Whicker: Tiger Woods mourns the loss of Bryant, his partner in sports dominance
Tiger Woods turned pro shortly after Kobe Bryant was drafted. It's going to be painful to imagine one without the other.
SAN DIEGO — At 9:45 a.m. they greeted one of the two essential American athletes of the past 25 years.
They had no clue what was about to happen to the other one.
Three guys wore orange tiger suits, with stripes and tail. One old fellow near the first green saw the man coming and yelled, “I’ve been waiting for 20 years for this.”
The fairways were lined and the hopes were high. The world slams the brakes whenever Tiger Woods stalks a victory.
Nearly 150 miles to the north of Torrey Pines, a 28-year-old helicopter began failing.
About 90 minutes after that, Dennis Paulson of the Golf Channel quietly told Joe LaCava, Woods’ caddie, that Kobe Bryant was gone.
LaCava kept it to himself. As Woods walked through the back nine, he occasionally heard someone yell, “Mamba” or “Do it for Mamba.” He tuned it out; no sportsman on earth has heard more extraneous fan comments than Woods.
Once Woods holed his final putt for a 70 and a ninth-place finish in the Farmers Insurance Open on Sunday, LaCava gave him the indigestible news.
“I grew up a die-hard Laker fan, it’s part of me, it’s all I remember,” Woods said, caught in the numbness that precedes the first wave of grief. “This is one of the most shocking, tragic days that I can ever remember.”
Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, nicknamed Gigi, were headed to Gigi’s basketball game. John Altobelli, who won a state championship last spring coaching Orange Coast College’s baseball team, was on the chopper with his daughter. The four of them frequently traveled like that. The crash claimed them and five others.
Bryant and wife Vanessa and the four girls occasionally came to Lakers games, and he coached his daughters’ teams. “Gigi’s a dog,” Bryant proudly told the Sparks’ Candace Parker and TNT’s Kristen Ledlow on a recent podcast. “She loves to compete.”
The news penetrated the hardest bubbles, even the one that surrounds the PGA Tour.
Matthew Wolff is from Westlake, Max Homa from Valencia.
“I talk to Justin Thomas all the time, about how much we try to emulate him,” Homa said. “He’s been a big part of my life. My caddie pulled me aside after a good day of golf (a 67, good for ninth) and said he had terrible news. It’s awful and sad and shocking. My wife and I were on the couch watching his last game (the 60-pointer at the end of the 2016 season). He was my first-ish basketball memory.
“He’s Superman. He played the game with, like, eight broken fingers. He shot two free throws with a torn Achilles. It’s hard to believe anybody like that could have the sniffles, let alone something like this happening.”
Homa said he’s been inspired by a poster he’d read about and that Bryant kept in his locker.
It was the quote from Jacob Riis that adorns the San Antonio Spurs’ locker room in several languages: “Look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the 101st blow it will split in two, and I know that it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”
“It’s devastating,” Wolff said. “You feel sick to your stomach. Nothing feels right at this point because you’re not just losing a great player, you’re losing a legend as a person. He’s a light. There’s really nothing you can say except you can’t take anything for granted. I’m devastated and I didn’t even know him.”
But Tiger was Kobe’s career Doppelganger.
Bryant was drafted in June of 1996. Tiger turned pro three months later. When Bryant and the Lakers won the 2000 NBA championship and then the next two, Woods was in the midst of a one-man dynasty. One month after that 2000 Lakers title, which Bryant cemented in Game 4 of the Finals, Woods won the British Open. At that point, he held all four major championship trophies at once.
Woods won his 14th major in June of 2008. Bryant won his fourth Lakers title 12 months later and the MVP. Their bodies betrayed them at about the same time. Bryant retired in 2016, a year in which Woods was too injured to play at all.
Now Woods is well into his second golfing act. He and Bryant shared so much, shared boundless ambition and intelligence. Each had a massive belief in his destiny.
Bryant played voraciously and without mercy. He nicknamed himself after the most vicious reptile in the world. Woods saw no reason to win by five when it was possible to win by 10. They were kindred spirit animals.
“When I lived in Newport Beach we’d work out together,” Woods said. “We really connected more on the mental side of it. The amount of hours he’d spend in the gym, it looked like it came natural on the court, but he spent more hours looking at film and working on the details. That’s where he and I connected.
“We’re very similar. We had our 20-year run together. It’s shocking.”
The coldest, cruelest part of Sunday was the knowledge of the aftershocks that are rolling toward a city that worshiped Kobe Bryant like no one else in its history.
This was the calm before the pain.
He didn’t know it but Kobe made me tougher. It’s always been “what would Kobe do?” when it came to golf. Put in the time and keep ur head down. Don’t let anyone outwork u. I’m forever grateful for him and I know I’m not alone. RIP #8 #24
— max homa (@maxhoma23) January 26, 2020