If you have ever been defeated, if you have ever felt you can’t come back from something, if you ever think you’ve lost everything, I want you to remember two words: Tiger Woods
Welcome to Plain English, the podcast that lets you, the English learner, explore the world with your new language. I’m Jeff, JR is the producer, and you’re listening to Episode 150. You can find an interactive multilingual transcript of this episode online at PlainEnglish.com/150.
Coming up on today’s episode: Tiger Woods was, at one time, the very best golfer in the world and one of the most famous athletes in the world. The savior of the sport of golf. The greatest of all time. You pick the superlative you want to use to describe Tiger Woods. And then he lost everything. He had one of the most spectacular personal meltdowns in the history of modern celebrities. Now, eleven years after it all came crashing down, Tiger Woods came back, at 43 years old, to win his fifteenth major golf championship. Later on today, we’ll talk about the expression, “reap the rewards.” And a new feature—a quote of the week. Today’s is from Victor Hugo’s novel about Notre-Dame cathedral. So stay tuned for that.
Before we get started, I want to give you a quick education on golf. There are four so-called “major” tournaments on the calendar each year, three in the US and one in Britain. They are the most prestigious tournaments of the year, but there are lots of tournaments around the world that are not considered majors. The Master’s is the first one on the calendar, in April every year in Augusta, Georgia. There are varying opinions, but many people consider the Master’s to be the most prestigious of the tournaments. It has the greatest traditions and history. I am among those who thinks the Master’s Tournament is the most prestigious. So with that in mind, let’s get going on the episode.
Tiger Woods completes his comeback with a win at the Master’s
Tiger Woods won the Master’s. There was a time when that statement wouldn’t have surprised anyone. Just another major golf tournament won by the best golfer in the world. Tiger won the Master’s in 1997, 2001, 2002, and 2005. Almost from his debut on the scene of professional golf in 1996, Tiger Woods dominated the world of golf. If he wasn’t winning a tournament, he was at least in the conversation.
He was the youngest person to win the Master’s in 1997, at age 21. Not only did he win that tournament, as a 21-year-old, he won it by 12 strokes, which is a blowout. If you’re not familiar with golf, you usually win by one, two, or three strokes. A four-stroke win is a big one. At age 21, Tiger won the most prestigious tournament by 12 strokes.
Between 1997 and 2008, eleven years, he won fourteen major championships. Remember, there are only four a year. Jack Nicklaus, often considered the greatest golfer ever, won 18 championships over 25 years. Tiger had won 14 in less than half the time. He is the only person to have won four consecutive major golf championships. He has the lowest average score of any professional golfer—a low score is good in golf. In addition to all those majors, he won another 65 tournaments that were not considered majors. Tiger Woods has the highest career earnings of any professional athlete. In 2009, Forbes magazine estimated he had earned a billion dollars.
Even all of that doesn’t do justice to what Tiger Woods was during the prime of his career. He was one of the only athletes in America that had true cross-cultural celebrity. That means people outside his sport, even outside the world of sports, knew about him, liked him, respected him. The game of golf, when he came on the scene, was struggling. It was losing TV audiences. Young people weren’t playing the game; it was considered an old person’s game. There was no energy to it. No minorities.
Tiger Woods changed all that. He started swinging a golf club when he was four years old and never looked back. He was an instant celebrity, even as a teenager in California. He signed with Nike at age 20. He dominated the PGA Tour, which is the professional golf association, as soon as he became a pro. He breathed life into the game. All of a sudden, young people wanted to play golf again. The crowds at the tournaments started swelling, people following Tiger along the course. TV ratings went through the roof. Golf was back, and Tiger Woods was the 21st-Century face of it.
Not everyone liked him. He was never an especially likeable guy, either on the course, in interviews or whatever, but everyone respected him. He had talent, sure. But he worked. He had an awe-inspiring work ethic. He set a new standard for work ethic on the PGA Tour, and he was rewarded for it.
