My Mom introduced me to the game of golf when I was in the second grade. From the very beginning, I was head-over-heels. I loved it.
It all began for me at a place called Parkview Golf Club—an 18-hole, par 65 course located in Mayfield Village, Ohio. Typically, 8-year-olds don’t pledge allegiance to a “home golf course”, but if they did mine would have been Parkview. My earliest summer-time memories are filled with round-after-round at Parkview. The course closed in 2001, and the land is now home to Progressive Insurance’s Campus II Headquarters.
****
Tiger Woods returned to the place where it all began for him earlier this week—Augusta National Golf Club. It was there, in 1997, where he notched the first of his 14 major tournament victories, steamrolling the field with a record-breaking twelve-stroke margin of victory.
Over the next decade, Tiger would unleash a vigor of dominance the world of sports had never seen.
****
In November of 2009, a ravaging scandal of infidelity surfaced, exposing dozens of Tiger’s extramarital affairs that sent his life into a tailspin.
Whatever his mistakes, Tiger Woods has earned his way out of the dog house.
Throughout his descent, he lost most everything that mattered to him—his wife, his fortune, his dad, his endorsements and his swing. And he lost them all in a way that was equally public as it was wicked. That’s a tough pill to swallow for anyone, let alone a proud and private Tiger Woods.
****
A Tiger Woods win at the Masters would be riveting for a variety of reasons.
I was a sophomore in high school when Tiger blazed the golf world with his first win at the Masters. Until his recent hiatus, I’ve never really known a Tiger-less world of golf. Whether you love 'em or you hate 'em, the world of golf is better place when Tiger is in it.
This weekend Tiger will have a chance to roar back on the only stage that has ever mattered to him in the first place: a major golf course.
I'm rooting for him. Are you?
