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Pa For The Course
Fore! Fellow pros had better lookout. After a break from the game Tiger Woods is back into the swing of things - and this time the world's greatest goldfer will be armed with renewed inspiration after becoming a dad for the first time. FQ's Simon Lewis reveals all.
Remember Tiger Woods? We used to see him a lot on TV playing golf and being not at all bad at it. World number one, in fact, with 13 major titles and more money banked than many small nations. So where did he go? Even allowing for the winter months that keep golfing hackers off the greens between October and March, Tiger, 31, and the pros still find a way to keep playing usually. They swan off to the Middle East and Australasia to compete in lucrative tournaments.
Not this year for Tiger Woods – and not any more – because he’s been enjoying some quality time with daughter Sam Alexis and loving every minute of his first steps into fatherhood.
“It’s been nice to have some time off and hang out with my family,” Woods explains. “We had a good trip on the boat and did a little fishing. Mostly,it was just fun to get away.”
He’s still world number one of course, a position he could quite easily maintain even if he took next summer off as well such has been his domination of golf over the last decade. But while you can be sure to see Woods back in action when the serious business of the 2008 PGA Tour returns to our screens, his re-emergence will have come following the longest break of his golfing career since turning professional in the autumn of 1996. Between the end of September 2007, when he helped the United States to victory over the Internationals in the Presidents Cup, and the New Year, Woods played in just one event and that was one of his own, when he hosted the Target World Challenge in mid-December.
Founding Father
The proceeds from the annual invitational event go towards pet projects such as Tiger Woods Learning Centre in Anaheim, California, and the Tiger Woods Foundation, set up to support community-based youth programmes concerning health, education and welfare. The Foundation has been going strong since 1996 and claims to have helped more than ten million children in its first ten years, so clearly Woods has an affinity with kids. Now he has one of his own with his wife Elin giving birth to Sam Alexis on June 18, the day after he finished runner-up at the US Open in Oakmont, Pennsylvania. Elin had been in hospital since the previous Thursday due to some slightcomplications but with her doctors she had assured her husband that competing in the second major of the year would be the right thing to do.
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“I flew home from the US Open, landed in Orlando, went straight to the hospital and next thing you know, we have Sam Alexis in our arms. It’s been fantastic to have her as part of our life. It was a dream come true for both Elin and myself, and all of our family. We’ve had a lot of late nights, but it’s been a lot of fun.
"Being off for this long is different from getting back into the competitive flow. But as far as having time off and being at home with Elin and Sam, it’s been incredible to see how fast they change, how fast they grow, just the little things. You appreciate the little things, and I think that’s the most important thing. But Sam is only five and a half months old so she is not talking yet.”
The birth of his first child gave golf’s top man an immediate sense of perspective as he contemplated a spirited second place behind Angel Cabrera and also a reality check that even multi-millionaire golf pros cannot avoid.
“The day itself was the greatest day I’ve ever had. Win or lose the Open, in the end seeing Sam being born was the greatest thing ever. You get that glowing feeling and it’s fantastic.” No downsides then Tiger? “Yes, probably getting a little bit less sleep. I don’t get a whole lot of sleep to begin with, but it’s even less now. It’s nice to come to a tournament and get some rest. “But I think the greatest thing is no matter how rough a night it is, sleep-wise, just seeing Sam smile in the morning, you forget everything. You hear that from a lot of parents, but until you actually get to experience it yourself and actually feel it, then you are thankful for it.”
Golf fans had not been used to seeing emotion from their idol save for the regular fist pumps that greeted the miraculous shots that pepper his rounds in the big events. At least they hadn’t until that summer’s day at Royal Liverpool during the 2006 Open Championship, when, 11 weeks after the death of his father Earl, Woods sealed victory and crumbled into the arms of his caddie Steve Williams in an understandable yet unexpected outpouring of grief. When his first child arrived, Woods’ daughter’s name gave him a link to the father he lost to cancer 13 months previously.
“We wanted to have a name that would be meaningful to either side of the family, my side or Elin’s side. She was born basically around the time of Father’s Day too, so it just happened to fit. My father had always called me Sam since the day I was born. He rarely ever called me Tiger. I would ask him, ‘Why don’t you ever call me Tiger?’ He would say, ‘Well, you look more like a Sam’. And I’d say, ‘All right, that’s cool’.”
Former soldier Earl Woods had an awful lot to do with his son’s development as a golfer and a man, and the military lifestyle and outlook made a lasting impression on Woods junior. |
“With my father I grew up well. He was in the military for just over 20 years, and being a Green Beret for 12 of those years, I think that you’re around it, you understand the level of commitment. I told dad, if I didn’t make it in the first two years, where I would go. I would probably end up going into the military and I don’t know what branch but I certainly would want to get into the special operations community.”
Chip off the old block
The low profile has been broken only for occasional musings on Tiger’s Blog, which adorns his website but nonetheless gives an insight into where possibly the greatest golfer of all time has been placing his priorities recently.
“My eyes light up every time I see my new daughter,” Woods says. “Sam Alexis is five months old and has held a golf club in her hands. I didn’t start swinging a club until I was 11 months so she’s got six months until that happens.”
It will be a while before Sam Alexis Woods starts appearing on leaderboards but Woods becoming a father has led some golfing observers to speculate on how focused he can continue to be now he has a daughter to dote on. The initial evidence since June seems to render that speculation unfounded and Woods has heard it all before anyway. Will fatherhood be a distraction?
“Well, they have been saying that a lot. First it was getting engaged and then it was getting married and now having a child. It’s always something. I don’t see how it can be negative. It’s been great. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
Something Woods has also grown used to and embraced are the comparisons to Jack Nicklaus – the one golfer whose achievements have so far eclipsed his own. The Golden Bear won 18 majors – and all of them once he had become a father. Woods continues to aspire to Nicklaus’s professional and familial standards.
“I haven’t quite experienced what Jack Nicklaus experienced, and how it’s going to be when we start travelling together. But for him to do that throughout his entire career and raise great kids, just great kids – I mean, Barbara is fantastic. She’s the best. And to have as close a family as they have, because a lot of times, when people are travelling a bunch, there’s a disconnect, and that’s certainly not apparent in the Nicklaus household.”
It’s a bond that Woods is keen to replicate.
“I want to have that as well, because my mom and dad were always there for me, and I know I can’t physically be there all the time – but I’ll try and be there as much as I possibly can.”
Expanding the Tiger family is another priority, with Woods adding: “It’s something Elin and I talked about on our first night. How can you love something so much that didn’t exist the day before? We never experienced anything like that. And certainly it’s a feeling that was different and one that was special and something that we want to experience again.”
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