Why Phil Mickelson was the Best Winner of the Tiger Woods Circus We Call the 2010 Masters
Yesterday afternoon, my lovely bride of 24 years, agreed to play nine holes of golf with me. This is a remarkable event for two reasons. First, my wife does not share the same passion of the game that I do. So to get her out in April was a treat and bodes well for Sunday afternoon couples golf this season.
And second as a golf enthusiast, I should probably been home watching the final round of the Masters. But this year, I was ambivalent about the tournament until the final hour of coverage.
I have never been to the Masters in person, but I would like to make that trip sometime. More importantly, I would love to have the opportunity to play the course with my father who by and large is the most passionate, enthusiastic golfer I have ever known. I took him to Pebble Beach this year where we met Tom Watson and Johnny Miller and he thought he was in golf heaven. If I could ever figure out a way to play the hallowed grounds of Augusta with him, his life as a golfer would be complete. But I digress from the topic of the 2010 Masters.
This year’s Masters was billed as the return of Tiger Woods after an absence from the golfing world due to personal digressions. Unfortunately, that pretty much dominated the news media the first few days of coverage. With Tiger lurking near the top of the leader board, people were interested to see if he would make a run at it. They were amazed at how much he could concentrate and bring a high level of intensity after “all that he had been through.”
Give me a break. It’s not like life forced him into his current predicament. He made a $110,000,000 last year, and because of his off course antics he will earn far less this year in the endorsement world. Good!
This sad fascination of the public with Tiger along with the cozy attitude towards him during the week is the disconnect with celebrity and reality. If anyone else were to pull the stunts that Tiger has pulled, their wife would have probably left them and even fewer fans would have cheered upon their return to the public eye.
Let’s contrast that with the eventual winner, Phil Mickelson. Largely unnoticed during the Tiger feeding frenzy of the early rounds, Lefty went about taking care of business. As the week went on and he ended up close to the top of the leader board, playing in the final pairing on Sunday, the media began to focus a bit on Phil.
And when he finally won, and his wife was waiting for him at the 18th green, the story was told. You see Phil also took some time off over the last 11 months for treatment. But the treatment Phil was concerned with was his wife Amy’s breast cancer. The whole week Amy was so weakened that she had not attended any of the rounds at the Masters.
In fact Phil said “I was just really glad she was there. I wasn’t sure is she was going to be there today. To walk off the green and share that with her is very emotional for us.”
But when he won, and they shared a long embrace, it stood in stark contrast to the Tiger story the media had been talking about all week. This was a family that was dealt a blow by fate with Amy’s cancer. They dealt with the adversity largely outside of the public eye, asking for no one’s sympathy and pretty much ignored by the media because it wasn’t scandalous.
How Phil was able to focus and concentrate was never discussed, even though he had to be distracted while his partner was fighting for her life. My question is not how Tiger could concentrate after all he has been through, but rather how could Phil play such a flawless round of golf after the life and death concerns surrounding Amy. I know somewhere on the final holes his mind had to wander to whether or not Amy would be waiting on the 18th Green to greet him. But he held it all together like the Champion he was with nary a single bogey in the final round.
Phil played some phenomenal golf to win including an incredible shot on 13 that should go down in the Masters highlight reels for all time. Playing under a tree, off pine needles, he hits a 6 iron purely 207 yards, over a creek, onto the green within a few feet of the pin. There are maybe handful of guys in the world that could have pulled that off, and maybe only two that would have tried it on Sunday while in contention to win the Masters.
Of the two, I am most glad that Phil was the one that won. He stands for everything that the media frenzy around Tiger didn’t cover. And in the end, he wound up the Masters champion with the Green jacket. My guess is even Tiger’s wife was pulling for Phil that day.
