Childrens Golf Clubs

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BOOK REVIEW: ‘Shooting for Tiger’: Tiger Mania Behind Ambitious, Hard-Driving Golf Parents

By David M. Kinchen

Mark Twain, who was from an era before golf carts, called golf “a good walk spoiled.” For a long time — B.T. (Before Tiger) — it was the game of choice of white middle-aged males, famously satirized in the “Caddyshack” movies.

Tiger Woods changed everything, says William Echikson in “Shooting for Tiger: How Golf’s Obsessed New Generation Is Transforming a Country Club Sport” (PublicAffairs, $24.95, 288 pages).

Golf is the new tennis, with ambitious parents, many of them from the ubiquitous and, in my opinion, all too often annoying baby boom generation, pushing their talented children into becoming the next Tiger. Echikson, a former staff correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, Fortune and BusinessWeek, chronicles this latest obsession by following a season of the American Junior Golf Association’s elite tournaments.

A tennis legend, Ivan Lendl, is one of the parents who is doing everything he can to turn his daughters Marika and Isabelle into female Tigers, Echikson writes. The specter facing these parents is golf phenom Michelle Wie, who skipped the junior tournaments and tried as a pre-teen to compete against experienced women players in the LPGA.

“By the time she was eighteen, Wie was damaged physically and mentally,” the author writes. Her experience convinced AJGA Executive Director Stephen Hamblin of the necessity for age limits: “You just can’t skip the stages of development.”

There’s an ethnic element involved that could be construed by P.C. types as racism: Many of the hard-charging parents are Asian, especially Korean. Wie, now 19, is the poster girl for this golf obsession. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii to natives of South Korea, Wie has never won a 72-hole stroke play match in her career, despite her 6-foot-1-inch stature and long experience. Since she’s young and obviously talented, I fully expect this to change.

Echikson devotes much of his book to the exploits of Vicky Hurst, an 18-year-old who — unlike Wie — went through the AJGA experience of junior tournaments. Hurst’s family, he writes, is reminiscent of Tiger Woods’s. Earl Woods was a Green Beret and lieutenant colonel. Hurst’s father, Joe, was an Air Force colonel, who retired from service after 26 years. Tiger’s mother, Kultida, is Thai. Hurst’s mother, Koko, is Korean. Earl Woods met Kultida when he was stationed in Southeast Asia. Joe Hurst met Koko when he was stationed in Korea.

Even if you don’t give a hoot about golf, thinking of it as an elitist activity for the idle rich, you’ll enjoy Echikson’s chronicle of junior golf. He describes a subculture of kids who have been deprived of traditional childhoods by families hell-bent on turning their kids into champions. We get inside rigorous and very expensive golf academies devoted to training the world’s top prospects. “Shooting for Tiger” explores the real costs of professionalizing young players and offers a elegantly written look at athletic obsession.

In the Wall Street Journal’s Golf Journal column on May 2, 2009, subbing for John Paul Newport, Echikson devotes the entire column to Vicky Hurst, describing her powerful drives (I envy those drives, given my all-too-common worm-burner efforts, often landing in the O.B. rough; at least I walk the 9 or 18 holes I attempt) and meticulous chipping and putting strokes.

Here’s a sample from the May 2 column:

“Vicky Hurst stepped up to Mirasol Country Club’s Sunset Course’s first tee at 8:33 a.m. She planted her feet, addressed the ball, and took a measured breath. Majestically, she pulled the large steel-headed Cleveland driver backward in a slow, steady arc, stopping at a perfect angle just above her head. Then the club cracked down, accelerating to whiplash speed.

“Whack!

“The ball gave off a sharp hiss and rose like a bullet shot from a rifle, carving a gentle right-to-left arc before smashing into the ground and rolling along the grass. It finally stopped close to the 280-yard marker.

“Many consider Ms. Hurst, an 18-year-old rookie this year on the Ladies Professional Golf Association Tour, the next great female golfer. Yet as with the other teenage star Michelle Wie, many also fear that she risks a burnout. Ms. Hurst spent last year on the Duramed Futures Tour, winning five times in 13 starts and becoming the tour’s rookie and player of the year. On April 25, she shot 68 on to finish 10th (tied with Ms. Wie) in the Corona Championship in Morelia, Mexico. At the Corona, she holed out an eagle from a sand trap and sunk three birdies in four days on the final hole in front of a large, animated gallery.

“I followed Ms. Hurst during 2007, her last year of junior golf, when she was deciding whether to attend college or go pro and played at tournaments such as the one at Mirasol, the Birks & Mayors Junior Championship.”

Echikson writes about both boys and girls in “Shooting for Tiger.” There are significant differences, with girls maturing faster, often making the leap from high school to the pro tour. In addition to Hurst, Paula Creamer and Morgan Pressel.

This progression is not good, according to the two dominant women golfers of the past two decades, Swede Annika Sorenstam and Mexican Lorena Ochoa, both of whom attended college before turning pro, Echikson writes in the Golf Journal column.

As a very casual hacker who enjoys the walk however it’s spoiled, I liked “Shooting for Tiger.” It’s a sports book that describes the effect of obsessive parents on their young offspring and provides plenty of ammunition for those who call on these parents to let their kids enjoy a childhood.

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About the author: William Echikson was the Dow Jones bureau chief in Brussels, Belgium from 2001 to 2006 and is now the senior manager for European Union communications for Google. He is the author of “Noble Rot: A Bordeaux Wine Revolution” and two other books in addition to “Shooting for Tiger.”

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