SAY IT AIN'T SO TIGER

Say It ain’t so Tiger


By now I guarantee everyone on earth has heard the Tiger story. Dude gets married too young. Dude doesn’t want to give up the single, famous life. Dude thinks he’s untouchable. Prior to the utter meltdown we’ve all witnessed, let’s face it: he was untouchable.

FOURTEEN major championships. The most dominant golfer of all time. The guy who single handedly revived a sport that used to be reserved for white folks over the age of 50. The first athlete to ever hit the one billion dollar mark in career earnings. Tiger’s impact on not only sports but to the world in general was simply incredible. He lived a private and secluded life that many respected, which added to the intrigue of the guy. “Why aren’t you in the tabloids more?” a reporter once asked. “Elin and I are boring people,” he said with a smirk.

Well, well, well Tiger.

There are two parts of an athlete that come with the gig; the competitor and the person. You can’t have one or the other and be beloved by the world. You can’t be a role model. When you’re young and single, you can live the life of Jeter. Take him for example: the guy has five rings, clearly is the poster boy of a sport, but has never settled down. He has always said his focus and his family lie on the baseball field. On the side he’s slept with about 25 of the 50 Maxim hottest girls on the planet. He lives the dream,but it has not affected his on field play one bit, and he has never heard the word “prenup”or “adultery” once.

But the second you take the leap into a family life, you have to give up the wild side. Family comes first. When you have a billion dollars in the bank, you can afford to bring your family on the road with you, not fly your mistresses on the road with you. Eventually, you will be caught when you’re a person of that stature. When you have two kids not even two yet, you need to be with your family. Rumors that he was banging a porn star weeks before the birth of his first kid are sickening.

Tiger and Phil have always been the comparable golfers on the tour for the past ten years. Both have smoking hot wives, both have young children, both win enough tournaments to make it a two dog race on the PGA the last handful of years. But what separates the two are the personal lives that we know about. Tiger chose the secretive life, where he swore off the media and requested the private life, whereas Phil chose to open up the doors to the world for him and his family, where he does not go a single place in the world without his wife and kids, even taking off 6 months of the tour to be with his wife while she battled breast cancer.

The money given to these golfers come to them via the fans and companies that fork their money to have them represent them, who they are. You can’t expect to live the good life without giving up some of your privacy, so it’s your privacy that you need to make sure falls in line with what you are. You can’t be a bad husband and father and expect for the world to belove you. You can’t live a double life. Cheating on a spouse is as bad an example that you could possibly set.

Tiger, people loved you for what you could do with a club, we didn’t know what we did with your club. Now we do. And your life will never be the same. This isn’t a Kobe Bryant situation where you play 82 games a year and with so many other volatile personalities in the league we’ll all just forget. The majority of the world watches you four times a year, and you will quite possibly never live this down. Your days of commercials are over. Your marriage, while the early reports are it’s not over, is shattered. Put it this way, I’ve been cheated on before, several times, and I won’t forgive for it. How is someone going to forgive you for it happening with double digit people and over the course of the five year marriage? It’s not happening.

He’ll win more majors, there’s no doubt about that. He’ll probably break Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 majors. But nobody is going to care anymore. He’ll never live this down. The galleries with scream for Phil now instead of the overwhelming support formerly given to Tiger. It’s just a sad situation for the best athlete of our generation.

Winning solves a lot of problems, but there is always the hated asterisk that goes along with athletes. Bonds and McGwire have it for cheating in the sport and Woods will have it for cheating an a family.

Sorry to say Tiger, you let us all down. May as well take the tiger headcover off your Nike driver and replace it with a cheetah, because that’s what you’ll always be to the fans you have. Elin deserves better. Your kids deserve better. We as the fans that put the money in your pocket deserve better.