Alas, Tiger is still making a spectacle of his private life … at the expense of his professional life.
After tabloids exposed Tiger as a serial adulterer in November 2009, I wrote that he should let his game do the talking and limit public statements about his personal life to the minimum required to appease Nike, his most loyal and lucrative sponsor.
What’s the point [of holding this press event]?
I have to think that team Tiger has determined that it’s the least he can do to give his remaining sponsors, like Nike, as well as the organizers of the PGA Tour, the closure they need to welcome him back. Because it’s crystal clear that this outing will do nothing to rehabilitate his good name…
Winning tournaments in his inimitable fashion is the only way now to eradicate bacchanalian images of his private life from public consciousness – even if not from the tabloids.
(“Tiger Will Finally Speak, but What Will He Say?” The iPINIONS Journal, February 19, 2010)
This is why I was so stupefied when Tiger reacted to this scandal – by providing so much fodder, he seemed more interested in keeping up with Kimye on social media than in competing with golfers on the links.
Nothing was more misguided and sensational in this respect than Tiger announcing his withdrawal from tournaments to enter rehab … for sex addiction; exactly the opposite of what I wrote he should do. A close second, though, was announcing his new relationship with Lindsey Vonn – as if they were just another wannabe-famous couple desperately seeking Twitter followers and manufacturing Facebook “Likes.”
The point is that, since that fateful exposure in 2009, Tiger has made news far more for the goings on in his personal life than for the derring-dos that once defined his professional life.
I lamented his metamorphosis: from a player whose predatory and invincible spirit psyched out his competitors even before his first swing, to one who courts public sympathy for his continuing failure to beat players he once dominated – as this excerpt from “For Tiger, Bad Play Causes ‘Pain’, Not Vice Versa,” August 7, 2014, attests.
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Don’t be surprised if bad play forces Tiger to withdraw … again. For his foolish and withering pride is such that he sees more glory in stories about how heroically he played before pain forced him to quit, than in stories about why a healthy Tiger can’t even buy a win these days.
But all he needs now to shatter any hope of ever regaining his professional swagger is for his rehabbing, Olympic-skiing girlfriend, Lindsey Vonn, to dump him for not providing the [rehab and] redemptive inspiration she expected. Then, of course, there’s the simmering resentment he must be harboring as he watches the media hail Rory McIlroy the way they used to hail him.
In short, what we are witnessing folks is the proverbial warning:
Pride goeth before the fall….
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Sure enough, nothing confirms that Tiger has lost all sense of personal (and professional) pride quite like him coordinating with Lindsey to issue virtually identical statements on Sunday about their inevitable breakup — as if his die-hard golfing fans even care.
They blamed the “hectic demands of our respective schedules,” which is laughable on its face. After all, they both knew from the outset that no two professional athletes have less in common, and more disparate demands on their time, than a golfer and a snow skier.
Frankly, the more credible reason is that Lindsey just got fed up with Tiger’s excuses for his performance anxiety, which make a mockery of Nike’s motto to “Just Do It.” In other words, far from providing the inspiration and reflected glow she bargained for, Tiger was adding too much psychological baggage to her life with his public blathering about why he can’t reclaim his title as the top golfer in the world….
Predictable media inquiries about their split brought this into stark relief just yesterday. For Lindsey, with countenance redolent of a relieved heart and triumphant spirit, left the media no choice but to report as follows:
Lindsey Vonn brushes off Tiger Woods split, targets gold…
‘I don’t really want to talk about my personal life,’ Vonn said when asked about the rift with Woods during a press briefing in the South Korean capital, Seoul.
(Agence France-Presse, May 6, 2015)
Whereas Tiger, with countenance redolent of a broken heart and vanquished spirit, gave them more tabloid fodder to report as follows:
Tiger Woods Says He Hasn’t Slept Since Breakup With Lindsey Vonn.
‘It obviously does affect me,’ he told reporters ahead of The Players Championship in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. ‘I’m not gonna lie about that … I haven’t slept.’
(Huffington Post, May 5, 2015)
This, folks, is the denouement to their feminist version of The Taming of the Shrew; call it The Taming of the Player. And it’s made all the more poignant by the fact that, since hooking up with Tiger, Lindsey has rehabbed and recovered from injuries – far worse than any Tiger has complained of – to not only reclaim her title as the top skier in the world, but also be named the honorary ambassador for the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Meanwhile, it’s plain to see that Tiger’s head remains so screwed up that he’s now courting public sympathy for losing even before his first swing at The Players Championship, the first round of which begins tomorrow.
What a friggin’ spectacle! I just he has learned from his last breakup to not compound the mess he’s made of his personal life by making Oprahesque confessions about his sins and Clintonian promises to atone for them: TMI Tiger!
Incidentally, the best thing that can happen to Tiger now is for his ex-wife Elin to give him a second chance. Because:
a. she shuns media attention as much as Lindsey craves it; and
b. she was the anchor in his life when he was winning all of those Major championships and giving the media nothing to report on but his spectacular play and boring talk … about golf.
Hope springs eternal.
Related commentary:
Tiger will finally speak…
Tiger bad play…