Tiger Athlete

When you're flat on the back and can't really do anything long enough, you find yourself sitting through parts of sports talk radio when they're talking about golf. Yeesh. And throughout this week I heard at LEAST three different talk radio guys blather on and on that the reason that Tiger Woods is the best golfer in the world and so much better than everyone else is that "he's just such a good athlete." Over and over, a guy would say "I mean wow, he's just SUCH a great athlete!" and you could hear all the listeners nodding their heads together.

Now, if they had been talking about a white guy I might not have even noticed. But when you start talking about an athlete who is black (okay, half black) and you immediately jump to "he's just such an athlete!" as the reason for his excellence, my Xmas senses tingle a bit. Especially in a sport where being a so-so athlete is not necessarily a deal-breaker.

It makes sense to me that if you have 50 golfers in a room, one of them being Tiger Woods, the odds of one of them simply being a better athlete than him would be MUCH greater than the odds of one of them possessing the specific skills set and work ethic that would make them a better golfer than Tiger Woods. Otherwise, someone else would be winning all these majors. I promise you there are more golfers that could beat Tiger in the 40 or in a game of one-on-one than could beat him at golf; I think laying it all on "oh, he's just such a great athlete" is lazy and disingenuous.