Augusta Masters 2019: What is Tiger Woods when alone with himself?

There's cosmic energy at the core of Tiger Woods' win

On the hallowed grounds of Augusta National Club where a battle royale is being waged for claiming the honour for receiving a fabled green jacket, one espied a cool dude, well-hatted and wearing dark grey, very deep purpled, sporty clothes, moving quietly from one sighting point to another, occasionally rising on his toes to get a better view. 

What intrigued me was his blowing in the wind flowing white beard, now somewhat thinned over the years, his soft brown humour-filled eyes nestling behind that famous beard, and the relative incongruity of his presence in that environment. 

Having recognised him as Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, the great Indian re-interpreter of how life should be practically lived for greatest personal harmony (also known as spiritualism), I greeted him and offered my pranam. His eyes twinkled and he responded with a handshake, but wished not to be laden with hangers-on. So, I respectfully shuffled away.

Now, there are a couple of coincidences here. Should you take the trouble, and I urge you to, to Google ‘Tiger Woods and the Sadhguru’ and watch that short video clip made some years earlier, you will hear the Sadhguru saying how he could, maybe, put Tiger right on top again. Well, now, Tiger is right on top again and the Sadhguru is also here! Coincidence, no?

The legend goes (of Bagger Vance) that this has been a battlefield for thousands of years and often one  of the warriors appears to have lost all — health, strength, will, and his own reason for being great, while his opponents are healthy and strong, and maybe a little too sure and arrogant. Then along comes a dark complexioned (like Lord Krishna) cool dude and shows the warrior, through precept and practice, that to win one has to be pure in thought and intent, to dig real deep into the deepest recesses of one’s subconsciousness, to discover who and what one really is, and thereby find the strength of will, and of hand and eye, to overcome the greatest odds. 

Furthermore, having done that, to fully and unconditionally commit to the action in front of one and be truly unmindful of the outcome. Sometimes one cannot do it alone; too many voices give different and indifferent advice. One needs a true guru, a Sadhguru. Whether Tiger and he are friends one does not know; it certainly seems that Tiger not only knows well what his innermost strengths and intentions are, but he can also retrieve that strength at will. Maybe that’s enough.

A few weeks ago, when Tiger won the tour championship at Eastlake, I wrote the following to a lady mentor of mine: The crowds were so enthused that they swarmed everywhere even where they were not meant to, inside the ropes, and Tiger felt he might be overrun by them.  I wish I had been there to capture that moment. Can you imagine?  The justification of the personal pain and the dedication to what only he believed he was capable of, the unswerving acceptance of his own unique reality as he dug real deep into some wellspring of cosmic energy that perhaps we all possess but are unable or unwilling to reach into, to go on and on and on despite the negative vibes from every critic in the world, to manage the pressure (as if that were the gameplan) of coming so close to winning and not winning, and then to grasp the victory of the season ending tour championship in a never-heard-before rousing crescendo that no one could possibly have imagined... not even he, is truly a labour  of galactic proportions. One is humbled by the greatness, not so much of the win, but the power of belief of this prodigy.  

She insisted that I write a special article using just these words and passion, but I never did. Now that Tiger has shown again the result of bringing up of that cosmic energy, I’m putting it out in the public space.

None of the present top crop of champions grew up playing in Tiger’s shadow but most have grown in his image. They are not feared of him as players 15-20 years back were. They don’t know that the fear of a stalking Tiger can cause them to stumble at critical moments. They will relish competing head-to-head with him and maybe develop a different kind of awe. They will find that they still have much to learn even if they are 50-70 yards longer in driving distance. 

The golf tournaments that Tiger enters are going to witness far heavier footfalls and eyeballs than ever before and of course, since he last won a major, social media has come into its own. The flood of news of and about him will be a factor higher and all this surely augurs very favourably for another huge bounce in the popularity of this sport worldwide.

His father did say that Tiger would change the world and indeed he has materially changed the golfing world. Now it will change again and grow further.

Right now, onwards to the next major!

Au revoir, till next year!

Series concludes