The Dominator

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By Devin Gordon

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The course was supposed to be Tiger-proof. After the first of the 25-year-old prodigy's two consecutive victories at the Memorial Tournament in Ohio, golfing legend Jack Nicklaus fiddled with the short, rangy par 5s on the Muirfield Village links he designed--in part so that Woods wouldn't be able to run roughshod over the field in future years. Perhaps next time Jack should lace the fairway with booby traps and kryptonite. But who are we kidding? That wouldn't work either. Though Paul Azinger actually led Woods by one stroke heading into the Memorial's June 3 final round, Tiger needed just a few holes to throttle him.

It was the 527-yard, par-5 fifth that triggered the romp. Poor Azinger, paired with Tiger, dunked his second shot into the pond just ahead of the green for a penalty. Then Woods hit the shot of the year so far. He pulled out his 2-iron and launched the ball 249 yards, sticking it six feet from the cup. (For those of you who don't know golf, let's put it this way: that's impossible.) Tiger sank his eagle putt and leapt from one down to two up. He won by seven. As the two men walked up 17, Azinger apologized for not giving Tiger a better run. Woods thanked him for his magnanimity, then wiped the blood from his chops. Afterward, Nicklaus, the man Tiger is replacing as golf's greatest champion, used the word "dominant" (or some form of it) three times in two sentences to describe Woods's play.

Talk about an understatement. As the U.S. Open in Tulsa, Okla., gets underway this week--and with it, Tiger's bid for an unthinkable fifth straight major title--Woods is playing better than ever. He's won 20 of the past 50 tournaments he's entered, meaning he's batting .400 in a sport where almost everyone else would give his right leg to bat .042.

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Three years younger than Michael Jordan when he won his first NBA title, Woods is emerging as the best of an elite crop of athletes: the dominators. Obviously, stars like Tiger are supremely gifted physically, but it goes well beyond that: dominators possess uncommon emotional control and unlimited reservoirs of passion. You want to know what it's like to face someone like Tiger? Make a fist. Now punch yourself in the face. Because dominators don't just beat you; they make you beat you. The real question is: how? What makes these athletes so much better than even the finest in their sport? NEWSWEEK asked a dozen true dominators--Wayne Gretzky, Martina Navratilova, Joe Montana, Jordan (a close friend of Woods's; following story) and more--what it takes to be the best of the best. And, of course, we asked them about Tiger. According to the only people qualified to say, these are the five rules.

1. Genius Is 99% Perspiration
It begins, they all agree, with good old-fashioned hard work. There is no magic pill, no such thing as effortless grace. "At this level, talent is a given. But Tiger works harder than anyone out there, and that's why he's kicking butt," says tennis great Martina Navratilova, winner of 167 singles titles, including a record nine Wimbledons. "Every great shot you hit, you've already hit a bunch of times in practice." The vast majority of athletes have a much lower tolerance for preparation. It's not the pain. It's simpler than that: practice can be boring. Says Joe Montana, who led the San Francisco 49ers to four Super Bowl wins in the 1980s: "A lot of guys say, 'Yeah, I watched two hours of [game] film last night.' But they're not really studying what's going on. They may as well have been watching television." Tiger's habit of pounding golf ball after golf ball long into the twilight--often during tournament play--has already become part of his legend. During his so-called slump earlier this year, Woods claimed he was simply working on shots he would need specifically for the Masters in April. People rolled their eyes. Until he won the Masters.

Montana, like Woods, understands that such preparation pays off biggest in critical situations--moments when a bout of nerves could disrupt even the most basic play. Dominators can be wondrously creative when they have to be, but they're also geniuses of simplicity. In his famous fourth-quarter drive to beat the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl XXIII, Montana threw nothing but short passes. No big strike, no fireworks. And no mistakes. "No matter who you are, no matter how good an athlete you are, we're creatures of habit," says Wayne Gretzky, hockey's leading scorer and four-time Stanley Cup winner. "The better your habits are, the better they'll be in pressure situations."

2. Let The Other Guy Get Nervous
Gretzky and Woods have one more critical trait in common: an almost creepy ability to keep their cool. "Believe it or not, the bigger the game, the calmer I seemed to get," Gretzky says. The dominators then let the other guy's butterflies become a weapon on their behalf. "I was comfortable because other people were nervous," says Yankee great Reggie Jackson, "Mr. October," a title he earned with a string of sparkling playoff turns, including the 1977 World Series, in which he homered a record five times. "Sooner or later you're going to rush or make a mistake. And I'm not going to do that."

This helps explain why Woods, playing in a "gentlemanly" sport where rivals can't directly affect each other's play, has nonetheless become known for rattling his opponents. Being paired with Woods is akin to when the disciples tried to save their boat during a storm, only to be distracted by the sight of Jesus walking on water. "You're not only aware of his superior skills, you're also dealing with a whole new set of variables--a much bigger gallery, oohs and ahs after every one of his shots," says psychologist Deborah Graham, adviser to more than 200 PGA Tour golfers and coauthor of "The Eight Traits of Champion Golfers." "It can be a big blow to anyone's confidence." Montana says he sees it written on golfers' faces when he watches Woods on TV: "He gets on a roll, and everybody else starts looking at the board to see what Tiger's doing. They're watching TV, too, and they should be playing."

