Bill Walsh A "Mentor" to Tiger Woods
by Mulligan Stu
on Jul 30, 2007 5:05 PM EDT
in News
 Photo by Gary Newkirk / Golf Digest |
SBN's 49ers blog, Niners Nation, has news coverage of Walsh's death and retrospectives on his career.
The photo (via Golf Digest) shows Walsh and Tiger Woods in 2006 at the opening of the Tiger Woods Learning Center in Anaheim, Calif. Walsh was an important figure in Woods' life owing to a friendship that blossomed when the freshman Woods walked into Walsh's office at the University of Stanford - where Walsh was coaching at the time - and asked to talk.
Walsh also had a love affair with golf, described in an article by Mark Soltau:
"Anybody who has seen golf -- it's the most skilled or athletic sports event," he said recently. "There is the incredibly challenging mental aspect, and you spend tedious long hours practicing."
In 1992, when Walsh returned to coaching at Stanford University, he was overseeing a spring practice one afternoon and called me over. I was covering the team for a local newspaper and had played competitive golf since I was a kid.
"Can you watch me hit a few balls?" he asked.
"Sure," I said. "When?"
"Now," said Walsh.
He wasn't kidding. Walsh turned practice over to an assistant and led me to his car, where we made a quick trip to the Stanford driving range.
It was 1994 when Woods first approached Walsh:
"Hi, Mr. Walsh," he said. "It's great to meet you. I'm Tiger Woods."
They bonded instantly.
"I felt sort of privileged to meet him," Walsh said. "He wanted to know a lot about football. After a while, we talked about other things like politics and Stanford. When you spoke with him, even at 19, he was a mature adult. He almost conversed better with adults."
Woods has spoken often of the influence Walsh had on him. But perhaps in that Soltau article he said it best and most succinctly:
You can honor Walsh by making a donation in his memory to the The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, or to the Tiger Woods Foundation that Walsh supported so strongly.
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