At the beginning of the final round of the PGA Championship, played in the western suburbs at the Medinah Country Club two weeks ago, Tiger Woods strode purposefully down the fairways. He’s put on considerable weight in his shoulders and upper body–he’s bigger and better than the lithe lad who won the Western Open two years ago at Cog Hill Country Club in Lemont, after his runaway victory at the Masters–and he looked like an athlete in his prime. Tied for the lead at the start of the day, he finished the front nine in 33, three under par, with three birdies and no bogeys. He added another birdie on the par-four 11th hole to extend his lead to five strokes. But by the end of the day he looked bedraggled, relieved just to have finished, much less won.
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That reversal was less a sign of weakness than of strength. The final round of the PGA, which I watched on television (as with football, the medium of choice) was sport of high drama and drama of high character. Woods seemed to undergo a change in personality, confident on the front nine, clinging to the lead with his fingernails on the back. He was also paired–on TV if not on the course–with 19-year-old Spanish sensation Sergio Garcia, who led the tournament after the first round, went somewhat astray in the middle rounds, and came on strong in the finale, playing with the blind emotion and energy of youth. On the 16th hole Garcia made the kind of shot only a rash kid would have attempted, from the base of a tree, and chased it down the fairway, leaping in the air like Buster Keaton as he traced its path uphill and onto the green.
Many commentators pounced on Woods as if he had disgraced himself, especially when he complained about some heckling he’d taken on the course–nothing personal or racial, just a sort of bleacher mentality brought to the golf course. Woods is partly responsible for that, having popularized the sport like no one since Arnold Palmer. (It’s also worth noting that the local print journalists called Woods a whiner, while the TV commentators thought the Medinah crowd was too rowdy.) But golf is a game of propriety and etiquette; to shout at a player, “A grand you slice it in the lake,” as one person supposedly said to Woods on the 17th, isn’t the same as heckling a ballplayer at Wrigley Field. Golf is a mental game, played less against an opponent than against oneself, and players may increasingly have to steel themselves against not only their own insecurities but also those sown by the fans. That would make golf an immeasurably more difficult sport, but Woods proved himself capable of dealing with it.
