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.All famous ath-letes are expected to perform at their best when it counts.Michael168 TIGER WOODSJordan, a good friend of Woods, always seemed to want the ball whenthe game-winning shot was called for, and he very often came through.So Woods is often called the Michael Jordan of golf.However, it isdiffi cult to compare an athlete in a team sport to an individual per-former.About the only real comparison to Woods is Roger Federer intennis.But this comparison is not completely valid, since in tennis theperformance of your opponent has a considerable amount to do withyour own performance.Federer has won 15 major championshipsthe 2009 Wimbledon Championship, going one ahead of Woods, andbreaking the record of Pete Sampras.The comparison is inevitable.Both are clients of IMG, but Woodsis far and away a more valuable property than the tennis player.Forexample, the overnight Nielsen ratings for the final round of the BuickOpen in 2006 were 5.6.The ratings for the final match of the Austra-lian Open tennis championship in 2006 were 0.5, which translates toless than 900,000 viewers.Something called a  Q score measures aperformer s awareness and appeal to an audience.Roger Federer had aQ score of 14 compared to a 40 for Tiger Woods.The Davie-Brown tal-ent agency has developed another measurement of advertising appealcalled a DBI Score.79 Once again Woods has more than twice Feder-er s score (86.1 to 44.8).80 Advertisers have tried to capitalize on theWoods/ Federer friendly rivalry, casting them together in shaving razorcommercials.81Tiger s objective has always been the 18 major championships wonby Jack Nicklaus.Federer recently eclipsed the record of Pete Sampras,who won 14 major championships82 in tennis over a 12-year period,when he won the 2009 Wimbledon title.83 Despite the relative popu-larity of tennis, golf, with the help of Tiger Woods, far surpasses it inadvertising revenue.AND SO ONAn interesting op-ed article in the New York Times by conservativepolitical writer David Brooks mentions, of all people, Tiger Woods.Thepiece is about what makes a genius.With all the speculation about whyTiger Woods became who he is, whether it was because of his father, hismother, or some mystical force, Brooks notes that what modern scienceIMPACT 169tells us is that what separates genius from the rest of us is not a divinespark, but practice.The simple fact is that IQ and natural talent arenot chief factors.What Mozart had, we now believe, was the same thing Tiger Woodshad the ability to focus for long periods of time and a father intent onimproving his skill.Mozart played a lot of piano at a very young age,so he got his 10,000 hours of practice in early and then he built fromthere.84In another article he further expounds on Woods s ability to controlhimself and most of what goes on around him:As an adult, he is famously self-controlled.His press conferencesare a string of carefully modulated banalities.His lifestyle is me-ticulously tidy.His style of play is actuarial.He calculates oddsand avoids unnecessary risks like the accounting major he onceplanned on being. I am by nature, a control freak, he (Woods)once told John Garrity of Sports Illustrated, as Garrity resisted thetemptation to reply,  You think? 85When a political columnist is regularly making reference to a sportsfigure, it is probably a good time to pause and try to put in context allthe infl ated expectations about Tiger Woods and his place in golf his-tory and American culture.The year 2009 was the first since returningfrom major surgery on his knee, and also the first year since 2004 thathe didn t win a major championship or make the cut in the BritishOpen.It might appear that his career has peaked and that due to theseand other factors (family, commercial commitments, the Foundation)we will see his accomplishments diminish.Unfortunately, the statisticsbelie this prediction.While he didn t win a major, he finished sixth intwo majors and second in the third, won six times on the PGA Tour,and won the FedEx Cup.He won seven tournaments through the sum-mer of 2009.He remains number one on the PGA Money List.Hestood number one in the Sony Rankings, and his win of the FedEx Cupis emblematic of the best golfer of the year.Nobody can predict how long Tiger Woods will continue to have theability to  focus for long periods of time. He has clearly demonstratedthat he no longer needs a father  intent upon improving his skill.170 TIGER WOODSRather than speculating on  whatever happened to Tiger Woods, itseems that the best thing to do is to simply sit back and enjoy his quest tobecome the greatest golfer of all time, as one might listen to a Mozartpiano concerto.NOTES1.John R.Catsis, Sports Broadcasting (Chicago: Nelson-Hall Pub-lishers 1996), 5.2.Ibid., 16.3.Ibid., 27.4.Ibid., 32.5.This cut down significantly on production costs since the broad-casters didn t have to travel and their headquarters were in New York.6.Catsis, 30.7.Ibid., 16.8.Ibid., 93.9.The Masters,  Official Site of the Masters Tournament, http://www.masters.org/en_US/history/jacket/palmer.html.10.The Masters,  Official Site of the Masters Tournament, http://www.masters.org/en_US/history/jacket/palmer.html.11.Louisville Slugger Museum, http://www.slugger.com/museum/.12.Curt Sampson, Chasing Tiger (Atria Books, 2002), 195.13.John Feinstein, The First Coming (New York: Ballantine, 1998), 17.14.As quoted in Sampson, 196.15.Michael Sokolove,  Constructing a Teen Phenom, New YorkTimes Magazine, November 22, 2004, 81.16.Sampson, 208.17.Feinstein, 58 59.18.As quoted in Tom Callahan, In Search of Tiger (New York:Crown Publisher, 2003), 142.19.As quoted in Tim Rosaforte, Tiger Woods: The Making of a Cham-pion (New York: St.Martin s Press, 1997), 142.20.John Strege, A Biography of Tiger Woods (New York: BroadwayBooks, 1998), 195.21.David Owen, The Chosen One (New York: Simon & Schuster,2001), 35.22.Sampson, 205.IMPACT 17123.Titleist Company,  Titleist, http://www.titleist.com/mediacenter/pressreleases.asp.24.Strege, 189.25.Owen, 206.26.Sampson, 212.27.Jonah Freedman,  Ranking The 50 Highest-Earning Athletesin the World, SI.Com, http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/more/specials/fortunate50/2008/index.html.28.Sampson, 212.29. Elite Players Have Their Clothes Laid Out for Them, NewYork Times, July 13, 2009, D1.30.Bob s Blitz, April 9, 2009, http://njfrogman.blogspot.com/2009/04/video-tiger-woods-cartoon-gatorade.html.31. Tiger Woods, Sporadic Gamer, New York Times, June 26, 2009,http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/arts/television/27woods.html?_r= 1.32.ABC News,  Tiger Woods Tees Off with Robin Roberts,June 25, 2009, http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=7926326.33.Tracey John,  Jimmy Fallon Crushes Tiger Woods Wii Golf, Wired,http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/06/jimmy-fallon-tiger-woods-wii/.34. Tiger Gets New Stripes: Accenture Launches New Global Ad-vertising and Marketing Campaign Based on Three-Year  High Perfor-mance Business Research, The Free Library, http://www.thefreelibrary.com/ Tiger+Gets+New+Stripes:+Accenture+Launches+New+Global+Advertising+and.-a0154337605.35.Quoted from article in Rick Horrow and Karla Swatek,  Pro GolfHoles It for Charity, Business Week, May 7, 2009, http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/may2009/bw2009057_627236.htm.36 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]