Jim McCabe

Life alterations come at you in all forms, but of the three that stand out — marriage, death, and parenthood — Tiger Woods handled the first two flawlessly. Why anyone would think the third would be any different is beyond me.

Already the world’s best golfer and most celebrated sports figure, Woods got married in November of 2006 and pundits wondered how such a life change would hinder him. Four tournaments is all he needed to win and in the time it took for him to celebrate his first anniversary, Woods had six wins, two of them of the major variety.

No worries.

From late in 2005 until spring of the next year, Woods lived with the knowledge that his father was dying of cancer. Surely it affected his play, but after taking nine weeks off to grieve, Woods came back with a vengeance. In his third start back following Earl Woods’ death, Tiger scored a near-flawless victory in the British Open. It was the first of seven straight wins.

Now, another life change — his wife Elin delivered the couple’s first child, daughter Sam Alexis, on Monday. At least some sideline observers have offered that Woods’s game could suffer as a result, but it baffles me as to how this is going to bother him.

There’s no reason to think Woods wouldn’t step away for a period of time he deems necessary — one week? two? perhaps three? — and return to his dominant self. The key components to any life change are discipline and motivation, and Woods most assuredly has cornered the market on those.

In fact, none other than Jack Nicklaus predicts that Woods “will be better than ever” when children enter the picture.

And Jack should know, for the first of his five children was born in September of 1961 — roughly 10 months before the first of his 18 professional majors. That’s right, Nicklaus compiled his entire professional résumé with children already at home.

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For sure, his wife Barbara deserves a big chunk of the credit, but you’ve got to figure that Jack had the steel-eye focus and fortitude to keep order to his home life and discipline in his golf game. Woods, it says here, can rival Nicklaus in those departments, which is why he’s still a good bet to go beyond 18 professional majors.

Woods has, over the course of his 11-year pro career, crafted a schedule that, while lean, provides periods of competitive play that keeps him tuned up for the majors. It’s not like he’s going to have to trim back from 30 to 18 tournaments of year and thus run the risk of losing his competitive edge. He’s already figured out how to maintain his competitive edge while affording himself good chunks of time off.

In many ways, I agree with Nicklaus; having a child will improve Woods’s game, in much the same way he came back stronger and better after his marriage and his father’s death. Life alternations, it seems, forces Woods to reassess the landscape and every time he does, he somehow pumps more passion into his pursuit of golf excellence.

That may not be good news for his competitors, but it sure is to those who love to watch history stalked.