Champions Are Different

Thomas Boswell in the Washington Post writes about how you and me are not Tiger and Jack:

In a different way, Woods defined, once again, how far he stands from any definition of "normal" behavior and how close he stands to the legends to whom he can be compared. Jack Nicklaus, for example, sometimes seemed not to have been present when he hit his worst shots; somebody else must have done it. Once, he topped a drive less than 100 yards at the World Series of Golf. Afterward, he described the hole as "driver, 3-wood, up and down for par." Pressed by eyewitnesses, he maintained, straight-faced, that he hadn't hit an especially bad drive. Yeah, only 200 yards shorter than normal...

When others might have felt sad, demoralized or any other emotion that might seem familiar to the rest of us in a moment of sharp disappointment just six weeks after the death of a parent, Woods said, with conviction, that he had only one emotion: "Frustration."

At a time when thousands in the gallery here thought they finally "understood how Tiger feels," they absolutely didn't. If anything, they were further from understanding him than ever...

That sounds about right. Elsewhere in this column, Boswell quotes Tiger saying he knows fans are looking for him to be more emotional after the death of his father. There's something understandable but not entirely attractive about the public wanting to see this guy break down and cry. Maybe later; not in the hunt.