This score just in: Tiger Woods 1, NBA Finals 0.
We have found the next Michael Jordan . . . on a golf course.
Sorry, Kobe Bryant. There can only be one. And it’s Tiger, who needs only one good leg to rule the sports world.
But can a golfer really be accepted as the best athlete on the planet?
Has Woods forever changed the way we view his game?
In a country that’s slobber- knocking crazy for football, did Tiger finally elevate golf above an excuse to avoid a real athletic activity, like cleaning out the garage?
“Golfers are athletes. They may have a nice walk in the park, but the game is draining mentally, as well as physically,” NBA star Jason Kidd said Wednesday.
With a startling admission that Woods not only played the U.S. Open but limped home holding the trophy on a wounded knee whose ligaments are shredded wheat and a leg bone with more cracks than the windshield of an old Chevy Nova, the 32-year-old golfing giant joined hoops warrior Willis Reed and baseball legend Kirk Gibson on the list of “I don’t believe what I just saw” performances for the ages.
After wearing a grimace while walking more than 20 miles over the five days he needed to chase down and beat Rocco Mediate in a playoff, Woods was asked if he had done further damage to a left knee that has already undergone three surgeries in five years.
“Maybe,” replied Woods, humbly hiding the true extent of his pain.
Maybe for the first time we can talk about guts in golf without referring to the bellies bellying up at the bar at the 19th hole.
Between his gigs as point guard for Team USA and the Dallas Mavericks, Kidd chases the little, white, dimpled ball down the fairway and sometimes into the rough. So I wanted his take on the age-old argument that golf does not hack it as a real sport played by real men.
“It’s one of those things that most guys would have pulled the plug on after the first round,” said Kidd, amazed Woods won his sport’s toughest test with multiple leg injuries now expected to prevent him from playing competitive golf again in 2008. “That’s why he’s Tiger. He’s the best.”
In a span of 36 hours, the invincible Woods won his 14th major tourney and the storied Boston Celtics captured their 17th championship banner.
But who is the real sports dynasty here?
In the NBA Finals, Boston star Paul Pierce went from a wheelchair after tweaking a knee in Game 1 to unstoppable MVP of the final round so quickly Los Angeles coach Phil Jackson all but called him a faker, wondering aloud if Oral Roberts was serving as team trainer for the Celtics.
The most noise Bryant made during a championship round inaccurately hyped as his personal coronation was by stumbling around in Air Jordan shoes obviously way too big for his feet.
With this remarkable won- and-done act, however, Woods has stolen the headlines crawling across the bottom of television screens and has dominated the conversation at water coolers throughout America in a way that Jack Nicklaus never could.
Of course, there will be hockey goons and other chest-thumping advocates of testosterone-laced sports that will insist the real story here is: Karma bites Tiger.
Why? Because, not long ago, Woods had the audacity to joke, “I don’t think anyone really watches hockey anymore.”
Funny, without Woods, golf again reverts to a niche sport easy to ignore and more like hockey than anybody on the PGA Tour or in NHL executive offices would like to admit.
From Muhammad Ali to Reggie Jackson and Tom Brady, rare is the athletic performer who’s so dazzling that America simply cannot take its eyes off the star.
But for the first time in 50 years, a golfer might stand atop the country’s pop-culture heap.
How big is Tiger?
Without his roar, the sports world just got a lot quieter, and we’re all going to miss the noise.
Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com
