A role model not to follow

Tiger Woods was, at one time, the greatest golfer in the world; some say the greatest athlete in the world. He didn't defeat fields of other excellent golfers, he destroyed them. He won tournaments by double-digit scores. The other professional golfers averaged one whole stroke worse when Tiger was in the field than when he wasn't. The reason for that was pure intimidation. Because he was so dominant and his game was so strong, most other golfers simply didn't think they could beat him.

His only golf instructor growing up was his dad, Earl, a career military man who Tiger idolized and loved. His dad was a single handicap golfer himself and taught Tiger everything he knew. Tiger shot a 48 for nine holes at the Navy Golf Course in Cypress, California when he was 3 years old and broke 80 for 18 holes when he was seven. The world had never seen anyone like him and he took that talent with him first to Stanford University and then to the PGA tour as mentioned above. The value of purses increased significantly when Tiger was at the top of his game and Phil Mickelson recently congratulated Tiger for making him rich because of those increases.

And then it all started falling apart. First, his dad died so his foundation was gone. Some people need another person or persons to help keep their heads on straight and evidently, Tiger's dad was that person in his life because Tiger started making really bad decisions after his dad's death. The first of course was messing around on his wife, a world-famous model, and beauty, with cheap white-trash runarounds which shouldn't have been a temptation to him at all. He and his wife divorced after his numerous affairs and his golf game began to suffer. Now here's the real point of the column.

Tiger started tinkering with his swing. When told he was by far the best golfer on tour, beating everyone handily and often, and asked what was he trying to prove, he said that his game still wasn't as good as it could be and wouldn't be until he could birdie every hole in an 18 hole round of golf. That's where he was wrong. Sometimes we ARE as good as we're gonna get. Sometimes no matter what we do, we're not going to get any better and in fact, sometimes we get worse. That's what happened to Tiger. He employed several different golf coaches, some world renowned, to "fix" a golf swing that, according to most, was pure and perfect. They could have told him no. They could have told him his swing was as good as it was going to get but they didn't. Many athletes by nature are cocky and arrogant because they know they have skills and talents that others don't and coaches are that way too. These guys that Tiger hired wanted the notoriety of being Tiger's swing coach. They also wanted the money that went along with it so they took the job and tried to fix something that wasn't broken. And Tiger got worse instead of better. His stroke average went up instead of down. And because he was trying to teach his body a new swing through repetition, his body started breaking down too, and injuries started occurring that hadn't happened before. I remember that one incredible Monday where he won an 18-hole major championship literally on one leg because the other leg hurt so bad he couldn't put any weight on it. And the problems went from his legs to his back which he's now had surgeries on. He's a shadow of his former self and even those who thought he was the greatest, like me, are resigned to the fact that he'll never be the old Tiger again and may not even win another tournament.

This incredible downfall from the penthouse to the outhouse happened for one simple reason. He was the best there was but thought he could get better and he couldn't. And that should be a lesson to all of us, no matter our field of endeavor. Instead of trying to beat your competitors, whoever they are, by more today than you did yesterday, be proud of beating them at all and take stock of the rest of your life that is good because you learned to do something well.

Not perfect maybe, but good enough that you know you don't have to destroy yourself trying to reach a goal that's unreachable.