Sporting Life

Tiger Woods can't win the PGA Championship, but...

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There is a pleasing picture from Sunday in San Francisco of an old tree looking on as an old champion completes a practice swing. His body might be stiff but his 44-year-old swing has flow. There's no one else in the photo except his caddie, but anyway he often looks like he's locked into his own remote planet.

It's US PGA Championship week and photographers instinctively seek out this man as he feels out the course. Think of it as force of habit. Like lyrics and Bob Dylan, or marble and Michelangelo, when it's Majors you think Tiger Woods. He could have dentures and an artificial hip and we'd still look for him. An athlete is never greater than a game and yet his shadow can be so enormous it stays there even when his sun is setting.

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