STOPPING BY WOODS ON A VAPID EVENING

The other night I was dozing in front of a documentary on History’s mahaan-atmas when in between JFK and FLW popped out you know you-Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods- the richest ‘athelete’ on planet earth and the master of every meadow that he’d ever wandered across.Tiger Woods- poise personified, boyish charm and a glistening steel iron in his arm. The voice over led me around his manicured childhood, explaining how Tiger had taken to Golf at the early age of six, excelled with obvious ease and left everyone else way behind by the time he was only in his mid twenties. The sonorous voice waxed eloquent about how the prodigiously talented Tiger had first cut his teeth under his father and then gone on to fulfill and exceed every expectation that his old man had ever of him. Pray, how had he prevented burn out? Apparently-by loving what he did.
At that point of time, the music stopped playing in my head and I stopped being the recipient of a thirty minute tribute on the mettle that distinguishes history’s mysteries from common cattle. I stopped masticating and wagging my tail. I sat up straight and wondered-How can someone get burned out by playing Golf? Were they talking about the sunburn caused due to too much time spent under the temperate sun? No this was not about the ill effects of UV on the shoulder blades. This was the basic question that tossed and turned in the tummy of every ESPN fanatic when he spotted scatterings of pot bellied men tip-toe their way around infinite expanses of distilled chlorophyll. Is Golf a real Game?
I’d say-No.If Golf’s a game, a real competition sport, then so are the staring contest we used to have as kids in school. (I’m sure we burned more calories there.) I mean, seriously- the last person on earth who could ever get the faintest symptoms of burn out is Tiger Woods. Forget the genes that don’t let his nerves fritter and his bum itch when he’s putting a delicate birdie and just look at his name-he’s got vegetation in his genealogy.
He’s Tiger Woods. If he isn’t getting to spend the best part of his life in the quiet, oxygenated all natural freshness that most harrowed urban dwellers only get to catch glimpses of on the Lifestyle and Living channel-then who is? And if a second name like Woods wasn’t enough, he went and changed his first name from Eldrick to Tiger; you know-just to let the competition beware of what was lurking around the woods; waiting to judge the wind, the slope and the coefficient of friction on the blades of the grass and then pounce on the unwary if they dared to venture in too far.
And coming to the heart of the matter, who decided that Golf was a competition sport? Why is it shown Live on TV when all Golfers do is whack a ball, walk (not run) after it (or take a motorized cart if its far) and keep tapping it around tamely till it rolls into a hole in the ground. (Wouldn’t it be more fun if a gloved, helmeted opponent tried to defend the hole?) There’s no apparent urgency and no real-time competition where a point lost by one man or team is a point won by another. Everyone just turns up in sharply creased slacks, keeps grinning like douche faced diplomats and continues putting to their heart’s content till the sun’s gone down. Not one of the men ever look like they could run half way to where their cars were parked if it started to rain. These ‘sportsmen’ don’t even have to carry their own gear around the Golf courses, just to make sure that they don’t break into sweat. Golfers have anti-perspirants named Caddies who keep handing their mai-baaps their irons of choice, retrieving lost balls and generally playing Watson to their unhurried escapades. I’m sure retired, arthritic, park benchers burn more calories in moving chess pieces by the hour than the average golfer.
Any surprise then as to how the legendary Jack Nicklaus last appeared in the PGA tour when he was all of sixty-five? Tiger Woods will, of course, overtake him sooner rather than later as the greatest Golfer ever-but what may actually be worth pondering is whether his Golfing records will ever be held in the same light as Ali’s thirty plus knockout fights or Pele’s thousand plus goals. In reality, it doesn’t matter. Because, with the obscene expenses involved in even its basic indulgence at the club level and its virutal inaccessibility to the common public, Golf isn’t so much of a game as an obsequious status symbol. It’s like stirring a vulgarly priced drink amongst friends at a posh club; the men’s equivalent of a starched linen English Tea Party, an excuse to unwind, network and tom-tom about in the circles that matter. And if anyone ever got burnt-out doing that, well- they could stay at home and get even fatter.