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 class of driven teenaged players is transforming the game, and a series of high-profile, professionally- run tournaments determine which of these teens have a shot at reaching the top levels. In Shooting for Tiger, William Echikson takes us inside a spirited season of the American Junior Golf Association's elite tournaments. From the fairways, Echikson unveils a fascinating sub culture: kids who have foregone traditional childhoods, families determined to produce champions, and rigorous golf academies devoted to training the world's top prospects. Vividly told, Shooting for Tiger examines the real costs of professionalizing young players and offers an unforgettable portrait of athletic obsession.
The figure of the white hunter sahib proudly standing over the carcass of a tiger with a gun in hand is one of the most powerful and enduring images of the empire. This book examines the colonial politics that allowed British imperialists to indulge in such grand posturing as the rulers and protectors of indigenous populations. This work studies the history of hunting and conservation in colonial India during the high imperial decades of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At this time, not only did hunting serve as a metaphor for colonial rule signifying the virile sportsmanship of the British hunter, but it also enabled vital everyday governance through the embodiment of the figure of the officer–hunter–administrator. Using archival material and published sources, the author examines hunting and wildlife conservation from various social and ethnic perspectives, and also in different geographical contexts, extending our understanding of the link between shikar and governance.
This work studies the history of imperial hunting and conservation in colonial India from the end of the eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century. It analyses early colonial hunting during the Company period going on to survey, in depth, different aspects of hunting during the high imperial decades. Based on original, printed, and secondary sources, it examines hunting at various social and ethnic levels, and also in different geographical contexts.In doing so, the author covers vast ground, including about the rituals, the variety of prey, the hierarchies of animals shot and hunted, the technology of firearms, the forms of hunting on horseback, and the introduction of hunting with hounds.
It's December 1997 and a man-eating tiger is on the prowl outside a remote village in Russia's Far East. The tiger isn't just killing people, it's annihilating them, and a team of men and their dogs must hunt it on foot through the forest in the brutal cold. To their horrified astonishment it emerges that the attacks are not random: the tiger is engaged in a vendetta. Injured and starving, it must be found before it strikes again, and the story becomes a battle for survival between the two main characters: Yuri Trush, the lead tracker, and the tiger itself. As John Vaillant vividly recreates the extraordinary events of that winter, he also gives us an unforgettable portrait of a spectacularly beautiful region where plants and animals exist that are found nowhere else on earth, and where the once great Siberian Tiger - the largest of its species, which can weigh over 600 lbs at more than 10 feet long - ranges daily over vast territories of forest and mountain, its numbers diminished to a fraction of what they once were. We meet the native tribes who for centuries have worshipped and lived alongside tigers - even sharing their kills with them - in a natural balance. We witness the first arrival of settlers, soldiers and hunters in the tiger's territory in the 19th century and 20th century, many fleeing Stalinism. And we come to know the Russians of today - such as the poacher Vladimir Markov - who, crushed by poverty, have turned to poaching for the corrupt, high-paying Chinese markets. Throughout we encounter surprising theories of how humans and tigers may have evolved to coexist, how we may have developed as scavengers rather than hunters and how early Homo sapiens may have once fit seamlessly into the tiger's ecosystem. Above all, we come to understand the endangered Siberian tiger, a highly intelligent super-predator, and the grave threat it faces as logging and poaching reduce its habitat and numbers - and force it to turn at bay. Beautifully written and deeply informative, The Tiger is a gripping tale of man and nature in collision, that leads inexorably to a final showdown in a clearing deep in the Siberian forest.
Hank Haney's candid, surprisingly insightful account of his tumultuous six-year journey with Tiger Woods, during which the supremely gifted golfer collected six major championships and rewrote golf history. Hank was one of very few people allowed behind the curtain and observed Tiger in nearly every circumstance. There's never been a book about Tiger that is as intimate and revealing--or as wise about what it takes to coach a star athlete. From 2004 to the spring of 2010, Hank Haney was Tiger Woods's coach, and Tiger was Haney's only client. In that period, Tiger won more than a third of the tournaments he entered and six of his fourteen major titles. Haney felt hugely honored to help Tiger with his swing, and he approached the job with intense absorption and attention to detail. Haney was with Tiger 110 days a year, spoke to him over 200 days a year, and stayed at Tiger's house up to 30 days a year--sometimes affording him more contact with Tiger than either the athlete's agent or caddy. Haney saw his student in nearly every circumstance: in the locker room; on the course; with his wife, Elin; and relaxing with friends. Haney was there through it all, observing how Tiger's public identity sometimes meshed awkwardly with the roles of husband and friend, and how the former child prodigy came to have a conflicted relationship with the game that made him famous.
This is a compilation of hunting tales from the jungles of India from the centuries gone by. “…We have no word in English that properly embraces all this, but all are expressed by the Persian word ‘shikar!’…” “…Sitting on the ground in a thorn “Boma” for a lion in Africa is considered an ordinary enough thing to do; but sitting on the ground for a tiger in dense jungles of the Indian subcontinent can be an entirely different experience. The risk inherent should be obvious to all. Sitting on a machan built on a tree was the more common approach employed by Tiger hunters of yore; but of course, there were exceptions...” “…In another moment the old Panther sprang out of the jungle, made a pat at the kid, and then crouched by its side. If there had been more space, I should have waited and watched the Panther’s proceedings, but as I was afraid that she would drag the goat into the jungle, I fired at once, and immediately jumped up so as to see above the smoke. The Panther sprang into the air, fell backwards, and then disappeared among the bushes…” “…I was standing at the junction of two pathways, and the beat had approached to within a hundred yards, when I heard “Woof! Woof!” I imagined the beaters had started up a big wild boar. The “woofing” was repeated during the next minute, coming closer each time, until finally there was a resounding “Woof” in the tall grass about fifteen yards in front of me. By this time I was standing on tip-toe, trying to peer into the grass ahead of me, when suddenly I realized that what I was staring at behind an ant-heap was the tail-end of a tiger…” The stories in this collection are extracted from rare works from the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries.
To mark the anniversary of his historic win at the 1997 Masters, Tiger Woods will for the first time reflect on the record-setting win both on and off the course. In 1997, Tiger Woods was already among the most-watched and closely examined athletes in history. But it wasn't until the Masters Tournament that his career would definitively change forever. Woods, then only 21, won the Masters by a historic 12 shots, which remains the widest margin of victory in the tournament's history, making it an iconic moment for him and sports. Now, Woods is ready to explore his history with the game, how it has changed over the years, and what it was like winning such an important event. With never-before-heard stories, this book will provide keen insight from one of the game's all-time greats.
