Tiger Woods.
Until the day after Thanksgiving, his name was synonymous with perfection. He was revered as an incredible athlete. Feared as a cutthroat competitor. An immaculate machine of destruction on the back nine.
And at the snap of a finger, as quickly as it takes to crash into a fire hydrant, the persona Tiger crafted out of an intense protection of his privacy disappeared.
We now see Tiger Woods for what he really is — an adulterous, lying sleaze — and yet another reputation of a great athlete is permanently tarnished. Say hello to Alex Rodriguez and Kobe Bryant, Tiger, because you’ve just entered the Eighth Circle of Hell for athletes who have disappointed America. (The Ninth Circle is exclusively reserved for O.J. Simpson.)
But Tiger is more than an athlete, more than the greatest golfer in the world. Like Michael Jordan before him, Tiger is a cultural phenomenon.
Because of this, his apparently sex-crazed antics are magnified under the media’s evasive microscope.
And why shouldn’t they be? Tiger has benefited more than any public person from the media heaping great adulation upon him as the hip and stylish golfer who was divinely chosen to make golf popular again.
Tiger wore Nike, donned red on Sundays, smiled and took it all to the bank because we thought he was a squeaky-clean, nice guy. With the Tiger love affair came million-dollar endorsements and a soon-to-be first billion-dollar athlete. He’s a marketing behemoth who’s made many rich people richer — most of all, himself.
But Tiger is no longer someone I can believe in. Every time he swings a golf club from now on, I’ll be rooting he launches the ball into some trees. If karma existed in this world, that’s where his shots would end up.
Tiger Woods was only viewed as inhumanly perfect because he worked so meticulously to craft that public persona. It is precisely because of Tiger’s obsessively controlled image that his fall from grace is so painfully hard.
So excuse me when I have an urge to break some golf clubs in “Happy Gilmore” style as I feel the need to say, “I told you so.” Tiger is no different from any other pompous athlete.
This is a man who hijacked the sport of golf in 1997 with his enthusiastic fist pumps and made America believe a charismatic man of values and integrity had arrived to rescue the sport.
He took every step he could to make himself appear perfect and never flinched — until now.
Tiger apologized for his “transgressions” on his Web site and for letting his family down. But Tiger, like Alex Rodriguez, Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds, let every trusting sports fan in America down, too. I have a right to know that the Tiger Woods I’ve grown up watching is a lie, and so does everyone else.
I want my athletes to be decent human beings as well as good at their sport.
Hey, Peyton Manning, thanks.
I’m not asking athletes to be perfect, even though Woods put that expectation upon his own shoulders.
But I do want them to be honest.
Tiger, stop acting like you’re better than the rest of us when you’re a man motivated by sleeping with women and making money. Those qualities, sadly, make you extraordinarily average.
Tiger is not perfect, no, but I now know he’s not worth anyone’s time.
Dustin may never watch golf again. Change his mind at dustin.volz@asu.edu.
