The Bogey Golfer on Tiger
For what it’s worth (not much)…
I remember seeing the first mention of the Tiger Woods story over the 2009 Thanksgiving Holiday. After reading the news scroll at the bottom of the screen over and over, and trying to piece together what really happened from what was displayed (which made no sense at all), I finally concluded that Elin must have whacked him senseless before he even got into the vehicle.
Since then, Saturday Night Live has run pretty hard with this angle, but I haven’t seen any “straight news” verification of this. Be that as it may…
What club would she have used?
The golfing community divides into three camps on this issue:
- The long iron camp – The power hitters obviously recognize that your two, three or four iron will deliver the best punch, since the club head is gathering speed at the end of a long arc.
- The mid iron camp – When you go with a long iron, you’re giving up a little bit of control. Backing off to a five iron, or even a six or seven, still gives you pretty good power, but it’s a little more forgiving. The pictures I’ve seen of Elin show that she’s of a slight build, and the five iron may have been more to her taste than a three.
- There is no short iron camp. This wasn’t surgery, and precision was probably not a consideration. The third camp was revealed to me by She Who Must Be Obeyed. She points out that Ms. Woods was furious, and probably grabbed the first thing that came to hand. It could have been an umbrella, or a broomstick, or a garden rake. Since it was Tiger’s house, it was inevitable that it was a golf club.
Interestingly enough, She was the first person I had talked to who showed any inclination to sympathize with Tiger on this whole deal. “That’s assault and battery. Couldn’t he press charges against her?” “Well, yes, technically it is, and yes, I guess he could. But that won’t help any of his problems, will it?” “Hmmm…”
And Tiger does have a few problems here. Several sponsors have already dropped him like a hot rock (Accenture, Gatorade, …). Long-time friends aren’t speaking to him (Jesper Parnevik…). And the aforementioned Ms. Woods is strongly rumored to be considering divorce, and pre-nup or not, that’s never a good thing.
And then there’s the whole Public Perception thing. Tiger has gone from being widely viewed as superhuman to being fodder for the late night comedians (who are masterful in their handling of any debacle, including this one). We’ve seen such giants as Bobby Jones, Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus age gracefully and ease into their sunset years with an air of reverence and gravitas. What does Tiger have to look forward to? Time will tell, I guess.
One could argue that all Tiger ever was was a guy who was really good at playing golf, and the odds are that he hasn’t changed in that department. Cynics will point out that all the hype and the golden boy image were carefully crafted stories turned out by the PR brains at Nike and IMG. They probably have a point, but the reason the PR guys carefully craft such stories is that we, the public, want to hear them. We want to believe. We want our sports icons, our entertainers, and our leaders to be larger than life, and to set an example that we aspire to follow. So when one of them turns out to be merely human, we’re all bitterly disappointed.
Will we get over it if Tiger keeps making winning putts and tucks away 12 more majors? Time will tell…
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