And then. I will never forget this. Thanksgiving weekend 2009. I remember staring at the computer screen thinking, what in the world are we watching unfold here? It all ended, in one bizarre weekend. He crashed his car into a fire hydrant. His wife was chasing after him, swinging a golf club at him. He was injured and taken to the hospital. In the weeks that followed, a massive scandal exploded. I’ll spare you the details, but it was bad. Tiger withdrew from golf. His sponsors started dropping him: General Motors, Gillette, Accenture, AT&T, Gatorade, all cut ties with him. He got divorced in 2010. He checked himself into rehab. All the details of a massive personal scandal came flooding out in the press, one after another.
He returned to golf in 2010, but over the next few years, he was not his dominating self. He won a few tournaments, but didn’t win a major. He wasn’t dominant, he wasn’t feared on the tour. Then, injuries started to take their toll. He had to withdraw from tournaments in 2013, citing back pain. He had starts and stops. He would often enter tournaments, only to pull out in the middle due to pain. He had surgery after surgery—his wrist, his back, his knees. All this time, he’s not getting any younger. He’s sitting on 14 major championships, whereas the record is 18. In 2017, he told friends, “I’m done.” He had his fourth back surgery. He entered a tournament and was ranked 1,199th in the world.
He had fallen as far as a person could fall, after having reached the pinnacle of professional success. But he kept playing golf, he kept practicing; he was determined to come back. And he got better in 2018; he won a non-major championship. And then he entered the Master’s in 2019. He didn’t lead until the very end, but clinched his victory in the final holes.
He was the second-oldest golfer to win the Master’s tournament. I know golf is often associated with older people, but competitive golf is for young men. To compete in the PGA, you need club speed. You need to swing that club hard and fast in order to get the length you need on the course. Tiger, at age 43, after all of his surgeries, beat a field of younger men. Here are the people who finished behind him: In second place were Dustin Johnson, 34 years old; Brooks Koepka, 28 years old; and Xander Schauffele, 25. Next came Jason Day, 31 years old; Tony Finau, 29; the Italian golfer Francesco Molinari, 36 years old, still seven years younger than Tiger Woods; and Webb Simpson, 33 years old. Behind them, Patrick Cantlay, 27, Rickie Fowler, 30, John Rahm, 24. You get the point.
This was a stunning comeback and a complete career reversal. He did it at the most prestigious major tournament and he did it at age 43. The crowd was with him: they hadn’t forgotten Tiger’s downfall, but they were rooting for him to come back. American sports fans may like to see people fall, but they love seeing a great comeback—and Tiger delivered in a big way.
Nike, by the way, stuck with him during this whole time, and they are reaping the rewards now with being associated with loyalty and this great comeback story. Good for them.
If you’re interested in Tiger Woods, there is a biography of him available. You can read it in English—the title is simply “Tiger Woods.” You can also listen to the audio version. And as a few listeners reminded me, if you listen to audiobooks, you can slow down the speed if you need to, right in the Audible app. That’s pretty cool. The book is good—it’s not exactly an admiring biography, and of course it doesn’t have the latest news on Tiger. But if you’re interested, it’s out there. I read it a few years ago and it’s not too hard, so you should be able to follow it if you’ve read or listened to nonfiction books in English before. And remember you can get a free audiobook with a free trial to Audible by going to PlainEnglish.com/book .
Quick hi to Coty from Argentina. Coty is an English teacher who uses Plain English in her lessons with her students. She was kind enough to take some time to chat with me about the state of English education in Latin America, which was really enlightening and helpful. So thanks Coty and a big hello to all her students in Argentina.
One more today. Hello and thank you to Ricardo from Sao Paulo, Brazil. He tells me he’s been listening to three episodes a day to catch up on the full archive. He has shared Plain English with his wife, Monike, and coworkers and friends. So thanks Ricardo for doing your part to spread the word about Plain English!
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