Healthier. Happier. Better.

21 WAYS TO REBOOT YOUR BODY AND MIND FOR LOWER SCORES—AND BROADER SMILES

- Michael Bamberger

1 PLAY LIKE A TIGER

We all figure it out, eventually, that what really matters most is not winning or losing but being in the game. You might not know that when you’re ten or twenty or thirty. But sooner or later you do, and if you get it at 43 (Tiger Woods’s age) that’s not too late. Because it’s never too late.

WOODS IS SMACK-DAB in the game, contending, captaining, mentoring, not long after he had just about written himself out of it. And he’s never seemed happier, don’t you think?

Yes, this magazine, so devoted to helping you cure your slice, is now expanding its editorial mission. We’re taking it on golf happiness, and life happiness. Or maybe we should say, as Jefferson did, the pursuit of happiness. He was all but predicting a Big Band composition, recorded by Larry Clinton and his Orchestra, called “Sometimes I’m Happy,” from the 1957 album Music for Tired Golfers. And so, after surveying top teachers, reading various books and watching It’s a Wonderful Life, we have devised a Big Three get-happy cheat sheet: 1) Be in the game, 2) Do for others, and 3) Live with gratitude.

And with that in mind, we will now attempt something both ridiculous and meaningful: To assess the happiness of a man who is a significant figure in the long history of prodigy studies. We’re not saying Tiger Woods is a Mozart or a Picasso or Marie Curie, but he surely has a place on the APL (all-time prodigy list). He didn’t ask to live his life on TV, but that is what he’s done, and millions of people have seen it unfold, from The Mike Douglas Show (not yet three) to where he is today. His path to happiness had to be challenging. But wouldn’t it be a waste if we didn’t try to learn something from it?

Okay.