Monday, December 14, 2009

A Word or Two on Mr. Woods

A lot of ink has been spilled about Tiger Woods. I could go on and on about the ridiculousness of his infidelities, which seem to still be multiplying at an incredible rate, but his "sabbatical" announcement merits a bit of discussion.

Let's look at a little comparison. A few years ago, Kobe Bryant was on trial for sexual assault. During the period he could have gone into hiding or at least taken off a few games during the middle of the trial. Instead, he chose fly directly from the trial each day to basketball games the same night. Is this something a normal person would do? No. But Bryant is, for better or worse, one of the most talented athletes of our time, and playing basketball each night was probably the only thing in his life that was going right.

Tiger is in the same category. Avoiding "his own" tournament (and how many of "his own" tournaments are there? I thought the one in the DC area was "Tiger's" as well, but I digress) after the shit hit the fan was a pretty prudent choice. But now it's the golf off-season. Woods has a few months to do whatever it is he needs to do - get a divorce or start the healing or just go far far away for a while. And yet he's chosen to temporarily pack in career, which may be the only thing that will help him mentally and in the court of public opinions. Tiger should get back to playing golf as soon as reasonably possible. It's becoming more clear that that's the only thing he will ever be great at.

4 comments:

Patrick H. Ouzts said...

Tiger doesn't have a chance of giving up golf and I agree he is making a mistake by trying.

Men cannot change their fundamental nature for a woman. It's not in us.

If he values his marriage more than golf, he might be able to make the change, but if he valued his marriage he wouldn't have had the mistress(es).

Unknown said...

@Patrick - Agreed. If monogamy isn't your thing, then don't get married to a person that it is.

Unknown said...

this is a pretty interesting article on sports stars and our expectations of them:

http://english.aljazeera.net/sport/2009/12/20091213153452917411.html

Anne said...

I haven't really read or listened to anything about Tiger ... however I did hear about his sabbatical from golf and agree it's just stupid

Of course I think Americans in general are just plain stupid for making this such a big news story ... who gives a damn