Tiger Talk

I've read a lot of columnists weigh in on Tiger Woods' 13 minutes of dialogue, last Friday morning. Some are calling him a changed man; someone who is well on the way to full redemption and forgiveness in the eyes of a formerly adoring public. Others are calling him robotic, a fake, a phony - that he attempted to look emotional in a last gasp attempt to improve his public approval ratings.

I don't think he has completely redeemed himself, but I also don't think he's a fake. I think he's humiliated. In a world where he has been able to control every last action that he makes, whether it be on the golf course, in a major sponsor's boardroom and well, even in the bedroom, Tiger Woods was finally forced to look vulnerable and weak. Those are two adjectives that have never described him previously.

I suppose I can understand the media's desire to report, discuss and dissect the tumbling life of the world's most famous athlete. I'm not one of them. I don't care how many women he slept with. It won't stop me from buying Gillette shaving products. I never would have bought a Buick, no matter who was hocking them. I can't really afford, nor do I really need, a $200 golf shirt. Tiger Woods is big business, whether it's selling cars, watches, sporting equipment, or gossip magazines. It's all about the dollars. It's all about the ratings. I get it - it's all business. Tiger is the richest athlete in the world today. He has made umpteen millions of dollars and in his shadow, his colleagues on the PGA Tour have made millions as well, because they compete in the same tournaments that Tiger shows up for. Trickle-down effect.

However, what Tiger does on his own time, should be his own business. Up until this fall, the man was private to a fault. He rarely gave interviews and never talked about his personal life. Unfortunately, when you are the most famous and most rich athlete in the world, your life ceases to be your own, when you do something like crash your car into a tree and sleep with numerous women that aren't your wife. Memo to Tiger: people were going to sit up and take notice. This world is full of cameras and microphone and cell phones. As much as you'd like to be able to conduct a personal life, where intimate details are off-limits to outsiders, it was never going to happen.

Now it's done. Tiger's is in rehab. He's admitted he's weak and needs guidance. He's apologized to just about everyone he's ever met apart from the clubhouse attendants at Augusta. He's putting golf on hold to re-evaluate his priorities and perhaps save his marriage.

I hope he can be left alone to do what he needs to do. The next time he re-emerges from his seclusion, it will likely to announce that he has completed the rehab and that he is recommitting to golf. Another media circus will ensue and once he does step back onto the links, driver in hand, it will be memorable, regardless of how he scores that day.

One thing this whole series of incidents has shown me is that Tiger Woods is not a machine. He is not without fault. He is not without frailty. He is human; well... away from the golf course anyway. He is vulnerable to temptation and to straying from what is considered acceptable behaviour. Despite the fame and the money and the access to just about anything he could ever want at the price of any dollar; he evidently wasn't content with the life he was leading.

As Friday morning's announcement showed us, Tiger Woods is not a comfortable public speaker. Everything he has ever spoken, aside from commenting about his golf scores, has been scripted. Think about it: commercials, endorsements, speeches at his foundation events.... all pre-prepared. All carefully thought out and presented neatly for consumption. This time, it was all about him and his problems and his exposed weakness. The slow, calculated sentences proved that was the most uncomfortable moment of his life. It likely made playing the 2008 US Open with a partially torn MCL feel like a walk on the beach in comparison. It appeared to be sincere, even though it was pre-prepared and that he had hand-picked those who were sitting in the room when he made his comments.

I don't really care what Tiger Woods does with himself off the golf course. Whether he attends church every Sunday morning, whether he has dinner with his kids every night, whether he gives half of his money to those in need, or whether he has one-night-stands with every Elliot Spitzer hand-me-down. It's his life and it's frankly none of my business.

I'm a sports fan and I'm selfish. I want him back on the golf course. I want him to return and dominate like he used to. I have never cheered a golfer from my couch like I did in 2005 when I watched him hit this shot at the Masters. It was the most unbelievable shot I've ever seen, despite one of the worst looking high-fives with his caddy! I think he's got a few more tricks in that golf bag. Let the man do his work, let him heal and take care of the crucial matters at his home. The sooner it gets resolved, the sooner we can go back to appreciating this once-in-a-generation talent. The past few months likely won't be forgotten by many, but at least they'll be dealt with honestly and put in the rearview mirror so that golf will once again become his safe-haven.