Tuesday, May 12, 2009

BE A TIGER

Laser-like focus is term that is tossed around loosely by athletes and coaches on a regular basis.  However, few can argue with the focus and intensity that Tiger Woods displays. 

Check out this example of his of concentration: Once Woods tried out four drivers that Nike was experimenting with and told the lab guys that he preferred the heavier one.  The researchers thought the clubs were the same weight, but they measured and Woods was right.  The club he’d selected was heavier... by the equivalent of two cotton balls.

“Tiger Woods concentration often seems to be made of the same stuff as the liquid-metal cyborg in Terminator 2: If you break it, it reforms,” David Owen wrote in Men’s Vogue.

Woods is the symbol of pure mental willpower.  He is, in addition, competitive, ruthless, unsatisfied by success and honest about his own failings.  (Twice, he risked his multi-million dollar career to retool his swing.)

During a broadcast of a playoff round, Nike ran an ad that had the voice of Tiger’s late father, Earl Woods running over images of his son: “I’d say, ‘Tiger, I promise you that you’ll never meet another person as mentally tough as you in your entire life.’  And he hasn’t.  And he never will.”

4:13

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