Some questions on Tiger:
Is Tiger Woods a burnt out star? Focus! Has he lost it for ever? Will he ever win again? Will prodigious injuries, nasty separation from his wife Elin, long-time Caddy Steve Williams, swing Coach and the alienation of an adoring public sap his confidence and, thus, his capability for good? What about the whole new generation of young golfers chomping at the bit, not dominated or daunted by a Tiger on their tail and all of them liking the colour Green (for their jackets!)?
Indeed, with Tiger having been bested by some of them and dread injury returning to him just three weeks ago, these somewhat iconoclastic notions have gained credence. Yet, like a punch-drunk prize fighter, Tiger rose again to claim the Ahno Pomma (as Arnold Palmer is pronounced by native Augustans) Invitational just two weeks ago.
This breaking out of the vortex of public recrimination, absence from the winners’ circle and the overturning of these myriad negative thoughts on him, show him peaking at just the right time to stake his claim to be the greatest golfer ever. Slowly, surely, confidently and persistently in the face of virtually insurmountable criticism, Tiger has adapted to the new conditions of competition, public opinion, the need to change his swing and his off-course agendas, to succeed. At the greatest of the four majors, the MASTERS, tell me that Rory Mcilroy, Luke Donald and Lee Westwood (playing musical chairs for the title of world No.1 for a few days each, until the music begins again) and all the rest of the highly talented field will not be mindful of:
“Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”
—William Blake
TV ratings, which drop dramatically when Tiger is not playing, will be at their highest level ever for the upcoming Masters tournament. Should he win here, there will be an explosive new interest in golf again worldwide — as there once was when he dominated the world golf scene after his record-breaking win at the 1997 Masters.
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It is interesting that the poet talks of the hand and the eye and indirectly of the controlling brain as being integrally linked. There are over 13,000 receptors on your hand, most on the palm side, all of which constantly send and receive messages from the brain. There are millions, possibly billions, of receptors in the brain that respond to stimuli of every sort from all your senses — whether they be anxieties, injuries, challenges, sexual, emotional, positive or negative — and send out instant signals to the parts concerned of the body to act. Any one of these signals can cause “haath jaam”, or hands tensing, which causes havoc at critical moments (the latest and most tragic of which was the highly talented young lady professional I M Kim missing a 12-inch putt on the final hole of the NABISCO LPGA Major Championship last Sunday, thereby causing a play-off, which she lost).
Some hundreds of these sensors are connected to each other and to different fingers of the hand, permitting or restricting movement according to evolutionary design. Each receptor is connected to the brain and both are connected through these receptors to the golf club. We are concerned in golf about how the hand, the eye and the brain somehow attach themselves to the different golf clubs one uses to smash or caress that insignificant looking golf ball to do one’s bidding. Thus, the brain, the hand, the eye and the golf club become integrated to achieve your ends (or end!).
There is of course a “correct” coming together of the face of the club and the golf ball at the point of impact. No matter what one’s other gyrations and contortions may be before or after the actual striking of the ball, the great golfers achieve this correct position at impact. The huge and infinite variations in people’s swings are to try to achieve exactly that same position, but hackers like me slice, hook, scull, shank, duff, air, etc, because our hands, brain, eye and clubs, each separately, seem to have different ideas of what the impact position should be. A perfect shot that we occasionally, accidentally, execute, but which top professionals routinely manage is really an act of genius, because it requires exquisite coordination between the hand, eye and brain. The average hacker is more often than not frustrated but the occasional perfect shot keeps bringing them back to chase that silly little ball all over the place again.
In the end, the mind controls all your actions and you can only do things that come in the territory of the mind. The mind can only desire some result and the nature of things is that desire has to be frustrated. A little negative thought, a little involuntary spasm or twitch, a little bit of tentativeness or not being fully committed and the result can be sub-optimal, or horrible, depending on the state of your betting pattern. To get into what is known in golf as the ‘zone’ is to unconsciously slide into a meditative mode which transcends the mind. Literally, taking ‘leave of your mind’ and leaving your swing to nature which only allows a satisfactory execution of the shot, but not to the winning or losing of the event. Occasionally, a duffer stumbles into this zone, but the truly great champions practice very hard and regularly, and fail and rise again, repeatedly, so that they may enter this zone easily at will; except that they can’t always! They only enter it when they are able to give up any ‘mind activity’, thus allowing full freedom, basically saying, “I have allowed the unknown to do it to me and for me”. To try truly hard is to become tense. When you are not trying and you are relaxed and not even bothered about the result, you are in the footsteps of the unknown, outside of desire and perfect shots are executed.
Is this spiritual nonsense? May be, but consider the legendary Bobby Jones’ response when he was asked who he would like to have hit the shot or the putt for him when everything was at stake. He responded: “That’s not hard for me to answer … Ben Hogan. Hogan has that intangible of all assets… the spiritual.”
And, finally, there are all the external elements of golf course design, trees, bushes, water hazards, slopes, sand, wind, light, rough, and the periodic exuberance of over-eager fans and photographers (not at the Masters!) that must inevitably participate in and shape the result.
So, in this latest edition of the Masters Championship, many a recent hero received no invitation to play, having fallen off the list of the top 50 in the world. One such, Ernie Els, will rise again and win a few more times, as a top golfer’s career goes well into his 40s; witness Jack Nicklaus’ Masters win at 46, Vijay Singh’s repeated wins until recently and Perry’s almost victory at the Masters two years ago at the age of 49. The Lord’s grace may indeed fall on any one of the great young players to win the famed Green Jacket, but stalking amid the giant lob lolly pines, over the most exquisite of emerald green golf courses, is the Tyger, on whom this grace has descended four times.
Will this week be the fifth time?
The author is chairman, Honda-Siel Cars India Ltd; and co-chairman, Usha International Ltd