Issue Date: April 3, 2005

SPORTS

Tiger isn't perfect. So what?

Give Woods a break, says a Harvard psychologist. He hasn't won a "major" in three years, but at this week's Masters, he won't fixate on that -- and neither should we.

By Arthur Ciaramicoli

With the Masters kicking off this week at Augusta National, all eyes will be on Tiger Woods. He won the U.S. Open, British Open and PGA Championship in 2000 and the 2001 Masters to become the reigning champion of all four major tournaments at once. By the end of June 2002, he had won eight career majors.

And he hasn't won a major since.

The media will have tough questions for Woods this week. Judging by the clearheaded way I've seen him address such inquiries, my feeling is that his response could be: "I woke up one day and realized I don't need to be perfect."

That's good. Woods doesn't have to be perfect. Nor should such expectations be projected upon him. He is what I call a proactive learner, as opposed to a perfectionist frozen by his mistakes. He doesn't equate greatness with winning majors, necessarily. He's more interested in quality of performance. He speaks as a person who knows that as long as he remains focused on performance, the victories will come again. As he told an interviewer: "You just play. Every one of us has moments where we have doubts."

Now married, he has established balance in his life. And he speaks as much these days about building his foundation as about golf: He's now constructing the 35,000-square-foot Tiger Woods Learning Center in Anaheim, Calif.

This approach is refreshing, given the pressures faced by people who seek an unobtainable standard of perfection. Like the sales rep who measures herself only by the mind-boggling numbers she puts up every year. Or the student who sinks into self-loathing when the test score arrives with anything less than 100%. These are people who can't distinguish between numbers and the performance that went into them.

Successful public figures take an adaptive approach to performance. The Boston Red Sox didn't let being down 0-3 to the New York Yankees last fall paralyze them. They knew that the fourth game was an opportunity, and they built from there. Woods knows that this week presents yet another opportunity for him.

Oh, and for those skeptics who dismiss all this as feel-good psychobabble, here's a sports-minded reason no one should make too much of Woods' alleged slump: He's 29 years old. He has his eight major wins. The greatest ever, Jack Nicklaus, didn't win his eighth major until he was 30.

Taking that into consideration, Woods is doing just fine.

Clinical psychologist and Harvard Medical School instructor Arthur Ciaramicoli is the author of "Performance Addiction" (Wiley, $24.95).