Jim McCabe

AUGUSTA, Ga. - In possession of a resume that is tough to match — 13 career wins, including a U.S. Open title, and more than $35 million in prize money — Jim Furyk could have expected a bit of a crowd at the conclusion of his practice round during the recent CA Championship in Doral, Fla.

And sure enough, there they were.

But sure enough, Furyk wasn’t pestered in the least. No, sir. He could have been the Suisse chef walking to work at the Doral Golf Resort & Spa, for all anyone cared. That’s because Furyk had played his nine-hole practice round that morning with Tiger Woods, who casts such a long and dominating shadow you can barely see any of his colleagues on the world stage.

Not Phil Mickelson. Not Ernie Els. Not Vijay Singh. Not Adam Scott, Sergio Garcia, Geoff Ogilvy, Luke Donald, or any other talented golfer you might want to mention.

Furyk included.

Though he beat Woods to win the U.S. Open at Olympia Fields in 2003 and has triumphed in four other tournaments in which Woods has been a factor, Furyk has no misconceptions as to where he stands in the golf world. And it’s nowhere near Woods.

There’s no shame in that. In fact, there’s almost a sense of relief, because Furyk feels a tinge of despair for a player he has come to admire and call a friend. Though he’d gladly love to have the major championships Woods has won, Furyk knows it would be a culture shock to live the life that is Tiger's.

“The other night was great. My wife and I went out with friends and had a nice dinner at a nice restaurant. Nobody bothered us,” said Furyk. He then cocked his head toward Woods being swarmed.

“Do you think he could have done that?”

Furyk shrugged. The practice holes he had played alongside Woods were fun and, as always, Furyk had learned by watching the game’s best player. But he had also had his beliefs firmly reinforced.

“I like being inside the bubble with him,” said Furyk, “but he eventually has to leave that bubble. You can’t be a rock star on the golf course, but not off.”

Facing the challenges of being Tiger
As the 72nd Masters prepares to unfold amid the azaleas and magnolias of Augusta National, as usual the storylines swirl around Woods. Though his streak of five consecutive PGA Tour wins was recently halted, he’s in the midst of another stretch of golf that defies logic and further cements his legend.

In his last nine tournaments, dating to last summer, Woods has won seven times, finished second once, and fifth once. There have been 32 stroke-play rounds during which he has gone below 70 a whopping 26 times, with his worst score a 72.

There have been other stretches of excellence — a seven-tournament streak in 2006-07 and a run of six in 1999-2000 — but you’d find plenty of support if you wanted to volunteer that Woods is playing the best golf of his career. So brilliantly has he been playing that talk of winning all four major championships, the vaunted Grand Slam, has been percolating all spring and now that the Masters is on our doorstep, it’s at a fever pitch.

Video   Tiger set to tame Augusta April 8: Tiger Woods prepares to play the first of the four majors in 2008. NBC Sports

All of which means that the pressure to squeeze Woods — to be near him, to watch, to study, to scream his name at every chance — is greater than ever. That, in turn, helps explain why on a sultry Sunday, Woods quietly strode to the first tee at Augusta National alongside his good friend and fellow Masters champion, Mark O’Meara. With the club closed to patrons and only a handful of media members present, Woods and O’Meara shared the golf course with a few dozen of their colleagues, as well as members, who had one last chance to play before the festivities begin.

No crowds. No requests for interviews. No cameras in his face.

It’s a peace that Woods cannot buy, not even with his hundreds of millions of dollars, so when those rare opportunities present themselves, he embraces them.

“I like anonymity,” he said once when asked what was the worst part of being Tiger Woods. “But it just doesn’t really happen anymore. It’s one of those things where I’ve had to try and adjust and get used to it, but it’s something I’ve never felt comfortable with. I don’t know why. I’ve tried to get more comfortable with it, but I just haven’t.”

Perhaps not, but with remarkable consistency, Woods has created a world with established ground rules that seemingly address the wide variety of people who tug at him within the golf arenas in which he performs. Consider the media life he handles, compared to his colleagues.

David Cannon / Getty Images file Wherever Tiger Woods is on the golf course, he draws a crowd of fans and photographers. Recently, Woods, who rarely has anything negative to say, voiced his displeasure with the clicking cameras.

For instance, at most tournaments, the defending champion and a sprinkling of other names are asked to come into the media center in the days leading up to the event, but since Woods’ presence is requested at all stops, he has determined the parameters. If he’s the defending champion of an event — and let’s face it, he usually is — he will come into the media center. If not, he will speak to the press at the conclusion of his pro-am round and rarely does he vary from that practice, so he has won points with the media for at least being easy to work around and the fact that he talks in some manner before every tournament, something you can’t say about large stars like Els and Mickelson.

As for those days when he competes, again Woods accepts that the landscape is different for him than his colleagues. Whereas there have been times when Singh and Mickelson, to cite two examples, have actually led a tournament and refused to come to the media center, Woods speaks after every round. If he’s the leader or a shot or two off the lead, he’ll often come to the media center; if he labors behind, he’ll opt to field questions after signing his card. And if, on those rare occasions, he’s so far out of the hunt that he can’t possibly win, guess what? Woods will still stop to talk.

No, he has never quite understood why the leaders were robbed of publicity at his expense, but it’s part of the world that he has learned to manage.

Granted, all these interview opportunities have rarely yielded enlightening or controversial stuff, but for all the criticism Woods has fielded for really not saying anything, there is a case to be made that it’s a true testament to his discipline that he can face a barrage of questions and rarely present himself in a bad light.

Some star athletes get in front of microphones and cameras and spout off so much drivel that they eventually offer up comments that embarrass them or their sport. While the public-relations machines that work for Major League Baseball, the NBA and NFL are constantly defusing stories of athletes being arrested or other sordid angles, you’d be hard-pressed to come up with an incident that has put Woods — or the PGA Tour that he virtually owns — in a bad light.

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