If you get used to doing things a certain way, particularly if your method is successful, it can be difficult to figure out that the same method doesn't work for everything.
I don't know anything about golf. However, I would think that the mindset that you use when you're in any sports situation is to focus on each goal and then forget about it as soon the goal is reached or failed, so you can concentrate on the next goal. You probably think about what happened so that you can change your tactics or keep them the same, but that is analytical thinking that you do to win and for no other reason.
I think it is also always a danger for talented children that they can get obsessed with the skills that they're learning for the vehicles of their talents, at the expense of the development of other parts of their lives. There are stories about stage parents, many of which are probably true. However, I don't know that as much attention has been paid to the way that a child's affinity for something, and the human love of winning, can take over the child's life. I haven't studied prodigies, but my guess is that real prodigies are the ones whose parents might, or should, say "The piano will be there tomorrow; why don't you eat something/sleep/talk to your friends" as often or more often than "Don't you want to get to Carnegie Hall?"
Throughout life, it's difficult to gain an appropriate sense of personal identity and of being both an individual and a member of society when you don't have peers, or when your peers are always people with whom you are directly competing for tangible and specific goals such as awards and money. America's glorification of the cult of personality doesn't help, either.
Women aren't goals or possessions, but they are treated as if they are by the culture of American, male, professional sports, in a way that is exaggerated even for the hyperaggressive, misogynist, objectifying way that the American propaganda machine treats women in general. Successful relationships demand not only that you be considerate of others but also that you be yourself, which can be challenging if you're not sure who that is. Relationship skills are always learned behaviors; human beings are born self-centered out of need, and learning to balance your needs and wants with those of others is the work of a lifetime. Also, sometimes things just don't work out, or they work for a while and then reach their natural ends.
I don't want to date Tiger Woods. He's an interesting case study, though, for an amateur observer of human nature and society.
Copyright L. Kochman, May 8, 2015 @ 1:40 p.m./edited @ 4:39 p.m.
