Prepared to pay the price for greatness

On July 21st 1953, policemen sounded their sirens, fireboats sent arcs of water into the air and ticker-tape came streaming from skyscraper windows, as New York welcomed home Ben Hogan, the winner of three major championships in the one year.

Last Sunday, having emulated Hogan's achievement, Tiger Woods slipped quietly from Valhalla, surrounded by his ubiquitous minders.

"I've got a tough skin but this kind of brings tears to my eyes," remarked Hogan, fresh from his British Open triumph. "If I win the Masters next year, then the Grand Slam would be a by-product of it," said Woods after his dramatic retention of the USPGA Championship.

Different times; different pressures; different expectations.

While playing with Woods during the second round last Friday, Jack Nicklaus listened to the screaming galleries. Turning to his young companion, the Bear said: "You know what, I thank God I am done playing. You've got to deal with this for the rest of your career."

Woods had shared in one of the greatest duels in the history of the major championships. "This win will mean more to Tiger than any of the others since he turned professional," said coach Butch Harmon. Yet any celebration of his victory over Bob May would be done in private.

There were headlines in newspapers and tributes on radio and television, but the central figure was a part of it all only in a professional capacity. The public emotion of Hogan belongs to another time.

It seems a huge price for a man of his tender years to have to pay for supremacy in his craft. Yet it is a price he is clearly prepared to pay, even in the knowledge that the pressures on him can only increase after this latest success. And effectively, he survives by saying No.

As one writer observed, Americans want artificial intimacy with their heroes. What makes him laugh, cry? What are his politics? What's his girlfriend like? What lies behind the perfect smile, perfect swing and perfect clothes?

With Woods, the answers to those questions come only in group interviews in which his words are very carefully chosen, as a result of painstaking packaging. So it is that we will never know the deep emotion of those climactic holes with May, when the champion's expansive skills were tested to the limit.

When his manager at the International Management Group, Mark Steinberg, was asked what percentage of requests for the player's time receive a positive response, he replied: "It'd be tough to put a number on that. One per cent might very well be accurate."

Steinberg explained: "Things come in all the time, every day. The dynamics are very complex, but we try to keep it as simple as possible around him, so a crazy world can seem simple and organised to Tiger." In simple terms, this means that media days for a tournament where he is the defending champion, are out. Even the PGA of America had to settle for a 15-minute teleconference by way of advance publicity with the champion for last weekend's event.

The American writer, John Updike once suggested that: "Gods do not answer letters." So it is that Woods's popularity doesn't seem to be affected by his refusal to slow down long enough to sign autographs during a practice round. He won't adjust his routine to fit in a sit-down television interview. His post-round press conference last Saturday had to be delayed while he went to the practice ground.

He has become the quintessential product of the sports marketing age, representing Nike, General Motors, American Express, Rolex, Golf Digest, General Mills, Warner Books, EA Sports, CBS SportsLine and Asahi Beer, all of which earn him millions without placing any serious demands on him to speak.

When he was a child developing the skills which would bring him to last Sunday's milestone, Woods taped what appeared to be the untouchable major records of Nicklaus to the door of his closet. At first there were 18 to go; at the beginning of this, his fourth, full year in professional ranks, there were 16. Now there are 13.

Like Nicklaus, he carries the undeniable stamp of greatness. And in terms of quality and tension, his battle with May bears comparison with the titanic struggle which Tom Watson fought with the Bear for the British Open crown at Turnberry in 1977. That was when they were level at the halfway stage and Watson finished 65, 65 to 65, 66 from his rival.

In the context of what Woods had done, Watson recalled that epic encounter of 23 years ago. "The shot he [Nicklaus] hit against me out of the rough on the last hole at Turnberry, I couldn't have done that," said Watson. "He was about the only player who could have got out of that lie."

He went on: "I was kind of licking my chops as I walked back to my ball on the fairway. I said `Well, I have a one-stroke lead and he looks like he might not even get it to 30 yards from the green.' And here he comes and launches this shot and it bounces on the green and I'm thinking `Oh Geez, there is Nicklaus for you'."

May could have echoed those words, replacing the name of Woods for the Bear, after the critical, 15th hole on Sunday. Trailing by a stroke playing the hole, the champion hit a poor approach into a greenside swale from where his recovery putt was badly misjudged, finishing more than 10 feet wide of the hole.

The challenger, meanwhile, had hit a glorious approach to five feet. Given where Woods lay in three, it seemed certain there would be a one, possibly two-shot swing at the hole, making May an odds-on favourite for the title. That was when Woods produced the sort of response which Watson had encountered at Turnberry. Almost incredibly, he holed the putt with the result that May, clearly shaken, made a poor birdie attempt and they left the green with pars.

As it happened, that was the only time May's nerve seemed to fail him under the most intense pressure imaginable. But his performance didn't come as any surprise to Phil Mickelson, who was a Walker Cup colleague at Portmarnock in 1991.

"When the average fan looks at Bob May, they just see a good, young player. But when I was growing up in San Diego, Bob May dominated. He was a couple of years older than I was and he won every Southern California Junior Championship there was," Mickelson said.

"He qualified for the LA Open when he was only 16 and he has been a top, top player at every level of the game. He is also a very tough competitor. He was one of the most difficult guys to beat head-to-head as a junior. So it didn't surprise me at all to see him go head-to-head with Tiger and play the way he did."

For his own part, May said: "I have always thought I had a good game for majors, because I keep the ball in play pretty well. But Tiger plays a different game than we play. He hits the ball incredibly far, as everyone knows. And when he hit the ball off the first tee, over those trees on the left, I knew it was going to be a tough day."

May concluded: "If I had won, it would have been a dream come true. Not only to win a major but to beat probably - well, we can't say he is the best golfer ever to play; it wouldn't be fair to a lot of other players who have played before him. When he is done, he may be the best player. And I went head-to-head with him and, you know, lost out in a play-off."

Listening to May and observing his graciousness in defeat, a decidedly curious thought crossed my mind. Could it be that he would enjoy his day in the Kentucky sun, more than his conqueror may be able to do? If so, then Woods is indeed making a huge sacrifice in the hope of one day emerging out of Nicklaus's shadow.