How did Tiger Woods a surprise humanity changed

For all the speeches for the PGA Championship Missing an identityThe tournament has at least one feature that distinguishes it from any other major event or Marquee PGA Tour: the 20 places in the field designated for club professionals.

Among that crew this week at The empty quil It’s Tyler Collet, a 29-year-old Pro Assistant on John’s Island Club in Vero Beach, Fla. Collet is playing in his fourth PGA championship After appearances in 2021, 2022 and 2024; This year he sailed the field, winning the PGA professional championship with a record 10 shots.

Wednesday morning, Collet played a round of practice with Cameron Youngwho is playing in his fourth PGA championship this week. At its first PGA start, in Southern Hills in 2022, Young, you can remember, was deep in the hunt on Sunday afternoon, before a stroke in a Greenside bunker and a three-putt in the 70th immersed hole Hope. It happens. Even the best players in the world hit the loose shots-or the bad bad ones-a lesson, said Collet, which was split in Tulsa earlier that week.

“I will tell a story I probably don’t have to …” Colllet started reporters Wednesday.

On Sunday in front of the championship, Colilet said, he is softening the balls in the range – he had the place for himself – when another player died with him and began his practice session. But not only any Tiger Woods player.

“He throws balls next to me, literally near me,” he recalled Collet, still in disbelief. “Really good.”

Then came another surprise, an epiphany even: Woods, proud owner of the 82 PGA Tour Wins, 15 main titles and golf immortality, was not perfect. A block here, a pull there. A high habit, a low habit.

“He’s a human being,” said Collet, “and he was hitting bad like me.”

Collet went on: “As we play at this level, we know how a thin shot sounds, we know how a fat shot sounds. Of course when it hits it well, it is another sound; it is certainly the best to do it. others would be. ”

Collet was not telling the story to shadow. Nothing close to this. His pointing was that players of all skills can and should take comfort in the fact that even supreme talents like T. Woods do not always find the center of the club. “Everyone strikes bad shots,” said Collet, “but just try to have fun with it.”

To say more easily than to do? Of course.

Who of us did not swear the match after a clumsy tee shot in the tree or led the wedge in a pond? Little effort on earth can expose your soul with more ruthless efficiency than this wonderful, crazy game.

Ask British Pro Eddie Peppelellwhich in the second round of Turkish Open of the World Tour DP Last week rins two balls in the 6th hole 6th on his way to a quadrant-then raised a white flag. It was done for the week. A few days later, Peppepell accepted, poetically, In podcast he cohosts“The fire that once burned in me is an ember in the best case, and I am trying to blow it gently to try and restore it in life and find the wisdom that can enable it.”

Collet gets it. He said he was not always so loose, certainly not when the new ranks were coming to Western Virginia or playing Golf College in East Kentucky or trying to find his way as a pro -college tour. Because in those days doing birds and avoiding bogeys was his workingHe said, “I never had fun doing it.”

But now that competitive golf is just part of his living, said Collet, his mindset has changed. “It’s no longer the end of the world,” he said for weeks when his swinging is not cooperating or the blows are not falling. “It’s a game that I want to play, and it is definitely the highest level, but it’s not like life and death there. I think it calms my mind and calms my approach, and I play better because it.”

The collet is grouped into the first two rounds In Quail Hollow with Jimmy Walker, who won the 2016 PGA Championship, and 52-year-old Richard Bland, who won the PGA senior championship last year.

Koleta can learn something from them. And surely those from him.