A World of Roccos
Ξ June 18th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Op-Ed |
Tiger’s unbelievable performance at the U.S. Open seems to have solidified his position in America’s pantheon of athletic demigods. The folks at Nike apparently pulled the dusty Ouija board out of the closet for a commercial that seemed to summon his late father’s voice with the eerily prescient proclamation to his son, “you’ll never meet another person as mentally tough as you in your entire life”. After his long march to what may become the most memorable victory in golf history, the press fell to their knees in reverence. Reporter after reporter, perhaps still under the spell of his father’s hypnotic words, wrote of the “steely gaze”, the focus, and the “cocoon of concentration” that the man seems to inhabit. I admit that his ability to steadily hold a goal in sight until he achieves it does seem almost superhuman considering the age of manic advertising, fast food and even faster social upheaval that we live in. Not to mention that he did the whole thing with a stress fracture and a bum knee.
Others wrote of how the unbelievable match-up between the relatively unknown Mediate and the unbeatable Woods had restored purity for at least one day to the province of athletics. A sports obsessed nation, we’ve become accustomed to feeling let down by the steroid abuse and profligate behavior that characterize contemporary professional athletics as much as much as we’ve become used to being let down by our politicians. Tiger and Rocco reminded a nation just how riveting good, honest competition can be.
What I hope doesn’t get lost in the media’s trumpeting of Tiger’s focus and the David versus Goliath story is Rocco Mediate’s incredible character. While Woods certainly deserves every compliment he gets for what he has achieved, the lesson we learn from Rocco is all the more valuable precisely because he is the opposite of Tiger. He’s an everyman. He’s a guy that had every right to complain that some of the best years of his career were taken from him by a back injury that nearly brought an end to his career when his back pain returned again a few years after surgery. Yet, ESPN’s Gene Wojciechowski aptly described him as a “45-year-old walking smile”. He had been in golf purgatory for years and was just happy to be having fun again.
Sometimes I wonder if we idolize our athletes so much that it’s spilled over into our approach to life away from the course. I hope that it hasn’t caused us to sit around and wait for the Tiger Woods of the world to solve the problems galloping headlong at us while there’s an army of Roccos just waiting in the ranks for an opportunity to prove their mettle.
Rocco’s temperament made me realize just how grateful I am to live in a world where for the first time we don’t have to wait for the big guys. The power of the internet has allowed little guys a chance to compete, whether they’re a small business in Oklahoma or a family in Kenya receiving a microloan from across the world. When we pool the talent and passion of every Rocco out there that just needs an opportunity we will end up with far more progress than one Tiger could ever give us. We need people like Rocco to show up every now and then to remind us that, as cliché as it sounds, an extraordinary world can only be built by all the ordinary people.
