Tiger Woods Speaks
link Tiger Woods to Make Statement on Friday – WSJ.com.
Who cares? Ok, well that’s not true. The real question is who really cares. Most people clamor for their 15 minutes of fame: Tiger goes the other way and wants 15 minutes of obscurity. The events that have come to light over the past few months surrounding Tiger’s life outside the links have more than fed people’s natural voyeuristic tendencies. People love success stories, but just as many love the crash and burn stories, if not more . If this were not true, magazines such as The Enquirer, People and Us Weekly to name a few wouldn’t be in business.
Apart from Jen, Brad and Angelina’s permanent positions on the covers of those magazines, most stories have their limited shelf life and the paparazzi move on to the next big thing. After the initial shock of seeing someone of Tiger’s stature being exposed for living the kind of personal life most “celebrities” probably do, the emerging sordid details are interesting only for those truly lacking their own lives. Tiger’s your typical boy gets to be greatest golfer in the world, marries beautiful trophy wife, has 15 affairs story. It happens all the time. The fascinating uniqueness in this case was the methodical yet reckless duplicity of his activities. Is it really that gripping to hear what girl “a” said or what girl “b” did? Only to their agents I suppose.
At this point, whether our hero is contrite and repentant is irrelevant. His good guy star has already fallen irreparably and all there is for him now is to resume his golf career. Despite the loss of Accenture as a sponsor, other corporations will line up to have him represent them. Will Tiger care if he is tarnished in the eyes of his fans? Likely not. Golf is not naturally a team sport. You strive by yourself to beat the competition, it is a selfish pursuit, but that’s the way it is. Success in the game is somewhat ephemeral, so when the opportunity arises to distance yourself from others, you step on the gas, not let up to make a close match. It is in Tiger’s nature to pursue wins on the course, the affection of fans is not a factor.
Sadly, with all that’s happened, nothing that Tiger does or says from now on can be taken without some question of honesty. Whether through contrived speeches created for him by his management group desperate to reflate the franchise or interviews to media people, his words will always have the taint of insincerity. You’d be wrong to think I blame this all on Tiger. Certainly he had a role to play. As culpable are his management team, his sponsors and the adoring media who extrapolated Tiger’s sporting achievements to real life heroism with the usual end game of commercial benefit. Guilty as well are those in the public who bought into the fairy tale. We all love our sports heros because we see them achieving things we aren’t capable of. In the end…it’s only a game.