TIME WAITS FOR NO ATHLETE
Twilight years: Manning, Bryant and Woods experiencing tough times as careers wind down
My favourite Peyton Manning anecdote was the one told in a magazine profile in his early professional years, when he was already making calls at the line of scrimmage and generally dancing around and pointing at linebackers like he was on fire.
Manning explained that he kept a number of instant photographs by his wardrobe to help him choose an outfit. His mother — it might have been a girlfriend — had selected various apparel combinations and taken shots of them, because he was never comfortable figuring out which sweater went with which chinos.
Peyton Manning was better at diagnosing a blitz at the line than he was choosing pants. That this particular anecdote also includes a Polaroid camera also tells you something else about Manning: he is old.
Kobe Bryant seems about as different from Manning as it is possible to be. Where Manning is the gregarious pitchman, Bryant is the sullen warrior who feuded with Shaquille O’Neal and his perpetual grin. Where Manning was a constant tactician, Bryant cared not for a strategy, unless it was called Give Me the Ball and I Will Shoot It.
Bryant is much like Manning in one way, though: He is old. Two ways, actually: He is broken down.
And so, we are about at the end of two spectacular careers, both of which have seemingly ended in a remarkably sudden fashion, although only Bryant seems to have figured that out.
One could add a third career to the list. It didn’t garner near the attention of Kobe’s retirement poem or Manning’s having been usurped by someone named Brock Osweiler, but Tiger Woods was announced two weeks ago as a vice-captain for the U.S. Ryder Cup team in September. Woods said in a statement that, “Once I’m fully healthy, I’d like to try to make the team too, but either way, I’m very excited to work with Davis (Love, the U.S. captain).”
It would have been a routine announcement — Jim Furyk was also named a vice-captain, and no one is eulogizing his career — but for the fact that nothing Woods has ever done has been routine. His entry in a tournament is something of an event in itself and, even through all of his recent struggles, he has always carried himself as though a run of victories is imminent.
But deciding to be one of the guys with an earpiece in a golf cart while the best American golfers are playing the Ryder Cup just seems like a very antiTiger thing to do. He’s always been The Man at these things, and his struggles in the event have neatly coincided with that of the U.S. team as a whole.
It looks a lot like a Tiger Woods who has accepted that the next chapter of his career is upon him, that the dominance is not going to return, and that he might as well start acting like someone who is not the sport’s biggest star.
Woods has always been closer to Bryant in demeanour, although those close to him insist he’s a jolly fellow when away from the cameras. Public Kobe, Private Peyton. Wherever he fits on the personality spectrum between them, though, Tiger has something in common with both: All of them, their playing days now in the twilight, will be remembered as something less than what we thought they would be.
When Woods won the U.S. Open on a bum leg in 2008 for his 14th major, did anyone doubt that, at 32, he would get to a record 19? Instead, there was the surgery, and the mistresses, and comebacks and more surgery and more comebacks and eventually he was a great golfer who couldn’t close the deal at a major anymore. Now age and injury have rendered him once-great.
Manning’s individual records will always keep him in the argument about the NFL’s best quarterbacks, but his 11-13 playoff record will usually keep him from winning it. He threw 55 touchdown passes two years ago, beat the Patriots in the playoffs and then was crushed by Seattle in the Super Bowl.
Bryant was, at 32, a five-time NBA champion who had a realistic shot at eclipsing Michael Jordan both in number of titles and on the career scoring list. But he made the playoffs just once more, then ended three straight seasons with injuries. Along the way, the game changed around him and team-first basketball became prized over his shootfirst strategy. Not only did he not match Jordan’s championship feats, he became a pariah, too stubborn to change his ways.
One more title, the sixth, would have changed the conversation around him, just like it would for Manning, or for Woods.
You can see why he might have kept trying. Everyone, even the greatest of athletes, wants their career to end in the right way, with the proper exclamation mark. Age, though, is not particularly merciful. And injuries do not care for your legacy.