Will Tiger Put a 7 on His Scorecard?

Dear Dad,

You won’t believe what’s going on down here with Tiger Woods.

Then again, maybe you will.

In our last phone conversation, last Easter, I remember asking you who would win the Masters. The tournament was starting the next Thursday. It was your favorite event for me to cover, and I was assigned to go. You said Davis Love III. You always said Davis Love III. You said you also liked David Duval and Ernie Els.

I asked about Tiger.

Of course, you said, Tiger is a contender every time he plays. You repeated something you had often told me, that you had seen Hogan and Snead and Palmer and Nicklaus but that you had never seen anyone as good as Tiger. But, you added, he should be even better.

You mentioned a couple of things about his swing, about adjustments that would improve his accuracy and consistency without sacrificing much of his power.

More important, you said, were the adjustments he needed to make in his inner game--his ability to focus, to control his temper when he hit an errant shot, to tune out distractions from the gallery. If he learned to do all that, you said, he could be unbeatable.

I wanted to hear more, but you cut the conversation short. I don’t think it was because you were worried about the long-distance bill this time.

Remember? You were in the hospital, having been admitted after suffering what you assumed was another heart attack. The doctors told you it was something else, but they scheduled a minor heart operation for the next morning. A procedure, they called it. I laughed when you told the old joke about a minor operation being one performed on someone else.

I’m sure, in retrospect, that you knew it was more serious than they were telling us and that you were frightened. I think you were crying when we hung up, believing in your poor, weary heart that it was the last time we would speak to each other.

I was supposed to leave Tuesday for Augusta National.

You left Monday for someplace even more beautiful.

*

You were right about Tiger.

After he came back from seven strokes behind in the final seven holes Monday to win at Pebble Beach, his Hoganesque sixth consecutive victory, I had that almost irresistible urge again to pick up the phone and call you.

It was the same one I had after Payne Stewart won the U.S. Open with that remarkable putt on the final hole and Tiger outdueled Sergio Garcia in the PGA and Justin Leonard sank that putt in the Ryder Cup and poor Payne died in the plane crash. I guess you knew that last one. I hope he has given you a game by now.

You tried to teach me to play golf when I was young because it was something you believed we could do together. You gave up when I came home one day without my clubs. I had left them beside the 18th green, figuring that someone else would have a better idea of how to make them work than I did. You’d laugh now to know that I have your clubs.

But if I never learned how to play, I did learn to appreciate the game from those days when I caddied for you in the local muni and country club tournaments. I knew how challenging it was because the only times I heard you curse, besides when you taught me to drive, were when you played.

That’s the reason you respected the pros so much. Whenever we talked about them, it was like you were talking about the knights of King Arthur’s round table.

Of course, we didn’t always talk about golf.

Sometimes we talked about football and baseball.

*

Did we leave anything unspoken?

Probably. We never ended a conversation without saying, “I love you.” Not since Mother died. But I was always envious of the girls because you talked more to them about your life than you did to me.

Maybe it was because they asked and I didn’t. Maybe it was because I always started our conversations by asking something like who you liked in the Masters. Maybe it was because you answered by asking something like how I thought the Cowboys were going to do this week.

It’s difficult, being guys. But at least I can take some solace in knowing that we were guys together.

People ask me all the time about the value of spectator sports. I answer that they help bring communities together. A person who lives in Woodland Hills and a person who lives in Laguna Niguel, even if they don’t know each other, can sit down together and discuss the Lakers and be talking like old friends within five minutes.

Sports can also bring fathers and sons together.

I’d like to believe that if I had it to do over again I wouldn’t avoid the other stuff, that I’d ask you about your marriage, your retirement, your thoughts on death.

Today, though, I know that if we could talk, we’d talk about Tiger.

*

Randy Harvey can be reached at his e-mail address: randy.harvey@latimes.com