We live in an age of sports immortals. Men like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Roger Federer, and women like Serena Williams, have not only thoroughly dominated their sport, they have set records which will last for a very long time – possibly forever. What they have in common is a rare combination of athletic grace and unwavering determination to win. These are athletes who are noted for making everything look easy, when in fact they put in hours of work each day to accomplish just this illusion.

Three of the four are still performing and gave wonderful examples this week of what makes them so extraordinary. Tiger Woods completely dominated the field in a victory at the BMW Championship, part of the playoffs for the FedEx Cup that caps off the PGA Tour. Roger Federer displayed some unusual brilliance at the US Open this week, and then in the finals failed to show anything of his normal form as he lost to a newcomer, Juan Martin del Potro. Still, people will be talking about this tournament as the one Federer lost, just as they will be discussing the mental collapse of Serena Williams in her pursuit of yet another US Open title.

Michael Jordan is retired from basketball but was in the news this week with some illuminating comments, so let’s begin with him.

Michael Jordan Elected to Basketball Hall of Fame

No surprise here. Everyone knew Michael Jordan would be elected at the earliest point of eligibility. What was surprising was the speech he gave discussing what motivated him during his career.

During this 20 minute talk Michael Jordan listed the names of coaches, teachers, mentors, and managers who had dismissed him sometime during his career. These were men who promoted somebody else over him because that person had been on the team longer, or who wouldn’t select him consistently for the starting line-up, or who told him some part of his game was weak and he could never fix it. Jordan took each of these instances as a dare and challenge, and he channeled his disappointment and anger into motivation to put in the intense work necessary to prove that person wrong.

The result was one of the most intense and competitive players in the NBA during the 1990s, when Jordan led the Chicago Bulls to six NBA championships. The opposition learned to keep their mouth shut on the court when facing off against Michael Jordan; trash talking the man only resulted in humiliation as Jordan stepped up his game and began to perform his wizardry.

His best known trick was a gravity-defying lunge up the middle to the basket. As his opponents leapt up to block him, Jordan would crouch down, still in mid-air, contort his body and spring out unexpectedly from the side, his left or right arm surging toward the basket and a goal. This bit of MJ magic became known as Air Jordan, as were the Nike basketball shoes he endorsed that made him a millionaire.

When Michael Jordan was hot he could sink 20 baskets in a night and as many free throws. An off night found him performing only half as well. Still, even at his best, there was no guarantee the Bulls would win that night. It took Chicago Bulls coach Phil Jackson some intense coaching with Jordan to realize that championships would not result from his talents alone. He had to learn team playing, which involved the art of passing the ball to find the optimal shot, not the maximum shot for MJ.

Once Jackson obtained a team performance from the Bulls, with Michael Jordan as the star forward, the door was open to one championship after another, and dominance of the league throughout the 1990s. No team since then has achieved the Bulls’ won-loss record, nor has anyone come along who can energize a sell-out crowd at an away game like Michael did. Michael Jordan became a global brand name, carefully rationed out to sell only certain types of products, and also exploiting Jordan’s warm smile and personality in the commercials. He was, in the 1990s, the most recognized male anywhere on the globe, so powerful was his personal franchise.

This was another part of Michael Jordan’s education: learning to live in a fishbowl, surrounded by bodyguards, judiciously maintaining a curtain over his personal and family life (which eventually led to a divorce), choosing endorsements with care for the impact on his image and the reliability of the company product; and choosing the right money manager when hundreds of millions of dollars began to pile up in the bank.

No wonder Michael Jordan was the first athlete Tiger Woods consulted when he first broke into international fame. No one on the planet was better able to counsel Tiger what was in store for him.

Tiger the Brand

When Tiger Woods walks up to the tee in a tournament he has his golf cap adorned with the Tiger Woods logo – a mixed T and W. His clothes are carefully set out in advance by his advisers, so that the sewn logos will receive maximum exposure on the cameras, justifying the millions of dollars spent by the advertisers to convince Tiger to wear them. Tiger’s clothes are color-coordinated for maximum affect on camera; Tiger always wears a particular red shirt on the last day of a tournament, partly to bring him luck.

His shoes, his golf club collection, his monogrammed golf balls, tees, and other accoutrements are all sold at stores and clubhouses around the world. He earns vastly more from the clothing and equipment franchise than from playing golf, and he has become the first sports billionaire, able to fly from one tournament to the next in his private plane with entourage.

