Many things Tiger Woods pre-Thanksgiving 2009 were never disclosed or made public. Since then, Suzanne McCourt created the one thing about Tiger that has never been published. She was selected for a dream assignment; to become the first woman to create original artwork to grace the cover of the souvenir program for the celebratory 25th AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-am in 2010. With Tiger returning for the first time in eight years, she painted a cover that prominently featured him. When Tiger withdrew from the tournament he was replaced in the artwork and on the cover by 2009 champion Dustin Johnson.
What triggers an artist to create? When Suzanne was 4-1/2 years old her preschool teacher told her mother that being an artist would be her life's calling. Her first painting as a 6-year old of her cat drinking Mayflower milk won the Oregon statewide contest. Between then and now, Suzanne's life has been as vivid and as real as the twists and turns of the Monterey Peninsula's 17-Mile Drive. A professional artist since 1992, she went from a "sweety sweet watercolor artist" to a "saxy and sexy blues artist" when she found sheets of music in an old piano bench that came out of storage. In between, of course, there were renditions of nude men; sort of David lying down, sketched, not chiseled. Life dealt her a brain tumor in 1999 and she felt "in a world of my own, not knowing if I was going to live or what I was going to do." A survivor, she became even more passionate about her artwork. After her daughter survived thyroid cancer in 2004, inspiration found her again and transformed her artwork to be uniquely her own life experiences. She believes in kismet, that there is fate and destiny to our journey in life. She creates, but knows she is not the ultimate producer, commenting that, "in my artwork, I never finish the story for you."
