Although he has yet to record that long-awaited tournament win, Tiger Woods has retained a degree of competitive consistency that rivals even his greatest days on a golf course.
Back among the top of the pack on a near weekly basis, it is possible that the upcoming Masters in less than a fortnight's time will nonetheless come a little too early for the 14-time majors winner.
However, although the wins have yet to return, the mania surrounding his presence on a golf course is perhaps wilder than ever before.
This is no doubt great news for Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian, the co-authors of a new biography, Tiger Woods
While much is already known of the father's approach to inuring Woods with the skills that he would later develop and hone as a professional golfer, this new biography promises details of the young Woods' regimen that is both impressive, and a little staggering.
Stories of Earl's young baby sitting in a high-chair as he hit shot after shot in a kitted-out garage show the odd effect it had on Woods according to his mother.
Kultida, Tiger’s mother, sometimes would sit beside the high chair with a spoon in one hand and baby food in the other. The way she tells it, every time Earl hit the ball, Tiger would open his mouth, and she would insert the spoon.
Perhaps more intriguing at this stage are the stories of Woods as he grows up and, as the biographers portray it, continues to seek his father's help:
Earl was always looking for ways to give his son an edge. Tiger was in grade school when his father furnished him with a cassette player and motivational self-help tapes. In addition to offering words of empowerment, the cassettes were filled with soft music and the sounds of nature, such as water flowing through a creek.
In the early Eighties, when other kids were listening to songs from Michael Jackson’s Thriller on a Walkman, Tiger was filling his mind with words that were intended to make him great.
Stressing that in later years, his father would consciously drive him to "breaking point, then back off," it is all seems perfectly orchestrated, if not a touch mad all the same:
I needed him to push me to the edge of not wanting to continue, because I had to learn to block out any feeling of insecurity. We had a code word that I could use whenever I thought I couldn’t take it any more. But I never used it. I was a quitter if I used the code word. I don’t quit.
The word he never said, was "enough." You can read a longer review of the book here.
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