As with any billionaire in the public eye, he has learned to keep his family off-limits to the press (the fewer pictures of them the better, from a security standpoint), You rarely see even his wife at a tournament, He selects his charitable appearances carefully, doling out his smile and drawing power to only a handful of causes each year. In that regard, he is more stingy than other top athletes, and people hope at the end of his career he will turn into a Bill Gates and set up a foundation to disburse his billions.

All of this would be for naught if Tiger Woods couldn’t continue to perform on the golf course at an exemplary level. There was some question that his career had peaked after Tiger was forced off the tour to undergo knee surgery. He has one of the most elegant and careful driving shots in the game, but it is also one of the most powerful. He torques his body up like a corkscrew in under to unleash a a highly controlled, propulsive whack to the ball. His swing can generate routine drives off the tee of 325 yards, giving him often a pitch-up on an average par 4 hole in order to get on the green. More than most players, he can shape a ball’s direction in flight to the left or right, in order to avoid trees or sand traps or water hazards. His short game around the greens is also first-rate, and when his putting is at its best, no one can beat him. But all this stress on his body has taken a claim on his health, especially with his knees and back where the stress is the greatest. The golf world has been waiting to see if Tiger has recovered fully, and if he could pull all his talents together again as in the past.

We got the answer this week at the BMW Championship at Cog Hill golf course in suburban Chicago. Tiger has played here many times and won four previous championships. He says he loves the course as it suits his style of game. On Friday he put on an incredible display not only of error-free golf, but of golf that was risk-taking when necessary, and beautifully positioned at all times to generate birdies and the occasional eagle. His drives were long and true, avoiding any hazards along the way. His approach shots to the green most often found the ball lagged up within ten feet of the hole. At this distance, Tiger was devastatingly accurate with his putter. He made all but one of these putts all week, generating one birdie after another when the opportunity arose. On Friday he shot a 62, nine under par for the course, and tying the all-time record low score on the course. By Sunday’s finish, he was 18 under par for the course, with an eight stroke lead over anyone else. It was the sort of dominating performance Tiger put on years ago at the Masters tournament, when he first announced his presence on the golf circuit. This week, following a year off from surgery for a sore knee, Tiger was announcing “I’m back!”

When Tiger attends a tournament, over half of the paying crowd chooses to walk along with him hole by hole. The rest of the golf course seems devoid of spectators. I’ve joined along on occasion with these crowds, and what you see, off in the distance, is a very intense, focused young man, whose mind is constantly turning over the possibilities for the next shot. Tiger doesn’t banter with the crowd or even smile. He is all business, He seems to have been working out in a gym, because his physique is lean and muscular, carried with a military bearing. He leans carefully over a ball to pick it up or inspect a putting line; he never hunches over or shows the slightest lack of military precision. He will take multiple practice swings, then spend some time addressing the wall until he lets go with the perfectly placed shot. He shows visible displeasure if he feels he mis-hit the ball, even if it luckily lands five feet from the cup. He has been known to finish his golf game for the day, leading a tournament, and then spend an hour or two on the practice holes working on some perceived flaw in his swing.

In the 1960s golf had its first mega-star in Arnold Palmer. He too attracted tens of thousands of followers to the course. I followed him around back then and remembered having a very good time. Arnold did not have a picture-perfect swing. He would wrench his shoulders and hit what looked like an amateur shot, only to see the ball soar majestically forward 285 yards (a big drive those days). He would struggle every so often with his putter or wedge, and you could see the pain of disappointment on his face when he hit a poor shot. But he loved chatting with the spectators, signing autographs, making jokes, and having a good time at what was after all a game. The whole business of endorsing products came later for Arnold, after he retired from the game, and it certainly made him a millionaire.

What Arnold had that Tiger Woods lacks is charisma – a relation to the crowd that generates excitement and warmth, and a sense for the spectator that they are part of something fun. The sense from the crowds that follow Tiger Woods is one of awe and reverence. No one dares breathe while Tiger is ready to take a shot, for fear of interrupting his concentration, thereby affecting Something Really Important. Indeed, on occasion Something Really Important does happen and the crowd is satisfied to have witnessed an incredible shot.

For me, I would rather take the bonhomie and gentlemanly banter of an Arnold Palmer. He turned 80 this week and received a lot of birthday congratulations from people at the BMW Championship. If you know a friend of a friend you can still call up Arnold Palmer and ask for a game of golf with him at his club in Pennsylvania. Likely as not, he’ll join you in a foursome, make some terrific and not-so-terrific shots, crack some jokes, have a Long Island Tea at the ninth hole (a drink he popularized), in general have a good time, and make sure you had a good time. To Arnold Palmer, golf is still a game, not the road to a billion dollar franchising empire that requires the utmost seriousness at all times. Long may he continue to remind us of that.

