Shooting for Tiger: How Golf's Obsessed New Generation Is Transforming a Country Club Sport

by William Echikson

While many parents encourage their children to become the next Einstein or Yo-Yo Ma, some push their kids to become the next Tiger Woods. No longer does an elite, elderly set dominate golf. A new... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1586485784
• ISBN13: 9781586485788
• Release Date: May 2009
• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Length: 269 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Tiger Mania Driving New Generation of Obsessed Golfers, Their Parents

BOOK REVIEW: 'Shooting for Tiger': Tiger Mania Behind Ambitious, Hard-Driving Golf Parents By David M. Kinchen Mark Twain, who was from an era before golf carts, called golf "a good walk spoiled." For a long time -- B.T. (Before Tiger) -- it was the game of choice of white middle-aged males, famously satirized in the "Caddyshack" movies. Tiger Woods changed everything, says William Echikson in "Shooting for Tiger: How Golf's Obsessed New Generation Is Transforming a Country Club Sport" (PublicAffairs, $24.95, 288 pages). Golf is the new tennis, with ambitious parents, many of them from the ubiquitous and, in my opinion, all too often annoying baby boom generation, pushing their talented children into becoming the next Tiger. Echikson, a former staff correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, Fortune and BusinessWeek, chronicles this latest obsession by following a season of the American Junior Golf Association's elite tournaments. A tennis legend, Ivan Lendl, is one of the parents who is doing everything he can to turn his daughters Marika and Isabelle into female Tigers, Echikson writes. The specter facing these parents is golf phenom Michelle Wie, who skipped the junior tournaments and tried as a pre-teen to compete against experienced women players in the LPGA. "By the time she was eighteen, Wie was damaged physically and mentally," the author writes. Her experience convinced AJGA Executive Director Stephen Hamblin of the necessity for age limits: "You just can't skip the stages of development." There's an ethnic element involved that could be construed by P.C. types as racism: Many of the hard-charging parents are Asian, especially Korean. Wie, now 19, is the poster girl for this golf obsession. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii to natives of South Korea, Wie has never won a 72-hole stroke play match in her career, despite her 6-foot-1-inch stature and long experience. Since she's young and obviously talented, I fully expect this to change. Echikson devotes much of his book to the exploits of Vicky Hurst, an 18-year-old who -- unlike Wie -- went through the AJGA experience of junior tournaments. Hurst's family, he writes, is reminiscent of Tiger Woods's. Earl Woods was a Green Beret and lieutenant colonel. Hurst's father, Joe, was an Air Force colonel, who retired from service after 26 years. Tiger's mother, Kultida, is Thai. Hurst's mother, Koko, is Korean. Earl Woods met Kultida when he was stationed in Southeast Asia. Joe Hurst met Koko when he was stationed in Korea. Even if you don't give a hoot about golf, thinking of it as an elitist activity for the idle rich, you'll enjoy Echikson's chronicle of junior golf. He describes a subculture of kids who have been deprived of traditional childhoods by families hell-bent on turning their kids into champions. We get inside rigorous and very expensive golf academies devoted to training the world's top prospects. "Shooting for Tiger" explores the real c