TIGER WOODS SWINGS AND MISSES I am not a Tiger lover. I’m more of a Phil guy. But this past week I really felt for the fourteen time major winner. Not because I think his response to Dan Jenkins’ article in Golf Digest which made fun of Tiger’s tipping practices, and alluded to the Night Of The Hydrant, was the way to go, but because his reaction gave us all a rare glimpse inside his head, and well, I just felt bad for the guy. He was actually speaking from the heart for once and it came out all wrong. He showed us all that he just doesn’t get it. Then again, what chance does he have when as a twenty year old, his father declared to the world that his son would have a greater global impact than Ghandi? (Yes folks, his dad, good old Earl, actually said that). People in the public eye are going to be media targets. Sometimes it is in jest, sometimes it is mean spirited. This time it was a little bit of both. No doubt Dan has lost something off his fastball. Semi-Tough was a long time ago, but Tiger’s reaction, like the semi-funny piece, was overdone. The insular world in which Woods lives is a problem. His agent/gofer/apologist/sycophantic butt boy Mark Steinberg is a disaster. Steiny has been around since the beginning and he knows how to play his client like a violin. Tiger is by nature and by nurture, a defensive overachiever who sees anything less than perfect as total failure. He is an all or nothing guy and Steinberg plays that flaw to the hilt. He is Tiger’s enabler and time and again he fuels the fires of his client’s insecurities. When the magazine hit the stands, Steinberg went on the warpath. You don’t cast stones at Ghandi. It was like Pedro Martinez throwing Don Zimmer to the ground the way he went after the eighty-four year old Jenkins. If Steinberg had just shut up and told Tiger to take the high road, maybe even make light of it, the article would have been forgotten in a week. Jack Benny made a career out of being perceived as a cheapskate. Tiger could have taken that angle and won some friends with a little humor rather than alienating even more people with his nasty bite back attitude. But the problem is, Tiger is helpless when it comes to public relations. He has no sense of the endearing qualities and residual effects of self-deprecation. Not many people in the world have sunk as much time and money into a charity like Tiger has with his foundation. People know that. Yet he still sees the need to be defensive when someone writes something about the way he tips, or doesn’t tip. Remember November, 2009? If he had responded immediately he would have barely missed a beat. “Hey, I really screwed up. Yeah, I’m a horn dog. I apologize to my family and friends. Let’s move on.” But Steiny circled the wagons… for months. And for months the saga dragged on. Every night on TV it was pile on Tiger. Isleworth became the Branch Dividians complex in Waco, Texas. Bad game plan. We all know how the last six years have played out for Tiger Woods, a golfer who rates himself by the number of major championship victories. He is O-FER since June, 2008, arguably his prime years. Oh what might have been. Thanks, Steiny. This past week I saw a picture of Tiger on a ski lift with girlfriend Lindsay Vonn. Lindsay had a big smile on her face and Tiger couldn’t have looked more miserable. We all know that look, we’ve seen it all too often. That is what’s sad about Tiger. With expectations like the ones he has had to grow up with, the threat of failure and attack, real or perceived, lurks everywhere for him. He is not Ghandi, yet I think down deep there is a really good guy there. A guy who would love nothing more than to be happy, but until he figures out that he is never going to live up to some of the ridiculous standards his father laid on him, and until he gets rid of his agent, he is doomed to be the most unhappy billionaire on the planet.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 13:27:51 +0000