Swiss Precision

One of Tiger Woods’ close buddies is Roger Federer, the Swiss tennis superstar. Federer dominates tennis like Woods and Jordan have dominated their sport. He holds the most grand slam tournament victories. He has an incredible number of records relating to the number of matches he has gone without being broken, the succession of semi-finals and finals he has achieved, most tie breaks won, etc. He is still reasonably young and can be expected to drive his grand slam victory mark to around 20 during his career, a number that will be very difficult to match for any future player. The only significant complaint about Federer is that his play is spotty, and there was certainly evidence of that this Monday when someone impersonating Federer appeared to show up at the US Open final and take a chink out of his reputation for greatness.

It’s not that Federer is playing a weak field. His nemesis, Rafael Nadal from Spain, kept Federer for years from winning the French Open. It was only when Nadal went off the tour due to injury that Federer was able to grasp this missing title this year. Federer himself has been injured and forced out of play due to a bout with mononucleosis. He is now scrupulously careful about his health and conditioning, because there has been an alarming increase in career-destroying injuries in professional tennis. The equipment being used is vastly more powerful than the wooden rackets of thirty years ago, and the swing being used involves the same sort of torque that is employed in golf and which can play havoc with back, thigh, and leg muscles, not to mention the knees. Nadal plays each stroke with such a ferocity that no one on the tour was surprised when both his knees gave out this year, necessitating surgery from which he may never fully recover.

Part of the secret to Federer’s longevity is his style of movement. His forehands and backhands are models of economic motion. The speed and spin put on the ball matches that of any other professional player, but Federer appears to exert far less energy than his competition. He seems to glide from point to point on the court, barely out of breath when other players are sprinting and hacking their way up and down the court. With apparent little effort, he can reach virtually any ball and still get off a classically proportioned stroke.

When he combines his mobility with his incredible accuracy in placing his shots in corners and on the base line, Federer is able to maneuver his opponents back and forth across the court, further and further to the left or right, until the time comes to deliver the ball to where the opponent ain’t. That’s what high level tennis is really about – a strategic game of maneuvering your opponent to a fatally out-of-place position. This takes some chess-like thinking ahead, and no one is better at this than Federer.

His highlight this week was the penultimate point played in his semi-final match with Novak Djokovic. Federer was chasing down an overhead lob, his back to the net, when he leaned down to catch the ball beneath his legs and drive it over the net for a winner. This type of circus shot is used by many pros, but hardly anyone is ever successful at it, and then only to give themselves time to handle the return shot from their opponent. What Federer did that was so unusual was not simply hit a winner, but hit it with real force, as if it were an offensive shot, not a defensive one. It’s the sort of athleticism that makes other professionals gape in awe, and if you haven’t seen it, check out  this You Tube link.

The only way for Federer to top off what was a perfect week would have been to demolish his opponent in the finals, 20 year old Argentinian Juan Martin del Potro. He had, after all, beaten him in all previous six matches. The performance put on by Federer was amazing, all right, but for all the wrong reasons. His playing was an embarrassment of double faults, weak serves, errant ground strokes, and volleys plowed into the net. Who this Federer was is not clear, but even in his struggles with Rafael Nadal, he performed better than this.

Tennis as a match sport is ruthless when it comes to mental collapses like this. Unforced errors and double faults are counted up and displayed on the screen for everyone to comment on. In golf, Tiger Woods can have a bad day (and often does), but there are 70 other players out there for the camera to follow. Michael Jordan got to sit on the bench out of public view if his game was off. Tennis pros are exposed for two or more hours to scrutiny of their every failure.

Federer was so discommoded in the finals he even had a rare outburst at the umpire. Maybe he was taking lessons from Serena Williams, who had a far worse breakdown a few days earlier in the women’s semi-finals.

The Williams Dynasty

For nearly ten years Serena and Venus Williams have dominated women’s tennis. They rank one and two in title victories, Serena being the more accomplished of the sisters. They have taken turns ranked as World No. 1 in the sport. They were the first to introduce a more forceful style of play to the women’s game, as they took advantage of improvements in racquet technology. They also took weight and endurance training to new heights, with a demonstrable improvement in their games. Within the tennis world, they are as much appreciated for their skill as double partners, a part of the game that gets little camera attention but is viewed as equally demanding as singles play.

