Being the best in your sport is hard. Taking time off and reclaiming that title is even more difficult. Few know that as well as Michael Jordan. His Airness hung on too long to his playing career and now he thinks Tiger Woods may be doing the same.
Wright Thompson authored a feature story on Tiger Woods for ESPN.com that is being widely praised by the sports world, as most things penned by Thompson often are. In the story comes some perspective from Michael Jordan, a friend of Woods who feels the golfer is struggling to face the reality he may never again be best in the world in the sport he once dominated. Tiger even asked Jordan when he knew it was time to walk away from playing basketball, a fate that was difficult for Jordan to accept.
“The thing is, I love him so much that I can’t tell him ‘You’re not gonna be great again, ” Jordan said. “I think he’s tired. I think he really wishes he could retire, but he doesn’t know how to do it yet, and I don’t think he wants to leave it where it is right now. If he could win a major and walk away, he would, I think,” Jordan explained later in the feature story.
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Knowing what Woods has been through personally over the years, Jordan sees the former golf prodigy now confronting his golfing future alone, and that should be a concern.
“He has …” Jordan says, and he pauses, searching for the right word, “… no companion. He has to find that happiness within his life, that’s the thing that worries me. I don’t know if he can find that type of happiness. He’s gonna have to trust somebody.”
If Woods needs somebody to tell him when enough is enough, he may have to be able to do so while looking in a mirror. Only he knows for sure what he can and cannot continue to do. The critics have been calling him out for not living up to the standard he previously set, and Woods has been unable to escape those criticisms as much as he tries. Maybe conversations with stars like Jordan and Derek Jeter are the kind of conversations Woods needs to have more often. Nobody can make the decision to retire except for Woods, but sometimes those you trust want to encourage you to keep going and find a way to go out on top.
