Richard Williams
Simply the best should be good enough for sports fans
At Imola and Augusta, the story was the same. The rest of them took a look, and gave up the chase. Michael Schumacher and Tiger Woods were never seriously challenged.
Boring, people said, as Schumacher won pole position for the San Marino Grand Prix and headed off into the distance to claim his third win out of the season and to shorten the odds against a third consecutive world championship.
Boring, they repeated, as Woods held the field at bay throughout Sunday’s final round of the United States Masters, despite expectations that a leader-board packed with talent throughout the tournament would produce an epic finish. Not a bead of sweat was to be seen as he laid the foundation for what many expect to be the first grand slam won within a calendar year.
So where were the Montoyas, the Coulthards, the Irvines? Where were the Goosens, the Garcias, the Mickelsons? Where was the competition?
The answer is that the also-rans were trying their hardest but were beaten on every count. Skill, fitness, competitive courage, strategic wisdom and tactical wit in these areas we know Woods and Schumacher to be superior to all their current rivals. But there is another factor that is common to both, and it may be even more crucial.
Woods and the elder Schumacher are both totally absorbed by what they do, to a degree matching and perhaps surpassing all their legendary predecessors. Their devotion to excellence provides a justification, if anything can, for the absurd amounts of money both receive.
On practice days Woods is out on the course at 7am, checking every angle of approach to a green and every possible undulation on the putting surface. Schumacher is usually in the garage until 7pm, talking to his engineers and mechanics, not just examining telemetry data but reinforcing the human relationships within his team.
Both think so hard about their job and have such alert minds that they are fascinating to listen to on the minutiae of what it is they do or they would be, if Schumacher were not bound by the Formula One law of omert, which prevents a grand prix driver from going into specifics on any subject whatsoever.
I once heard Woods discussing putting technique, and talking at length about trying to induce something called “end-over-end rotation”. What he meant was simply getting the ball to roll rather than skid or slide, thus imparting a greater stability to its path. To achieve it, you have to strike the ball when the head of the putter is just past the lowest point of its arc of travel. It would be fascinating to hear Schumacher discussing his tyres in similar terms.
Is this sort of thing boring? Does it make Woods and Schumacher into tiresome obsessives? It depends on what you think sport is, and what it is for.
To the men who pay vast sums for the right to televise major events, close competition is everything. They need suspense all the way to the finish. It’s no use to them if Manchester United wrap up the premiership in March, or if Lance Armstrong establishes a winning lead before the Tour de France has even reached the mountains. They want Michael Thomas snatching the title from Liverpool with the last kick of the season, or Greg LeMond spurting to victory by a handful of seconds in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe.
Those were certainly great moments, but to turn them into the ultimate objective of sport is to take a reductive view. Sport is about winning through being the best. The margin of victory is as irrelevant as the timing at least when compared with the manner, which is everything.
When we look back into history, after all, what comes most readily to mind? Yes, we remember a few exciting contests won on narrow decisions. Effortlessly towering above them all, however, are the undisputed greats.
Think back almost 50 years, and the sights we recall most vividly whether from our own experience or from hearsay are Real Madrid winning the first five editions of the European Cup, Mercedes-Benz returning to grand prix racing with Fangio and capturing two titles off the bat, and Rod Laver starting a run of success that, had tennis not been cut in two for several years by the amateur-professional schism, would surely shine even more brightly on the game’s honours board.
Like Di Stefano and Puskas, Fangio and the Mercedes engineers, and the marvellous Rockhampton Rocket, Woods and Schumacher are where they are because they understand the dimensions of their talent.
Their unwillingness to waste a single drop of it may not make for tight finishes and what programmers think of as great TV, but in 50 years’ time they will still be talked about. If you ask me, the occasional processional finish is a small price to pay for the privilege of being around to share their time.