Why Woods needs to emulate Hogan's heroics

Reuters

MOMMA'S BOY: Tiger Woods kisses his mother Kultida after his tearful apology at PGA Tour headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.

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OPINION: Tiger Woods' non-announcement yesterday about his return to golf, maybe not even this year, shows how committed he is to fixing himself on an emotional level.

Woods has been out of the game only 98 days, which many thought was enough for the furore over his infidelities to die down and allow him to come back to the sport in time for the Masters.

But the fact Woods has hinted he may not play this year, and thus miss the Masters, the US Open at Pebble Beach and the Open Championship at St Andrews, shows how committed he is to repairing himself – not just his reputation. Those event were deemed his for the taking and the fact he's willing to forego them says a lot.

All his life Woods has been driven by Jack Nicklaus' mark of 18 majors. He could easily take his own tally from 14 to 17 this year; if he wanted to.

However, it seems as if he has something more important to focus on now: himself and his family,

Before we dwell on Woods, I want to talk about the legendary Ben Hogan, whose comeback to golf is probably the greatest in sport.

On February 2, 1949, Hogan and his wife Valerie were hit head-on by a greyhound bus which was overtaking a truck on a winding road. Hogan, who like every driver in the day, probably wasn't wearing a seatbelt, threw himself across the other side of the car to protect his wife. That, said experts, saved his life as the steering wheel would have smashed him in the chest.

As it was, Hogan suffered a broken collarbone, broken ankle, broken ribs and a double fracture of his pelvis. While in the hospital, a blood clot appeared in his leg, forcing doctors to tie off the surrounding veins to keep the clot from reaching his heart. The muscles in Hogan's legs wasted away and doctors warned him he would never walk again, let alone play golf.

But within a year, stunning everyone, he was back, playing at the Los Angeles Open and losing in a playoff to the great Sam Snead. More remarkably, Hogan played some of this best golf after the accident, winning six of his nine majors after his near-fatal car crash.

While Hogan spent a year out of the game working on his physical recovery, Woods has been working on a spiritual and emotional recovery.

As Hogan was physically broken, Woods, surely must have been psychologically broken by what has happened to him in the past three months. The public humiliation, ridicule and shame are one thing. Having to front up to his cheated upon wife and children is another still. But for the world to know you are receiving counselling for sex addiction? That's something else entirely. And then there's the healing, which requires introspection and a desire to change.

In some ways what Woods has gone through has a parallel with his childhood. Then, at the hands of his father, Earl, he suffered something of psychological reboot – Earl admitting that to mentally toughen his son he used techniques he learned in prisoner of war interrogation when he was in Vietnam. In other words, he broke him. And then put him back together again as a diamond-tough sportsman.

From a distance, Earl Woods sounds like an abusive parent. Maybe not as abusive as Andre Agassi's dad Mike, but abusive nonetheless. And it would no surpise to learn Woods is addressing some of these issues in his ongoing therapy.

It's been suggested, on the evidence we have of Woods infidelities, that he is suffering from low self-esteem; hence his choice of what some people might call "skanky hos" as sex partners. His choice of relationships and attitude to women indicate a puerile young man, something reflected in Woods' behaviour on the golf course via his temper tantrums, spitting, swearing and club-throwing. That was something he recognised and addressed yesterday.

If it's hard to believe that the world's richest and most successful sportsman might be lacking self-esteem all I can do is point you to Agassi's compelling biography Open and the effect an abusive father can have on a child.

Now Woods needs to turn himself into a real man; to do emotionally what Hogan did physically.

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