So, if one golf legend at the Masters this week added to his legacy a determination not just to bear pain but to smile through it, another prodigy fully entered himself into the public consciousness.
Tiger Woods and new Masters champion Scottie Scheffler provided very different storylines and lessons, but both honored the game of golf and the world of sports.
Start with Woods. Just about everybody is more than familiar with his incandescent career, his self-inflicted travails, his multiple injuries even before his 2021 car wreck, and his truly remarkable and successful determination just to make it back to competitive golf to finish all four rounds at Augusta National. And golf fans at least already were aware of a “new Tiger” in the past four or five years anyway: one who was gracious to competitors, patient with interviewers, and in general markedly lighter in demeanor.
Still, in this iteration of Tiger, the one limping in pain and happy just to compete (and, a triumph itself, to make the cut), there seems to be something even more in the realm of grace.
“It was an unbelievable thing,” he said immediately after the tournament ended, “just having the patrons show their support out there: I don’t think words can really describe that.” And, again and again, he credited not his own work but the work of his “team” of doctors and trainers in making it possible for him to compete. And, most of all, he said it all not in a perfunctory way, but with a smile so wide and genuine that it was infectious. To watch him was no longer just to admire his talent or his toughness, but to find him deeply likable.
Other athletes through the years have gone through winsome maturations before our eyes, starting out arrogant or angry but later welcoming “elder statesmen” roles with a mixture of dignity and charm. Yet, perhaps because he has been so in the spotlight for so long, few seem to have undergone quite so dramatic a transformation — not from being a “bad guy,” because Tiger always had some quite admirable traits, but from one who gave a killer vibe to one who seems approachable and, dare one say it, kind.
Then there is the new wunderkind, Scheffler. He hired veteran caddie Ted Scott after meeting him in Bible study. He married his high school sweetheart. He lost his best friend to bone cancer. He dotes on his sisters. And, albeit in an outwardly placid way, he actually looks like he is having fun out there.
And oh, did I mention that Scheffler is amazingly good? He is the 24th longest driver (of about 200 golfers) on tour. He’s 15th in greens hit in regulation, the best on tour in approach shots from between 125 and 150 yards, the best in “scrambling” from the fringe, and 15th best in “strokes gained putting.” He has all the tools, and he also appears unflappable.
Like his fellow golf star from Dallas, Jordan Spieth, and at least judging from outward appearances, Scheffler reinforces the idea that in this new age of golf, nice guys can finish first.
And now Woods is showing that all-time greats can become nice guys. Kudos both to Scheffler and to Woods, who made this Masters one to smile about.
