Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright.

I own golf clubs, but I'm not good at the sport. I watch golf casually, as in the Masters at Augusta National and sometimes the US and British Open if I'm not doing something else.  But over the past two decades I have watched Tiger Woods with much more interest than I actually have in the game of golf.  I'm not alone.  Over the past decade, as Tiger has struggled through troubles of various sorts, something rather unlikely has happened, he became an underdog again.
For those of you not familiar with the saga of Mr. Woods, and I'm sure there are a few of you, Tiger was a golf prodigy, who appeared on a TV show when he was barely school age, with his father Earl.  Earl cultivated Tiger's talent for what is perhaps the world's most difficult game, and by the time he was a teenager, Tiger was already roaring towards being a professional golfer.  When he emerged from the amateur ranks, everyone already knew about this kid, they had been talking about him, they had been waiting for him, like he was the chosen one.
Even in his late teens, Tiger was good; he hit the ball long and had a killer instinct that brought people who didn't care a lick about golf into the crowd.  All of the sudden, galleries at the tournaments were full to busting with people who did not look like the typically white, middle-aged men who were the nearly exclusive patronage of the sport.  Tiger Woods, half black, half Phillipino, young and as driven as the other sports icon of the age, Michael Jordan, was a nearly instant sensation, even before he won his first tournament.
It is a rare thing when a phenomenon actually lives up to the hype, especially in a game as complicated and ephemeral as golf.  Tiger was dominant in a way that the world had not seen, not even in the likes of Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer.  As Tiger hit his prime, the field seemed to wither, the sports media wondered not if, but when Tiger would catch Nicklaus's seemingly untouchable record of 18 major wins. He did seem dominant in a way that is only comparable to Michael Jordan and the Bulls of the mid 1990's, it was not if, but by how much Tiger would win.  He racked up win after win and honestly it seemed like it might just go on forever.  The other top tier golfers were just going for the scraps that Tiger left behind, while golf as a whole was very suddenly at or near the top of the heap in terms of visibility and popularity, and it was ALL because of Tiger.
If you think that is an overstatement, the next chapter proves that it was not.
Earl Woods died, and Tiger's world started to come apart a bit.  I suppose it might have been at least a little predictable, Earl had so much to do with making Tiger who he was.  Tiger was married to a model, Elin, he had a couple of kids and everything seemed to be so very perfect, but he was also addicted to sex, and engaging in serial infidelity.  As a very wealthy man, and perhaps the most famous person in the world at that particular moment, it was rather inevitable that such behavior would come into public view at some point.  Tiger was also beginning to get older and experience problems with his knees and his back.  His violent, powerful swing had consequences.  His enormous wealth and success did as well.  His marriage fell apart, seemingly at the same time as his body.
Now it wasn't about Tiger on the golf course, it was Tiger in rehab, Tiger in surgery, Tiger getting arrested for being found by the side of the road in a drug induced stupor.  When he finally did show up on the course he was profoundly average by professional standards.  He missed cuts, he couldn't seem to hit it straight, and he often had to withdraw for physical reasons.
They still talked about him on the TV though, because his fall was nearly as compelling as his dominance.  Over the past decade, as Tiger wandered in one wilderness after another, the sports-talk guys never gave up the chatter.  Will he ever win again? Will he ever be "Tiger" again?  For most of them, the answer was no.  And so the most dominant golfer ever was turning into a footnote, a walking shadow of what he used to be, and his back kept getting worse, to the point where golf became a secondary consideration to merely being able to walk.
After a surgery, where the prognosis was a bit of a toss up, Tiger's back was stabilized.  Last year, he started to show flashes of the old Tiger.  He had spent most of his thirties mired in futility of one sort or another, but now in his early 40's he seemed to be emerging from the wilderness.  Still, he might never be the Tiger we all remember.  Last week he proved those who thought that wrong.  Tiger won the Masters tournament yesterday, after posting four straight rounds under par, which at Augusta National is practically a superhuman feat.  Tiger had the look that he used to have, and the field melted in front of him.  Those of us that watched him 15 years ago recognized that act, and we remembered why he is so very important to the game and to our very culture.
It is not just that he won a tournament, or even that he won a major tournament, it is that he came back from the edge of destruction, he battled back from near irrelevance.  The greatest golfer the world has ever seen somehow became an underdog again, and yesterday on the 18th green of Augusta he shrugged of that mantle with a flex and a roar, and became Tiger again.
I honestly don't know why I care, but I do.  It is human storytelling, it is a saga in real life.  Watching him hug his children, who cannot remember when the last time their Dad was the best golfer in the world, actually got to see that, indeed, he was, and experience the hope that he might just be again, it is somehow a holy thing that we all get to share.  Tiger's entire life has been lived in public, for better and for worse.  Those cheers that carried him off that golf course yesterday were, I think, more for a man who has overcome his own ruin as they were for a man who got his golf game back on track.  I know that the catch in my throat was not about the significance of the game, but about the remarkable ability we humans have to overcome, even when everything falls apart.
Thanks Tiger, you have made it worth the watching and the waiting.