Seems like everybody’s got New Year’s resolutions for Tiger Woods. How this bad boy should mend his ways. Get his priorities straight. Drop the swing coach for a marriage councilor. For what doth it profit a man if he is voted Athlete of the Decade but screweth up his marriage?
Not since the peccadillos of Bill Clinton has there been heard in the land such a chorus of earnest advice to a fellow human. Not to mention such rampant, holier-than-thou hyprocrisy.
Golf is a very hard game. Marriage is a hard game too and from all the chastising of the world’s greatest golfer, you’d think we were all shooting par at it. Actually, it appears from the stats—the 50% divorce rate for first marriages and higher loser rates for the 2nd and 3rd—that as a culture we don’t do any better at it than we do at golf.
But, says my friend Dick, what about noblesse oblige? Tiger’s got all that money and the bully pulpit of his celebrity. He ought to set an example, show us mere mortals struggling to stay out of the rough in our own marriages how its done. And sure, it would be nice for him to be a world class husband, too. But evidence is plentiful that at the superstar level of any part of the entertainment business–pop music, athletics, movies– temptations abound you and I know nothing about and the discipline performers apply to their main line of business is of little avail when it comes to the personal stuff. Buffered by millions (or in Tiger’s case billions) from many of life’s vicissitudes, superstars don’t have the same motivation as the rest of us for walkin the line. It is not the typical image of superstars (of either gender ) to be model spouses.
All the tch-tching at the tarnishing of the vaunted Tiger Brand, the image of all -round perfection. Well, maybe the problem is with that image. I never trusted or found particularly attractive that smooth, vaguely uptight exterior of Tiger selling me something. Shaq and Michael Jordan seem a little looser and people probably don’t develop the same expectations of their private lives. I liked and trusted Tiger more when he on occasion blew up on the course and used profanity. Golf is a frustrating game and those John Daly moments could only endear him to most duffers.
OK, I admit it, Ive got an ulterior motive: I want to see this athlete continue to do what he does that makes him of such interest to so many, including even many who don’t know a birdie from a bogey. I don’t want to miss the pleasure and thrill of watching history get made. I wouldn’t be rooting for Mozart or Shakespeare to take a year off from doing their thing no matter how shabbily they were performing in private life (and a lot of great artists were less than ideal hubbies).
Call me a selfish fan. Much as I wish Tiger well in his personal life for the satisfactions that come with getting that part of life figured out, seeing him mastering marriage is unlikely to interest me as much as watching him play golf. And the one doesn’t really have a whole lot to do with the other.
There wouldn’t be any story if Tiger were not perhaps the most dominant athlete in history in any sport. That’s the baby here and it’s in danger of being thrown out with the bathwater.
So I’m hoping Tiger starts the New Year by issuing the following message: OK fans and paparazzi, now you know, the image was phoney; it was a big mistake to let myself to get painted into that corner in the first place. I’m sorry (if he really is) for not being any better at managing my marriage as many of you. I’m working on it. Meanwhile, if you’ll get off my case, I’d like to get back to doing what I can do better than all of you, wh ich is presumably in the interests of all of us.
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