The restaurant where I ate lunch had ESPN News looping when I went in today. The Tiger Woods statement was shown in its entirety at the top of the hour. It wasn't a pretty 13 minutes.
Is it just me or has someone scooped Tiger's brain out with a melon baller and inserted an android processor which just mouths words in a nearly human manner? i know the guy is known for his focus and lack of emotion on the golf course, but this was just unreal.
The presentation varied between the world's #1 golfer and uber philanderer staring at the papers in front of him and reading, or apparently freezing up in his speech and looking straight at the camera. Not pretty either way.
The best part was at the end when the robot known as Tiger walked over to his mom and his programmers had them embrace ion a long hug while the rest of the people in the front row stared at them, praying 'please god don't let him try to hug me.'
My brother and I had a spirited IM discussion about the Tigercast. He was amazed at the 'entitlement' the public felt toward Tiger and how much is being expected of him. Matt notes a belief that Tiger owes us nothing. I beg to disagree.
One of the reasons this guy has such problems is that he has no emotion beyond himself, not for golf, not for his wife, not for me, a fan of the game, or apparently for anything else. And he showed it again today.
While it's very true that infidelity is common in the world and probably more common among sports stars, that isn't really the issue. What I saw today was a guy trying to come before the public for its blessing and doing it with such hollowness that he was rendered unbelievable and even more pathetic.
He didn't have to do this. Tiger chose to be part of the public theater. If he was going to go out there and do this, he had a responsibility to do it well. If he couldn't do it well (which was apparently the case) someone should have told him to just stay silent and move on to the next phase of his therapy and ignore us. Because otherwise he ends up looking like a guy who felt like he had to go out and say that he was putting his wife and family first, but not because he necessarily felt that way.
I am not at all saying I won't be a fan of Tiger the golfer when he comes back, but I'll be a fan for the same reason I always have been- because he can do amazing things on a golf course, not becasue he is the accessible everyman on the golf course, a la Arnie Palmer. In the mean time, I want him to go away and get better and stop wandering though my life, blathering on about things it's clear he has no solid grip on yet.
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