Seven years ago, I re-entered the world of amateurish golfing. I stayed there for about three years before gradually making my exit. By then the investment of time, money, and frayed nerves had added up to more than I was willing to spend. While I played I watched professional golf much more closely than before or since. Both the men’s and women’s tours were of interest, the latter especially because the LPGA holds a tournament here in Mobile every year.
I never really had a favorite golfer. There were a few with whom I sympathized at times or whom I admired. I noticed Fred Funk, for example, stride over to shake Annika Sörenstam’s hand at the practice green when Annika was playing her only tournament with the PGA. I liked Fred for it, and I wasn’t surprised to learn he had two daughters at home.
One golfer I didn’t much care for at the beginning was Tiger Woods. He was in the middle of one of his most dominant periods. Phil Mickelson had yet to win a major, and no one else seemed to have a chance of competing with Woods. It would have been like rooting for the New York Yankees to declare myself a fan of the world’s dominant golfer. And if nothing else, I’m always trying to be at least a little different.
I think what first pulled me in Woods’ direction was when an open mike caught him yelling “God damn it!” after an errant drive. The announcers made a quick apology, but I was roaring with laughter. He wasn’t so different from me after all – playing poorly upset him so much that he had to verbalize it.. Still, it wasn’t until after Mickelson had won a couple of majors and Woods went into a bit of a slump due to a redesigned swing that I began accepting his wins as things that could be celebrated. I became one of those who would only be interested in watching a tournament if he were in contention.
What excited me most about him was not his going for broke on many of his drives, but the way his imagination was activated by getting into difficulty. It seemed to me that good lies and clear approach shots might have bored him a little. He needed a challenge sometimes. I loved to see him mishit a drive not because I wanted him to do poorly, but because I wanted to see a spectacular recovery shot that no one else could pull off.
On the day after Thanksgiving this year, as I was watching a big local football game on TV, I was horrified to learn of the possibility that he might have been seriously hurt or even worse in a car accident. The shock was quickly supplanted by a growing sense of the burlesque. Over a dozen women now claim to have had affairs with him and are revealing things that are both unflattering and truly none of our business.
One of the most disheartening allegations is that he was performing with one of his ladies as he got the news of his father’s death. He supposedly had just visited his father in a hospice, but had returned home for a romp. This same mistress recalls frequent embarrassment at Woods’ cheapness in restaurants. Worth a billion dollars, he frequently expected to receive free meals. He never tipped.
His father once gave an interview in which he predicted with metaphysical certainty that his son was going to accomplish great things beyond golf, world changing things. As if living up to his father’s expectations for golf weren’t enough, Woods would also have to find a way to improve the whole world if he were to satisfy his father’s demands. Instead, he was doing all he could to construct an explosive apparatus that would end his career. He married even though he had to know that his private inclinations would likely still get him in trouble; he compounded that mistake by having children.
I've been tempted to wonder why, if Woods wanted to assert his individuality vis-à-vis his father, he didn’t just play poorly. He could have had his privacy and his uniqueness that way, too. But of course the excellence trap is a tight one. If you’re brought up from infancy, as Woods was, to accept nothing less than conquest as being satisfactory, you can’t just start tanking. I’m not saying Woods’ over-the-top philandering was a cry for help. It was actually far more: it was a way to be himself without having to perform poorly on the course, to get away from golf without having to accept mediocrity at the game now or when forced on him by the ravages of age later.
I don’t know how we’re going to view him. If I were to be at a tournament in which Woods was playing, I would likely stare at him like all those kids who gawked with outrage at Sarah Michelle Geller as she emerged from the chapel at the end of “Cruel Intentions.” It would be a gaze intended to shame the recipient, a look of disbelief that one could show one’s face after selling us an image of wholesomeness, all-around excellence, intelligence, and self-mastery that was a sheer fraud. I hope Woods will retire, I hope his wife has the good sense to divorce him and get on with her life, and I hope we all learn the lesson that we have to be who we are, sooner or later.
