He can win in the face of an attempted last-round ambush by David Duval, as he did in the British Open. Or he can win as he did Sunday, when a wonderful obscurity like Bob May hounds him for hours with his underdog tenacity. A Bob May playing indomitably, looking vaguely like the neighbor butcher thrust into the international limelight - but playing unafraid and matching the best golfer on earth, birdie for birdie, escape for escape. But he still lost to the hard-crust will, the power, the precision, and the nerveless creativity of Tiger Woods. He is winning championship after championship in a game of hard-skulled competitors, a game where the athlete is on his own, and in which the difference between greatness and mediocrity is microscopic, less than a stroke a round.
Woods knows that.
And because he does, he doesn't have the time or the nature to indulge showmanship or flamboyance. He electrifies the crowds with his strength and his uncanny art on the putting green, and his absolute belief that he will recover from some imminent catastrophe, and he does. He worries and glowers. Muhammad Ali had charisma, the quality of igniting the crowds with both his ferocities and his personality. Michael Jordan had that.