THE remark was certain to have the game's journeymen roaring their approval: "If somebody handed you enough money to be comfortable the rest of your life it would probably make a four footer a little easier." Reigning USPGA champion, Mark Brooks, was talking this week, almost predictably, about Tiger Woods.
It seems that everybody these days, in or out of golf, is talking about Tiger Woods. Whether his four footers are any easier than those for his older brethren, there is unquestionably a certain comfort to be derived from his 40 million contract with Nike.
The 20 year old phenomenon may soon reach the stage where he will no longer have to endure the tedium of flying in a commercial aircraft. In fact, he is chartering a plane to Sydney for the Australian Open later this month, for the benefit of his father, Earl, who was taken ill last weekend. It represents no more than another stage in a rather special lifestyle that has been mapped out for a player who is expected to dominate the professional game for the next 25 years.
Brooks, who grafted for almost eight seasons to achieve the tournament earnings that Woods has amassed in eight weeks, could be forgiven his feelings of envy. Yet he makes some valid points. For instance, every sporting activity undertaken by Woods since the age of two has been geared towards golf.
"No other 20 year old in the history of the game has been groomed this way," Brooks says. "Most of the rest of us messed around with football or basketball or baseball until we got out of high school. Our golf games didn't develop until we were in our early twenties."
Rather than looking for reasons to explain Woods's astonishing, recent dominance, however, there are other, more pragmatic practitioners, who are taking a more competitive view. They could be likened to the snooker professionals who, confronted by the superior skills of Steve Davis during the 1980s, resolved to work harder in the hope of closing the chasm in class.
By his own admission, US Masters champion Nick Faldo will be putting extra effort into the daily work outs that have made him one of the game's fittest players. This year's British Open champion and leading US money winner, Tom Lehman, is responding to the inescapable reality of being unable to match Woods's power without plutonium supplements. "For me, the answer is to sharpen up my short game," he says.
"If you looked at Tiger's record before he joined the tour, it wasn't that impressive. I attribute that to the fact that it's difficult to come out here once in a while and make an impact before returning to school. He was going from economics to the Masters and then back to biology. That's pretty rough.
I expected that once he got out here full time and was travelling and playing and totally focused on the tour, he was going to be the Tiger Woods he was on the amateur circuit. In other words, a dominant player.
"And when you have a new person coming along who is an obvious, can't miss superstar. I think guys work that much harder because they don't want to give up what they've achieved, what they've earned. Nobody wants to get passed over by a new person.
"It may come to a point where this new person is just so talented you just can't help it. It's unavoidable. Until that happens, I think everybody is going to do their upmost to see that they stay tough by continuing to move forward and improving."
For the moment, however, Woods is perceived, in typical American parlance, as being competitively bullet proof. He has been conditioned to the idea since appearing on US television hitting golf balls as a two year old.
He would have seen nothing remarkable in these outrageous words of his father, a few months ago: "There is no comprehension by anyone of the impact this kid is going to have not only on the game of golf but on the world itself. The Lord sent him here on a mission and it will transcend the game.
Earl, the golfing prophet, spent last weekend in a Tulsa hospital with acute bronchitis, but was well enough on Tuesday to return to his home in California. The closeness of father and son can be gauged from the fact that the news prompted Tiger to shoot a closing 68 in the Tour Championship on Monday, compared with a wretched second round of 78 the previous Friday, as a reaction to his father's hospitalisation.
In the first round at Southern Hills last week, Woods drove the ball 353 yards at the 619 yard fifth hole, a full 90 yards beyond his playing partner Brad Faxon. It didn't surprise him. "It's always been there," he said calmly. "I've always been long, naturally."
He explained of his slim, 6ft 2in frame: "I've just been blessed with enormous hip speed and shoulder rotation. I've also had enormous growth bursts.
"I remember a time in Florida where I grew a half inch in two weeks. I gained about 20 yards just because my swing are changed."
His schedule for the remainder of this year will see him competing in the Australian Open on November 21st to 24th he then plays in the annual Skins Game with John Daly. Fred Couples and Tom Watson on November 30th to December 1st; followed by the JC Penney Classic on December 5th to 8th, possibly with Kelli Kuehne, a member of the beaten US Curtis Cup team at Killarney last June, as his partner.
Meanwhile, experienced players in the US are vying with each other to offer credible explanations for this stunning talent. In this context, former LPGA professional, Carol Mann, was typically expansive. "People have to understand that Tiger is on another planet as far as his thinking is concerned.
"He doesn't know anything about fear or frustration or failure. All he has every done is win. He doesn't think like other people. When he says he can win every tournament he plays in, he really believes it."
One suspects that the process will be greatly facilitated by the fact that his rivals, in ever increasing numbers, are coming to share that view - whatever about Lehman's determination to hold the line.