Both sisters have had trouble with leg and knee injuries, a common motif in sports like tennis and golf where aggressive play has sidelined Tiger Woods, Rafael Nadal, and other top players. Serena entered this month’s US Open with a knee brace on one leg, and somehow managed to advance to the semi-finals despite obvious pain when playing. It was in the semi-finals that her game blew up.

Serena Williams was down a set to Kim Clijsters and losing in the second. She faced elimination and had been serving poorly all night, while Clisjters was on top of her game. At a crucial second serve, Williams was called by the line judge for a foot fault, causing her to double fault and leaving her with one last chance to stay alive in the tournament.

Something motivated Serena to protest vociferously to the line judge. Her protest was loud, crude, prolonged, and worst of all, involved the threat of jamming the tennis ball down the line judge’s throat. Of course, Serena didn’t mean she would literally do this to the line judge. She was speaking out of anger. She was also violating a major rule that forbids intimidation of a judge or referee.

Instant replay showed the line judge was in error – there was no foot fault. But a closer review from another angle showed that Serena Williams’ foot had indeed touched the court before her racket touched the ball. That is a foul that cost her a point, and then her outburst cost her another point and the match. A stunned crowd watched her walk over to the other side of the court to congratulate Clijsters on her victory.

This was a bizarre way to lose a match. Conjecture was immediately made that she did this on purpose, since her play was poor in the first place and she was bound to lose. This is not very convincing. Serena could have easily and with no loss of face withdrawn due to injury. She has been such a competitor over the years that it is difficult to imagine the thought of throwing the match crossing her mind.

She said afterwards that she used to be much worse with her temper, and she left it at that, trying to “move on” from an embarrassing incident without admitting any culpability. The tennis authorities assessed her a $10,000 fine, small change from the $350,000 paycheck she received for reaching the semi-finals.

A number of tennis pros felt that Serena was treated way too lightly by the USTA, and that she should have been suspended from play rather than allowed to compete with her sister in the doubles final. They made the point that no other sport, not even hockey or football, would tolerate anything approaching this behavior to a referee or umpire, especially involving intimidation or threats. They are almost certainly right about that. The integrity of sport breaks down if the arbitrators are not free to make impartial decisions.

What happened to Serena Williams was a mental collapse, not unlike Roger Federer’s, expressed in part in her athletic performance, and also in her courtside behavior. A past master of these sort of outbursts – John McEnroe – was one of the commentators on television, and it was odd hearing his colleagues talk about his previous disgraces (as they put it), with him saying nothing in defense and unwilling to comment about Serena. It does make you wonder what he thinks about his behavior thirty years ago as a young tennis star.

No doubt, like John McEnroe, Serena Williams will want to be remembered for her trophies and her tennis records. Unfortunately, we now have You Tube and permanent access to her Foot Fault Frenzy, a lasting stain on her record. Tennis, like golf and basketball, is said to be much more a mental game than other sports, and what we saw this week with both Williams and Federer was just how much mental strain these athletes are under. No wonder Tiger Woods paces the golf course like an automaton, holding every ounce of negative emotion in check.

Intimidating the Regulators

Sport is not divorced from trends in society at large. A tremendous amount of advertising dollars has found its way into golf, basketball, tennis, football, etc. The stars of the game become instant multi-millionaires, and superstars like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods earn hundreds of millions of dollars more in commercial endorsements. Managing their image becomes as important as managing their game. They have large entourages to feed, a brand to nurture, contracts to live up to, lease payments to make on their private jets, and mortgages to meet on their multiple homes. Technology has given them racquets and golf clubs that make it easy to break established records, but also require that they brutalize their body and risk major and career-threatening injuries.

We see the results in spectacular and unprecedented performances. We see records broken routinely. We also see these heroes and heroines sidelined time and again with injuries, and on occasion, we see a breakdown in the steely composure they employ when at their work.

Have we seen a limit being reached in these developments? Are the advances peaking, and are the strains becoming too much for these athletes? I suspect so. I suspect there is some general, though weak, connection with what is happening with professional sports and what has happened with other industries like banking and health care that have been polluted by too much money. Standards get compromised, and egoistic, selfish behavior is tolerated or even encouraged. Eventually even the regulators are dragged into the corruption through intimidation and cooption.

This is, however, about as far as I want to go with the social generalizations. When all is said and done, it is sport as big business, but sport also as entertainment that is involved here. We continue to be entertained by some extraordinary athletes, and quite possibly we are living in an era that will not be repeated in our lifetimes. We should enjoy these athletes and their performances while we can.