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Tiger Woods talks to
Global Golf Post’s Lewine Mair
about Lee Westwood, what he
has in common with the new
world No. 1 and how, four years
after his father’s death, he feels
he is still learning from him.
SHANGHAI, CHINA | Tiger Woods is seldom wrong with his facts but the error he
made was understandable. During a break
from his Tai-Chi photo shoot on the eve
of last week’s WGC-HSBC Champions at
Sheshan, he was recalling the first time
he had met Lee Westwood, the player who
had just taken his No. 1 spot on the world
rankings.
“It was at the Walker Cup,” he said,
“Porthcawl, 1995.”
“Not possible,” ventured this cor-
respondent, who was pretty sure of her
ground in that Westwood barely caught
the eye of England’s amateur selectors,
let alone their Great Britain and Ireland
equivalents.
“Are you sure,” checked Woods.
Westwood, when he was consulted,
was able to explain why Woods had got it
wrong. There was another man of Work-
sop with whom Woods was getting con-
fused – Martin Foster. The latter, who at
one point had Lee’s father, John, on his
bag when he was on the Challenge Tour,
had played in the match of 1995. He had
come up against Buddy Marucci in both of
the singles while Woods had two games
against Gary Wolstenholme.
“My father,” said Woods, “was exactly
the same in knowing my game inside
out and he, too, knew when to step away.
It was one of his great strengths that
whenever he passed me on to a coach, he
always took it that the coach knew more
than he did. I might have told him that
there was something I didn’t like about
what I was being taught but, every time,
he would leave it for me to sort out. He
would say, ‘It’s your responsibility, you
deal with it.’ The same applied with cad-
dies. He refused to get involved.”
That Woods has never fallen out of love
with the game, is something he puts down
to his dad, some of whose instructions he
is still decoding four years after his death.
“He would often speak in riddles to
make me think about what he was saying
and you’d be amazed at how frequently
something he said years ago will suddenly
click with me today.”
There was a recent incidence when he
was on the practice ground at Isleworth
with his two children, Sam and Charlie. As
he was working with them, so he experi-
enced an almost uncanny revelation as to
how and why his father had taught him to
do precisely the same things that he was
now trying to teach.
He went on to mention that it had been
common for Earl to make an instruction
double as a lesson in life. “He would tell
me that if I could only learn to put any
on-course anger behind me, it would help
with my schoolwork. I would master far
more if I could keep a calm, clear head.”
But surely it was his mother, who did
the necessary pushing when it came to his
schoolwork? “People are right,” he said,
“when they say that my mother was the
disciplinarian but my father’s rather more
subtle approach worked pretty well.”
When Woods was asked how he was
progressing in the matter of getting his
troubled life back on track, he said again
that he sees himself as “a better person
than I was this time last year.” He talked of
having had “a good look at myself, where I
was and how I was raised.”
There was the impression that whatev-
er conclusions he may have drawn about
other facets of upbringing, he could not
be more convinced that the way his father
taught him his early golf was as good as it
could get.
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