3. Don't Just Dominate, Intimidate
Tiger has repeatedly said that intimidation isn't part of his game, that once he's on the course he's thinking about nothing but his own shot making. Sure, once he's on the course, but what about when he's getting dressed in the morning? It's no coincidence that Tiger often pulls out a blood-red sweater for his Sunday charges, just as it wasn't chance that Dale Earnhardt preferred dark sunglasses and drove a black and white stock car that looked like a 200mph pirate ship. Jackson, during the '77 series, was the last Yankee to take batting practice--just before the Dodgers took the field. He claims he didn't care if they noticed, "but you could tell they were watching." Before one game, he crushed about 45 out of 60 balls over the fence; that night he walked on four pitches in his first at-bat and then hit three home runs.

Bob Gibson, the ferocious pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, took intimidation a step further: he wouldn't even talk to guys on the other team. "Especially if they were hitters," says Gibson, who had a baffling 1.12 earned-run average in 1968. "When people get to know you, they get more comfortable with you. And then they get more comfortable against you." By most accounts, Woods is not as solitary. But he's not known for being overly chummy, and he has few close friends on tour. Is it simply his personality? Maybe. Either way, it works.

After a while, a true dominator can conjure the sense that the gods are aligned against you, that defeat is inevitable. Says Bengals cornerback David Fulcher, who watched Montana storm by his team's bruising defense and into the end zone: "Eventually you're just thinking, 'OK, when are they gonna score?' You don't talk about it, but it's in everybody's head." After a few successes, a mystique can emerge around an athlete who's capable of doing half the work for him. Now on the PGA Tour guys reflexively say that they must play mistake-free golf in order to beat Tiger. Why? Tiger doesn't play mistake-free golf. That's a myth. And yet his rivals have convinced themselves that they must be perfect. What happens, then, when they inevitably make a mistake? Is it any wonder they unravel?

4. Have A Sense Of The Historic
Do you have to win the big ones to be a dominator? It's a subject of eternal debate among sports fans, but it shouldn't be. Tiger is the proof. He's at the head of this heavenly crew of athletes not because he's won five of his past six tournaments, but because he has won five of the past six major tournaments. Every athlete says he wants to win a major title or a team championship. But Tiger doesn't just want those moments of glory. He has an innate sense that he can't be a legend without them.

"We need the images of ultimate triumph," says sportscaster Bob Costas. "It's that simple." How else to explain why Joe Montana--and not Dan Marino, who surpassed him in every statistical category but never won a Super Bowl--is the NFL's iconic quarterback? History is merciless, Dan. Luck, too. Just ask Pedro Martinez, a dominator-in-waiting who happens to pitch for the Boston Red Sox, a team that hasn't won a World Series since (sing along, Yankee fans) 1918. "I'm not like those guys. Not yet," says the three-time Cy Young Award winner. "I want to go the places they've been and test myself." And if you never get a ring? "I'll feel like crap."

5. Never, Ever Be Satisfied
Most athletes work the hardest when they're trying to reach the top, but Tiger has seemed only more committed to improving his game since leaving the competition in the dust. Woods won his first Masters--by the largest margin in history--in 1997, but he knew that he wouldn't reach Jack Nicklaus's mark of six green jackets without a jolt to his game. So he spent the next 18 months retooling his thunderous, but often wild, swing. "His goals are different than mine," says golfer Chris DiMarco, who led the 2001 Masters for two rounds before yielding to Tiger. "I've got kids. I've got other things weighing on my mind. I'm just trying to make a living for my family. I'm not concerned about winning every tournament."

Fair enough, but that, in a nutshell, is why DiMarco will never beat Tiger Woods. "When I watch golf and hear other players interviewed, most of them sound like they can't believe they won," Gretzky says. "Then you hear from Tiger, and he either expected to win or he can't believe he didn't. It's a different mind-set altogether." For a dominator, losing is like slow asphyxiation. It's unimaginable. "The guy who said 'It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game'--he was full of s--t," says Bob Gibson. "Winning is what it's all about."

The drawback for the great ones is that the satisfaction of accomplishment rarely lasts very long. Dominators have a difficult time savoring victory, and they dwell on their defeats almost obsessively. "There's no balance in their feelings. They expect to win, so the highs of winning aren't as high as they used to be," says former NFL coach John Madden, now a TV analyst for Fox. "But when they lose, man, the depths of the loss are so deep." Gretzky won four Stanley Cups with the Edmonton Oilers but says the final he keeps revisiting is the one he lost with the L.A. Kings in 1993.

"They're addicts," says psychologist Graham--much like a heroin junkie whose craving never diminishes, even after the highs do. Viewed in that light, Michael Jordan's now probable second comeback seems almost pitiable. Here is a man whose obsession with victory is so consuming that it obscures nearly everything: his own contentment, his sense of drama--surely there has never been a more dynamic exit than his last-second shot to beat the Utah Jazz for a sixth NBA title--even his awareness of his place in history. "He's got to know it's unlikely that he can do anything to increase his standing," says Costas. "If he's doing it, it's because he just can't bear not to."

Is Tiger like Mike? You have to wonder how long Woods, after winning the 2001 Masters and completing golf's first-ever grand slam (with or without asterisk), dwelled on the feat before turning his mind to this week's U.S. Open. Observers say the only thing that can stop Tiger from winning 5, 10 or 20 more majors is complacency. Obviously those folks don't know much about dominators. For warriors like Woods, the heart stops first, then the hunger. So what does that mean for Phil Mickelson and David Duval and all of golf's other megatalents cursed to live in the age of Tiger? Well, guys, have you considered tennis?

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