Tiger and Me

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Kauai, Hawaii

I had gone to the top of the world to wait for the tsunami. They had whispered it might come.

And so I climbed to the 15th tee box at Poipu Bay on a magnificent morning on the island of Kauai to watch and wait. I was there for the Grand Slam of Golf but suddenly expecting a slam of a completely different kind.

The great Pacific surf pounded the rocks a hundred feet below me, and the beach line stretched for what seemed like miles in either direction. If you had only looked at the sky, so crystal clear and deep blue, you might have recalled the morning of 9/11. Thus have we grown to accept the ironic window dressing to our tragedies.

The earthquake had hit near the Big Island just before dawn, the second in three weeks. The first had produced great damage; this second was thought to only contain the tsunami.

When you are given the blessing of time to prepare, you tend to run in a thousand different directions. When you only have a little while – as they suggested in very hushed tones – you collect what's inside you.

For some reason, after wife and children, friends and family were safely stored deep within, I looked the opposite direction from the ocean, to the north of the island across the rolling golf course.

And I thought of Tiger Woods. How blessed that he and I both came into the game virtually at the same time. How blessed that I was able to establish a rapport. (The boys in the TNT truck have a running bet to this day. Whenever I do a Woods interview, Tiger will end it with either "You got it, Jimmy" or "Thanks, Jim." Many a dollar has ridden on either the name my grandmother called me or the one my mother still does.)

Tiger and old what's his name.

How blessed that I have been allowed to watch this remarkable athlete during these last ten years perform on a stage much larger than any that Jack or Arnold or Lee managed. And perform with a kind of brute grace, a self-deprecating swagger that has made him the planet's most popular athlete.

We have marched these years if not joined at the hip then at the lip. I've always been there and that, frankly, has seemed to give the man a bit of a comfort zone when faced with a firing squad of microphones.

In 2000, I was greenside at Pebble Beach for the U.S. Open win, at St. Andrews for the British and at Valhalla for the PGA.

Two weeks later, having missed the first round, I scrambled with a crew to Toronto for the final 54 holes of the Canadian Open. I hadn't planned on covering it, rarely ever did, but considered the overriding implications of a streak such as that and decided I couldn't miss it.

And after that second round was over, my cameraman and I made our way down to the 18th to get post-round sound.

"Where you been, man?" Tiger said with a surprised smile, "I was getting used to you, Jimmy."

($5 to the grandmother side of the bet.)

And so it has been this way all these years.

A photographer, unbeknownst to me, climbed into our interview station this past summer at Hoylake for the British Open and took a shot of me interviewing Tiger after the second round. When I saw the finished product, it was as pure a portrait of our relationship as possible – me holding the microphone, Tiger with the widest smile.

The morning before the whispered tsunami, I took that picture to Tiger on the range and asked him to sign it. Something I rarely, if ever, do. It was early, and he was yawning and grousing about the time.

He looked at the picture carefully, laughed and talked for a moment about what had produced the grin. He thought it was gas. I suggested the gas with which he had just chloroformed the field.

Slowly, he took pen in hand.

Then he stopped.

"How do you spell Ernie again?" he asked.

"Um, it's Jim, Tiger."

"Ohmygawd, yes, I am so sorry. You're right. I don't know what I was thinking. I knew that. Jim, right."

And so I stood on the 15th tee waiting for a tsunami that, fortunately, never came.

Counting my blessings and, thanks to whatsisname, not taking a thing for granted.