Couldn’t stop thinking about this picture last night and what it represents. I remember being 18 in 1997, and blowing off the final round of the Masters. I was young and dumb, and didn’t grasp why a blowout was still so compelling. That night I got a call from my dad.
“If you didn’t see it, you really need to watch the scene of Tiger and his dad behind the 18th green,” my dad said. Like a lot of fathers, he was using sports to as a way to say he loved me. He didn’t feel connected to Tiger, he felt connected to Earl.
Still, I had a hard time appreciating Tiger early in his reign. He was a magician, but so ruthless in pursuit of greatness, I just couldn’t feel warm toward him. I wish I could go back in time & appreciate the golf as it was happening instead of focusing on who he was or wasn’t.
A lot has been written about how Tiger has changed. I’m not sure it matters, or if I could say one way or another. What I know is true is I’ve changed. I’ve had a back so sore I could barely walk, I’ve felt humbled and disappointed, I’ve chosen being a better dad over work.
Tiger has always been this imperfect vessel for a lot of things. His life says so much about the complexities of race, ambition, fame, hubris, talent and determination in this country. No one has ever written something that got him exactly right, because there is too much there.
The magic of that picture of Tiger and Charlie, for me, is that my perspective is now flipped. It doesn’t matter that I’ll never win the Masters, or that Tiger and I are world’s apart in talent and wealth. I don’t see myself as the son, I imagine myself as the dad.
It’s easy to get cynical when your job is writing or talking about sports. There was a time when I’d have read some 40-year-old sportswriter tweeting like this and rolled my eyes and made jokes about #dadlife. And that’s ok. That’s the way it should be, in fact.
But one day you might wake up and 20 years have gone by and maybe you’ve got kids of your own. Maybe they’re watching with you, like mine were yesterday. When they ask why you’re tearing up, and you’ve seen the whole arc of some athlete’s life, where do you even begin?
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