invincibility airbrush.
We did not cling to him as much as we watched him, hoping to get a glimpse of what we could be. It was not real, of course, although its size was, and it was easy enough to lose it.
[LIVE SCORING: See results from the 2018 Ryder Cup]
Woods, in fact, had no facsimile, no comparable anecdote to explain his ascent … and fall. You know all the sordid details of his private life in the broad sense. Although it's not just his inner life that has collapsed.
He put so many couples on his lap that they were almost liquefied. And his back, wearing this facade all these years, was cracking under his own weight.
When he fell to The Barclays five years ago, he looked broken. Yet the craters were not complete.
A little over a year ago, the police found Woods driving his Mercedes, not far from home, in Jupiter, Florida. He blew too many painkillers and if the descriptions in the stop report were not enough – embarrassed, mumbled, confused, lazy – the shot was.
Maybe he did not deserve empathy at that time. If you drive with a stuffed brain, you are armed. And maybe the infidelity or all the money that he has earned has prevented you from showing empathy.
After all, he was his own saboteur.
Yet in this life, in this country, we all want to have the chance to rework our own fables, to change the tone and direction of our story.
That's basically what Woods did last week in Atlanta. That's what he reminded us on Sunday when he went up this fairway and holding back his tears and letting the sound of 10,000 indulgent souls overwhelm him:
It is always possible to get out of your own toxic sludge. That it is possible to change your story.
Woods is no longer the inaccessible and unknowable cultural strength that has intimidated its competitors and dominated our sports landscape. He is no longer invincible.
But it is always the reflection of who we aspire to be. Only now he resides with us in the earth.
Although we are in awe of a god, we reserve our love for those who are in the struggle and respect for those who overcome it.
You can never forgive Woods for the choices that he made away from the golf course. You can never relate to his fall from grace.
Yet what happened on Sunday – and what could happen this week in Paris – has done more than give a new dimension to a legend. He has done more than give millions the kind of visceral thrill that only he can give.
More: The memorable moments of Tiger Woods on the team of the American Ryder Cup
When he finally tapped in the par and raised his arms and rested on this 18th green, he gave us a story as old as time and story that allows us to continue.
What is more powerful than that?
Contact Shawn Windsor at 313-222-6487 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.
Source link
