- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Tiger Woods is arguably the greatest golfer the world has seen, or will ever see again. He was the first athlete to earn a billion dollars in prize money and endorsements and was the perfect role model, whether he wanted to be or not. Or so we thought…
This article is not going to be an ‘are they or aren’t they role models’ argument. That is one for another column, and another day where we all have more time to debate (for the record, they are, and that’s that).
The events of the past week have cast a rather unfavourable light on someone who I, and millions of people around the world, had foolishly assumed was as squeaky clean as his image – and brand – spruiked him to be.
Tiger Woods is at the very least a very poor liar, and at worst a serial adulterer who, when the net was cast on his cheating ways, sought to use his vast reservoirs of cash to pay off the women he had drawn into his circle in return for their silence.
As an unwavering and unabashed fan of Tiger for far more reasons than just his golf game over the years, I heard the initial reports of his minor car crash and thought some of the stuff the tabloids were coming up with was just the usual trifle we come to expect from the tabloids.
But day after day more rumours, stories and speculation are mounting an increasingly solid case to say Tiger has been up to something rather ordinary for some time. Only thing is, as much as we all want to know the real story, Tiger says it’s private and we have no right to know.
I disagree.
We, as fans, can’t profess to know a professional athlete. We aren’t in their world, we can’t relate to what it must be like to be at the pinnacle of their athletic pursuit, and most of us will never even come close to the fame and fortune that comes with being the best among the best.
But as fans, we support every high and low of our sporting heroes, we show our support by paying our hard earned on merchandise, the proceeds of which go towards the profits of companies that hand over huge wads of cash to stars such as Tiger.
We pay our way to, and into, events to watch these athletes ply their trade, which indirectly goes towards balancing out the profitability of sporting events, like last month’s Australian Masters, against the hefty appearance fees some athletes, like Tiger, demand.
Current day society’s insatiable appetite for any glimpse, however small, into the private life of our idols gives cause to the demand of magazines that pay the stars, like Tiger, vast sums of cash for a few family portraits, or a heart felt story on a new addition to their family.
So while I can see how the lack of privacy must be a constant axe to grind for anyone who achieves that level of fame, it is the flip side of all the fame and fortune that fuels that same incessant need to know how the incredibly wealthy and famous live their lives.
Tiger has had it pretty easy so far, and this whole mess, if you believe even only half of what you are reading lately, could have easily been avoided by, you know, NOT CHEATING ON YOUR WIFE.
I didn’t want to believe it either…but with some of the evidence that is coming to light daily, it is getting increasingly harder for Tiger to hide behind a press release pleading for people to respect his privacy.
There have been many press conferences over the years where Tiger has been lauded and fawned over by everyone in the room.
He wasn’t pleading for privacy then, albeit almost all of those were carried out via his professional rather than his personal persona, but with the level of fame he has gained via his sporting prowess, and benefited greatly from, he can’t pick and choose what people are going to be curious about.
Let me tell you how this looks to me, based on the blanket media coverage and a mind numbing amount of articles and information I have read, and only believing around half of it.
If I was to paint a picture of how this looks to the average sports fan, I would say Tiger has been enjoying the company of a number of women from various segments of his life.
He has arranged meetings with these women via his people, and then proceeded to lavish gifts on them, pay for them to stay in the most glamorous hotels in various destinations and, it would seem, had sex with at least one of these women whilst bound by a little bit of metal most normal people would call a wedding band.
Somehow, maybe based on finding some text messages from one of these women on Tiger’s phone, Tiger’s wife, Elin Nordegren, erm…was a little displeased.
Whatever happened from this moment until the couple left their house is anyone’s guess, but when they did leave, Elin left with a golf club and proceeded to smash the back window of the car Tiger was driving, which I have officially dubbed, The Escapealade, causing Tiger to lose control, albeit at slow speed, hit a fire hydrant and end up in a tree.
Tiger escaped the ‘crash’ with cuts and bruises to his face, none of which anyone has seen publicly, perhaps because they might look suspiciously like nail marks or be around the same size as Elin’s fist.
Given her fiery routine with the golf club, I’m not putting anything past her!
How he managed to get cuts and bruises from a minor crash in a car that wasn’t even travelling fast enough to activate the vehicle’s air bags on impact is right up there with the other 7 Wonders of the World.
The initial story about Elin having smashed out the rear window to pull Tiger from the wreckage seems to have fallen by the wayside, given that, again, the car could have been overtaken by an elderly woman on her zimmer frame prior to impact. Perhaps Elin isn’t really that sharp and didn’t think to, you know, open the driver’s door and let Tiger out.
Maybe she has a Macgyver complex, who knows. The whole thing doesn’t add up.
That’s how it looks to me, an everyday fan. No doubt it looks like that to a bunch of others too. If this isn’t how it is, I am happy for Tiger to tell me otherwise, with his own mouth. Into a camera.
I feel for Woods’ wife, she didn’t ask for this. My only hope is that she continue with her stand as a self respecting woman that she started with the golf club antics and not take up the proposed $80 million dollar offer to stay on board with Tiger Inc. as his trophy wife until 2018.
To have your heart broken is one thing. To think that patching it up with dollar bills is either a good solution for yourself, or a good example for your kids, especially your daughter, is ridiculous.
But more so I feel for his kids. For every ‘my dad is the greatest golfer of all time’ stories they might ever tell, they are likely to be rebutted by ‘well my dad is a plumber, but he’s a far better husband and father than yours is likely to be’.
That may seem harsh, but for Woods to have to look at those kids as they grow up, knowing he has let them down in such a way, regardless of what happens with his marriage, in my opinion will be far worse punishment than the public or any tabloid could ever dish out.
So, as a fan of Tiger Woods, I am shocked and surprised and feeling a little foolish for being sucked into the promotional machine that built that squeaky clean image.
I hope he faces the music like a man and says exactly what he did. I hope he doesn’t hide behind press releases and screams of privacy.
I’ll never understand how someone with a billion dollar image, with the perfect family, including a Swedish model wife, would feel the need to take a cocktail waitress back to his room, just for kicks.
But the people I feel most for are the rest of the golfers on the PGA Tour. These people have been systematically intimidated, dominated and made to feel inferior, seemingly by grub of a man with no respect for his family who was just beat up by his wife.
Sad really…