How the Best Got Better: The Game Of Risk

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Harmon, 56, who has coached Woods since Tiger was 17, observes that "when Tiger turned pro, he was long but wild. So he worked on that and has led in total driving. He had trouble controlling his distance with the irons, so he worked on that, and now leads in greens in regulation"--hitting the ball on the green with a chance to putt for birdie or eagle. "He was always a good putter, but he's worked to be more consistent. Whatever he sees as a weakness in his game, he turns into a strength." Harmon has tutored Greg Norman, Davis Love III, Jose Maria Olazabal and other international golf greats. He says of Woods, "He's only at about 75% of what he's capable of achieving. That's the scary part."

Like Michael Jordan, Woods not only dominates his sport but is changing the way it is played--and the way it will be played by the next generation. "It's cool now to play golf," Woods says, and if his Tiger Woods Foundation succeeds in making courses and equipment available to more underprivileged kids, the sport will "attract the better natural athletes"--including the bigger and stronger kids, many of them black and Hispanic and Asian. "Just imagine," Woods muses, his eyes alight, "if Michael Jordan, with his size and strength and hand-eye coordination, had started playing golf early?"

Any would-be Tigers will, in fact, have to start early. Tiger's dad Earl, a Green Beret lieutenant colonel in Vietnam, took up golf in his 40s, a few years before Tiger was born. And though he became a one-handicap, his struggles convinced him that kids should be taught the game as soon as they're capable of swinging a sawed-off club. For his son, that was at 10 months. Tiger took a strong interest in the game, which, by all accounts, his parents managed to encourage without pushing and while keeping things fun.

Earl taught the basics, but Tiger couldn't hit the ball very far, so he learned to score with putts and delicate wedge shots. His first instructor, Rudy Duran, recalls that at age five "Tiger had the skill and imagination to hit high wedge shots, low ones, shots with backspin." Nicklaus, in contrast, feels he never developed first-rate shots from off the green because he didn't start playing golf seriously until age 10, when he was already big for his age and intent on smashing the ball.

What Tiger shares with Nicklaus is a first-rate mental game, a vital weapon in a sport in which major tournament pressure can crush even great players. Woods has "the ability to stay in the present during a tournament and focus on hitting one shot at a time," Duran says. Woods' profane outbursts, once common, are now rare. He has learned to laugh at himself more often, which he did even when he made a triple-bogey in the third round at the U.S. Open.