Sports writers are a unique and opportunistic bunch, sometimes with a penchant to create news and not just report it. When you get down to it, this quality isn't unique to sports writers but many other journalists, as well, but sports writers have a special gift for it.
Witness the Players Championship at Sawgrass, Ponte Vedra, Florida which ended yesterday with a cool and imperturbable Swede named Henrik Stenson demolishing the field. And, to read the sport pages, you would think Tiger Woods choked, fell apart and is in trouble. Agreed, he was not the usual Tiger with that lethal streak which sees him at his best the last day. But, sports guys and gals, let's get real: he was off the competitive circuit for nine months after his reconstructive knee surgery and is still reestablishing his game. He says the knee is fine, but I would think that some physiological adjustments or alterations occurred in view of the gravity of such surgery and Tiger is still adapting to it. I predict in the next month or so, he will get his act together and win the U.S. Open or the Brit version, called internationally The Open, not the British Open.
Plus consider another fact: Tiger has raised the bar of excellence, and there are a bevy of young talented top guns anxious to take on the master. How often have you seen that scenario played out in sports of the old champion inspiring a host of new challengers?
An athlete like Tiger--or Jack Nicklaus or Ben Hogan----doesn't come along every five years; it's more of a generational thing, every twenty or twenty-five. And even the champions lose. Do you remember how often Jack Nicklaus finished second---more than he did first!
So, I suggest, sports writers of America and the world (I know for a fact the British sports writers are as prone to swift judgements, maybe even more so than their Yankee counterparts), the king is not dead. Be ready to wax ecstatic with purple hyperbolic prose again when the Tiger starts to prowl! He'll burn bright again!
I hope so. I'm one of those who only watches on Sunday if Tiger is in the hunt.
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