AT 30 years old, Tiger Woods has won 47 PGA titles already.
You know Tiger Woods, right?
If you don’t, you might as well don’t know Manny Pacquiao, either.
Anyway, Tiger Woods is the world’s No. 1 golfer today. Just yesterday, he won the Buick Open — his fourth Buick crown since 2001.
This guy, he seems to win the big ones most of the time, if not all of the time.
Since he turned pro in 1996, all Tiger Woods seems to love doing is win golf tournaments. Not a bad habit. You play and have fun, yet you take home money big enough to make the list of the wealthiest in Forbes Magazine.
Easily yesterday, Tiger Woods pocketed close to a million dollars.
He made a two-putt birdie on the finishing par-5 hole to forge a playoff with Jose Maria Olazabal and Nathan Green.
Next he did par-par on 18 and 16 in the sudden death to win, seemingly, with nary a sweat.
Green lost because he bogeyed 18 after a missed green.
Olazabal lost because he bogeyed the par 3, 16th — also after a missed green.
Tiger Woods was in regulation both times.
To others, they win some, they lose some. To Tiger Woods, he wins mostly all the time.
But while Tiger Woods stashed away the top prize, Olazabal’s share of the runner-up purse wasn’t as bad since it ran into hundreds of thousands of dollars, too. Same with Green, who made his second Top 5 finish in only two PGA tournaments as a rookie.
Indeed, the beauty of golf is, you are enjoying it and at the same time winning the big bucks.
Not so in boxing.
Manny Pacquiao has to go through Calvary after Calvary to earn his millions.
Although he knocked Erik Morales out in the 10th, Pacquiao would be a hypocrite if he says he wasn’t hurt by Morales’ own shots to his face.
Sure he was hurt, too, sure he suffered, too, since Morales is also known as one of the hardest punchers in the game. Only 14 of his 48 previous victims went the distance.
If Pacquiao would say otherwise, he’d be lying the way Morales lied when the Mexican said he wasn’t hurt the first time they met and won a 12-round decision.
In 46 fights, Pacquiao has had his own dose of hits in his own head. He’d had 22 punch-laden rounds against Morales. Surely, he’s had his own share of shots thrown his way.
That’s why I pray Pacquiao won’t go the way of Muhammad Ali, who also banked quite a fortune as a world heavyweight boxing champion, but would pitifully be reduced into a virtual vegetable after contracting Parkinson’s, the disease that mostly afflicts boxers due to constant head bombardment atop the ring — not to include sparring sessions.
Boxers absorb the most head hits than any person on Earth. Doctors say the brain gets shaken with each shot inflicted on the head, face. Parkinson’s is that debilitating disease that slows down the motor of our brain. Thus, Ali, 67, now moves in slo-mo, his speech as slurred as one undergoing speech therapy after a stroke.
I don’t know if this would be correct but I’ll say it just the same: What if Pacquiao retires now?
To begin with, he’s got a lot of money now. Look, if the computations are right — he earned no less than P300 million in his Jan. 22 fight against Morales — what is there to fight for?
Give me P4 million and I’ll go home to Mangatarem, buy me a hectare of rice field, de-weed my caturays and malunggays in the morning, nurse a cold beer in the gathering shadows while I listen to the birds by the swaying cogon and murmuring brooks.
Ah, but some people would just not stop, couldn’t stop, refuse to stop.
Just like grandmasters, only weavers of words know when to resign.
