TRAINING A TIGER

Victor Bloom MD

I know many Grosse Pointers who are golfers and who have been following the miraculous career path of young Tiger Woods avidly. There is good reason--- the young man shows promise of becoming the greatest golfer of the 21st century, which is no mean feat considering the luminaries of past years, such as Byron Nelson, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. Several sportwriters have already called 21 year old Tiger Woods the number one living golfer, and sure enough the greats insist he has the most perfect game anyone has ever seen. He is the best driver, chipper and putter ever, and one cannot help but wonder what went into his winning ways.

One need not wonder long. His father, Earl Woods, a former green beret, wrote the book and did most of the parenting, coaching and training. His new book, "Training a Tiger" is aptly named, and he details the process by which a small baby was acquainted with golf and a tiny golf club. This first toy was his immediate delight, and before he could walk he was toddling around on a wheeler-walker with his ever-present golf club. At age two he was on the Mike Douglas show and participated in a putting contest with Bob Hope!

At age four he won a golf tournament with ten year olds. That was the first of his many precocious victories, leading to his unprecedented winning of three successive amateur tournaments, and finally, the amazing 'Open', his first professional tournament. Recently, in the Master's at Augusta, he broke record after record, against the top players of the world, who magnanimously agreed in consensus, that he was the greatest player they had ever seen. The year before 'the shark', Greg Norman, blew a five stroke leader to fall to Nick Faldo in the Master's. This year, as if completely humbled, awestruck and intimidated by Tiger Wood's spectacular performance, Faldo and Norman 'choked' and didn't even make the cut. Woods broke the Master's record in winning by 12 strokes.

Of what interest is all this to a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst? The answer is simple--- all the experts know that golf, probably more than any other sport, is a 'head-game'. You have to have your head on straight, you have to keep your cool, your concentration, your focus. You cannot be rattled or choke. To a Freudian it means that you don't have any unconscious, unresolved conflicts. For example, on a television interview Greg Norman admitted that his father said he would never amount to anything. The interviewer asked if he choked, because Greg Norman is well known to have a history of blowing leads. He is an enormously talented golfer, and has won the most money, and is very successful in business, but it is well known that when it really counts, he can and does, miss an easy putt. Greg Norman denied, in this nationally-televised interview, that this apparent choking under pressure is psychological. He shrugged his broad shoulders and passed it off. "It is just one of those things".

Professionally experienced psychoanalysts know it is not just one of those things, that in all probability his father's admonition that he would never amount to anything, is in his unconscious and works to trip him up. People think we can just shrug off or let go of messages we get from our parents. This is not the case!

The book, "Training a Tiger" by Tiger Woods' father, Earl, is a case in point. Unlike the messages Greg Norman got as a boy, Tiger's father constantly gave him messages of encouragement and support. He was a very creative and determined parent who wanted his son to be a great golfer, and knew he had to start early, but who never, in spite of his wishes, ever pressured the boy. He always held out golf practice as a reward for doing his studies and chores, and always made it fun and interesting. He set it up so that Tiger would seek out golf practice, rather than have it imposed upon him. And believe it or not, at age two, Tiger knew how to telephone his father at his office and ask him if he could practice with him after work! Earl would deliberately pause before giving an answer, creating some tension, implying the answer might be no, but it was always "yes!" and the little boy was delighted. Imagine this, that Tiger was not allowed to call his father on the phone until his mother had finished teaching him with flashcards, yes, at that early age, the alphabet and simple arithmetic. Even before he could add or subtract, Tiger intuitively knew the difference between birdie, par and bogie, before he was five!

What Earl did to make practice interesting, was to invent games, at first putting games, then chipping, and finally driving, which suited the developmental abilities of a young child admirably. At first the ball would be put one foot from the hole, and after he could do that on a regular basis, the ball would be moved to two feet, and so on. For longer putts he would be taught to imagine the trajectory of the ball before hitting, and he would hit hundreds of balls until he could get them all close to the pin. He was taught to two-putt. Three-putting was a mistake.

So Tiger learned that golf was fun, but that business came before pleasure. First he had to do his lessons, then he could play. No wonder he was accepted to Stanford. Tiger's mother and father worked as a unified team; there were no differences of opinion, no conflict about priorities or the fantasies of his playing championship golf. And on top of this, his parents made sure that in addition to everything else, he had a sports psychologist in constant attendance during his high school years. No doubt that had much to do with his winning the amateurs.

Tiger was fortunate to have good genes and the best of guidance. Parents wanting the best of advice about how to optimize child development would do well to read "Training a Tiger" and to heed its advice, regardless of their particular aims for their child or children. The story is true and inspirational; it is a model for our times.