By Dan Nied
All won’t be forgotten when Tiger Woods tees off at the Masters on Thursday in his first tournament since his world exploded.
His moral crimes won’t be put into any proper perspective, and the fast food media will pick apart his every move.
But, finally, Tiger will begin the endgame of what has turned into an outright, and undeserved, media frenzy over his private life.
Yep, sex sells, especially when that sex is being had by someone who is the best at what he does. So it’s a little hard to indict a gossip-driven media monster for its infatuation with Tiger’s extramarital activities.
Yet, we’re talking about a rich, famous athlete who cheated on his wife. Nothing more than that. Michael Jordan paid off his mistress. Muhammad Ali was a notorious womanizer. Even Martin Luther King has been the subject of these types of rumors. Yet no public figure, save Bill Clinton, has endured the kind of scrutiny Tiger has seen over the last four months.
The reasons why are fairly obvious. Tiger’s transgressions occurred in the Internet age, where, when it comes to news, size and speed have replaced integrity and worth. Add in the fact that Tiger was caught while he was at the apex of his sport (Jordan and Ali were caught after their careers, King after his death), and it’s easy to see why Tiger’s harem is perceived as the biggest story on Earth.
Yet here he is at Augusta National, where he burst into superstardom with his 1997 Masters win.
Thirteen years later, Tiger must perform a similar feat, somehow shifting the focus of this conversation from women to golf.
But even if Tiger wins the Masters, the topics will simply merge into one. He’ll no longer be Tiger Woods: Golfer or Tiger Woods: Adulterer. If he wins, he’ll be Tiger Woods: The guy who won golf’s biggest tournament while facing the shame of adultery.
And while a win under this unique pressure will certainly cement Tiger’s status as the Greatest Athlete of Our Time, it will also fan the flames of the perception that Tiger just isn’t human.
Maybe we need to see Tiger break down to verify our own human theories. If he misses the cut, perhaps we will understand him better knowing that no man -- not even Tiger -- can stand up to this level of chaos.
But maybe, if we believe his mistakes have already humanized him, that he did what so many men would do in the same situation, we need to see him win. Because if we already believe Tiger is a normal, flawed man, then he can tell us something about resolve. If we somehow view Tiger through the prism of a victim, then a Masters win will give us faith in man’s strength in the face of adversity.
And yet, to see Tiger through this lens would take an awful lot of effort. He devalued his marriage and family, and failed to live up to the higher standard that served as the price for his fame.
But if we want to see this as something more than the average celebrity adultery case, then we must choose sides. You either want Tiger to fail, or you want him to succeed. There’s no sitting this one out.
Tiger has already succeeded, however, in taking this story to his home turf -- the golf course. It is only through his chosen sport that he can ever earn the public’s forgiveness.
Eventually, we’ll need to see Tiger dominate the way he once did: hitting mind-bending bunker shots, impossible putts and monster drives. If he can convince us once again that his value to us is as a special athlete instead of a public figure, we’ll forgive and forget soon enough.
