Tiger Woods Needs Krishna as Caddy

Sports Saturday

 

I know that golf television announcers are reassuring us (and themselves) that the game has grown beyond Tiger Woods, whose brilliant career has been sidetracked by injuries and domestic problems. I also know that I will not be watching this weekend’s PGA Championship because Tiger missed the cut.

For people like me, golf is devolving back to the days of BT (before Tiger), a time in the 1990’s when indistinguishable men vied for trophies that seemed to carry little meaning.  Then Tiger burst on the scene, taking golf courses by storm (including the once-segregated Masters) and sending golf’s television ratings into the stratosphere.  Now that time seems like a lightning flash, illuminating everything before plunging the world back into darkness.

What could get me to come back?  How about Tiger following the footsteps of Rannulph Junah, the hero of Steven Pressfield’s golfing novel The Legend of Bagger Vance.

 

Bagger Vance is based on, of all things, The Bhagavad Gita, the great Hindu poem about a young warrior finding his way through the world.  In the novel, Junah is a once promising golfer who has been emotionally devastated by World War I, even though he served heroically in it.  For various reasons, he finds himself involved in a special exhibition match with two of golf’s legendary figures, Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen.

But he plays the match as much against his inner torment as against these golfers. As Pressfield puts it, he is battling against “his little self, that yammering fearful ever-resistant self that freezes chokes, tops, nobbles, shanks, skulls, duffs, flubs.”

By echoing The Gita, Pressfield is able to give an epic quality to this battle. Guiding Junau is an old black man named Bagger Vance, who is the novel’s version of Krishna.  As in The Gita, Bagger is counseling the young warrior (Prince Arjuna) through life’s trials.  Junah must learn to let go of attachment and surrender to “the perfect swing” that he has within.  If he does so, he will not only prevail in the match.  He will conquer his demons.

It’s interesting how golf has turned to Eastern religions in recent years.  Most notably, there was Michael Murphy’s 1971 novel Golf in the Kingdom, which he followed up in 1997 with The Kingdom of Shivas Irons. Then Tiger appeared to confirm Murphy’s insights by coming into the game talking about Buddhist meditation.  He seemed to have a feel for golf like no previous champion.

But if the Baghavad Gita is any model, Tiger must hit rock bottom before he can find true wisdom.  As Vance puts it, he must “act without attachment, as the earth does. As I do. The rain falls, with no thought of watering the land. The clouds roll, not seeking to bring shade. They simply do. And we must too.”

Tiger’s 10-over par exit from the tournament (15 strokes behind the leader) is rock bottom. No one knows what will happen next.

Can Tiger come back after having lost his way in the self? Can a man who once ruled the golfing world and who then went through public humiliation find his swing again?  And by swing, I mean not not only his golf game.  I mean his authentic self.

Now that’s a drama that I would watch.

 

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