Windies and Woods make for a year of gatvol
Since we are in the silly season of retrospective appraisals, here are two highly personal observations from an eventful year in sport: I was gatvol of the West Indies and gatvol of Tiger Woods.
How can a team of such potential brilliance fail so regularly, and how can one guy, among so many good players, win so consistently at golf? Not even Manchester United can make me that gatvol.
Where are the vicissitudes that make sport so wonderfully unpredictable?
If we can only get the West Indies to win - preferably against Australia - they will be worth watching again. But it won't happen as long as Brian Lara pads up to Jason Gillespie. If only Lara had Ridley Jacobs' temperament, we might see a sea of change in the team from the islands.
And if we can get Ernie Els to roll back a dozen shots or so, turn a few second places into firsts and think of Tiger as Cliff Richard rather than Elvis Presley, it might make the PGA Tour more interesting.
Of course pigs may also fly next year, but until they do the two bankers for 2001 are the West Indies to get beaten and Tiger to collect another major title.
The Windies have fallen on such bad times that not even a world record by one of their number received its due recognition this week. When the venerable Jacobs held seven catches behind the wicket, hardly anyone noticed.
Jacobs is from a long line of proud cricketers from Antigua, whose entire population, as someone pointed out this week, you could fit in the MCG's Southern Stand and still have enough room left for the Melbourne taxi drivers.
Sadly, Jacobs was the last man to leave the scene of his most recent achievement. He wasn't acknowledged in the way a bowler is, by being allowed to depart ahead of the rest of the side to applause from his peers. The West Indies have become so bad they don't even know how to celebrate even the little consolations.
Any acknowledgement would have been appropriate, not only for equalling the record of Wasim Bari, Ian Smith and Bob Taylor, but for always providing some backbone to a team which seems to have so little of it.
Jacobs, who is 33, is coming to the end of a career during which his recognition by the selectors was belated and the team owes him a huge debt of gratitude. He is not as naturally talented as Lara or even Courtney Walsh, but he does his best - and at least he gets his foot to the ball when he bats.
The situation is quite the reverse in golf. There is no lacking of talent, ability or willingness to hunt down the Tiger, but he is just too bloody good.
From January in Hawaii, where Els and Woods went eagle-eagle to the 18th, forcing the play-off which Woods eventually won with a 40-foot birdie putt, it has been the year of the Tiger. We can only wonder whether Els would have still pocketed the two million if Tiger had been in Sun City this month instead of in Argentina, where he finished the year winning the World Cup with David Duval.
Woods won nine tournaments, three majors and anchored the President's Cup team. He won in Thailand, Canada and Scotland; he won at historic St Andrews and historic Pebble Beach. He won the US Open, the British Open, the Canadian Open. He won the PGA, the World Series of Golf and the old Bing Crosby Clambake. He won Jack Nicklaus' Memorial tournament and Arnold Palmer's Bay Hill tournament. As Tony Kornheiser of the Washington Post remarked, "If Gary Player had held a tournament, Tiger would have won that too."
Earl Woods, hardly a dispassionate observer, came closest to describing Tiger's play: "It's like watching Rembrandt paint."
Here's to 2001 not being like watching paint dry.