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Decent Exposure Woods deserves to stand alone in the spotlight
Updated: Monday April 09, 2001 11:35 AM
Sports Illustrated senior writer Jack McCallum touches on a Hot Button issue each Monday on CNNSI.com. After you read Jack's take, give us yours. The job of Tiger Tamer is still open. Wide open. There are several excellent candidates with superb swings, nicely creased pants, great tans and Gettyesque bank accounts. But they all seem to come up short in one crucial area: the heart test. Can we cease and desist, sports fans, with the complaints that Masters champ Tiger Woods gets too much coverage? Can we stop the breast-beating that all these other swell fellows on the PGA Tour deserve to be written about? They don't. They don't deserve anything. Tiger deserves it all. He's it. I was once at a tennis tournament where good-but-not-great tour player Dick Stockton read former Sports Illustrated writer Curry Kirkpatrick the riot act because he felt Kirkpatrick -- and by extension others -- gave too much ink to Jimmy Connors and Bjorn Borg. I can't remember exactly what Stockton said but it involved words to this effect: "There are a lot of other guys on the tour giving their all and trying as hard as those guys." I remember there was some sympathetic applause in the room for Stockton's sentiments. But Stockton was dead wrong. There was a reason those two guys got most of the pub and that he was relegated to the agate type. It's very simple: When it counted, Connors and Borg beat Stockton. They beat him all the time. They beat him like Keith Moon beat his drum set. They beat him like my grandmother used to beat her throw rugs. To their credit, I've never heard any of Woods's supporting cast clamor for publicity. But I've heard their fans clamor for it, and I've heard the grumbling about a media that is too fervently pro-Woods. I've got news for you: This ain't figure skating or gymnastics, where the scoring is subjective, folks. All the media is doing is reflecting what's going on, and what's going on is that Tiger is turning everyone else into oatmeal. You think we in the media wouldn't love to chronicle a string of Tiger losses? When he went months without winning, some of the stories made it sound as if he was barely breaking 90 at Humpty Dumpty Hills. But when the money's on the line, the guy makes sure that he's the story. The only story. Oh, where have you gone Tiger Tamers? Davis Love III? Tremendous length off the tee, enough of a complete game to have won a PGA under emotional circumstances. But, alas, against Tiger in the big events he's been barely a blip on the radar screen; at Augusta this year he didn't even play well enough to hang around for the weekend. Ernie Els? Big, strong man whose easy-going temperament suggests he could win 10 majors. But over the last couple of years, whenever he gets within striking distance of Tiger, Els, the runnerup in three majors last year, finds a way to rack up L's. David Duval? Knows how to win, beefed up his body, has the complete game. But there he was on Sunday bogeying No. 16 and missing birdie putts on 17 and 18, the final five-footer not even making contact with the hole. He choked, pure and simple. Phil Mickelson? Long and strong, deadly with the wedge, tough-minded. But there he was, mano a mano with Woods on Sunday, and Mickelson turned into Mickey Mouse. Make no mistake: Tiger could have been taken. Never mind the birdie Woods made on 18 -- he had the tournament won by then. Woods made a miscalculation on 12 that led to a bogey, three-putted from eagle range on 15, made a shaky second-shot swing on 17 and chipped brilliantly to save par. But Mickelson couldn't catch Tiger, failing, as did Duval, to close strong. Tiger is not only the man -- until somebody steps up and does something about it, Tiger is the only man. Sports Illustrated senior writer Jack McCallum writes about a Hot Button issue every Monday on CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the
writer.
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