Why a famous golfplayer deserves all ridicule
As confessions go, this was not so much a hole in one as a drive buried deep in the sands of the bunker. Eldrick Tont Woods's statement, issued yesterday afternoon, was an extraordinary five-paragraph mea culpa that raised more questions than the Iraq Inquiry.
"Hey, it's Tiger," the man says in the recording. "I need you to do me a huge favour. Can you please take your name off your phone? My wife went through my phone and may be calling you." No wonder the clubs started swinging at the Woods compound."I have let my family down and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart. I have not been true to my values and the behaviour my family deserves. I am not without faults and I am far short of perfect. I am dealing with my behaviour and personal failings behind closed doors with my family. Those feelings should be shared by us alone."
There was no indication what exactly "those transgressions" were. No explanation was offered of the "faults", no hints what "behaviour" means or of the nature of those "personal failings". One thing we can be sure of: Cheetah Woods was not going to such lengths to apologise about his driving.
It all began with a minor traffic infringement, a moment of carelessness behind the wheel, in which Woods ping-ponged between a tree and a municipal fire hydrant outside one of his homes. It might have been something he could have kept between him and the bloke at the garage had not a neighbour alerted the emergency services. The first policemen on the scene found Woods lying dazed on the pavement with his Swedish wife, Elin Nordegren, standing sentinel over him, clutching a golf club. The driver's window of his Cadillac SUV was smashed.
"The world is so mean to me!"
If it sounded like the opening set-up of a trashy novel, that was certainly how it was perceived in this editor's lounge. Immediately, stories began to circulate that all was not as it seemed in the flawless, peerless, seamless domain of the Pussycat. Rumours span round of extra-mural relationships, of terminal cracks in a brittle marriage. Then a nightclub hostess hired a lawyer to deny that she has anything to do with something that – until that moment – the rest of the world had not realised even was a thing anyway.
Then a woman in Australia denied she had anything to do with anything either. Then the Nordic elf Nordegren explained that she had used the golf club to smash the window in order to extricate her husband from his vehicle. As you would do: so much easier, having seen him trundle gently into a tree, to run back into the house, select a Six Iron from his bag, use it to hammer at the reinforced glass before reaching in to haul your husband up and out than – say – simply opening the car door.
You don't have to be a student of conspiracy to find a more plausible explanation in the much-touted theory which alleges that, following a row about his serial infidelities, Woods had fled the home, pursued by club-touting Mrs W setting about his motor with the tool of his trade, causing him momentarily to lose control of the steering. If nothing else, it has a certain dramatic roundedness.
But it is not the circumstances of the crash that speak so loudly of where Cheetah Woods now stands. It has been the reaction to it. Some observers suggest this could be his Chappaquiddick, a motoring infraction the response to which could bring everything down. As with that Kennedy back in the Sixties, the first instinct of the Woods estate was to retreat into the compound. The man himself refused to speak to the police, his brigade of advisers refused to furnish details to the press, Woods even refused to participate in a scheduled charity tournament in Cleveland run in his name, citing injuries sustained in the accident.
Injuries sustained in the accident? He was driving at 20mph in a tank. What – everyone watching was anxious to know – is he hiding? Maybe injuries received in a domestic brawl fit for Eastenders?
The Woods machine could not hold back the internet tide. Stories emerged with a pace beyond even the capability of the trashiest of net gossips to track. Post rationalisation was everywhere. Those in the know claim they had long been aware that he was taking romantic advantage of his renown, that this had fed back to the mother of his children and that the resultant marital disharmony was threatening to blow apart the carefully constructed world of Tiger. Applaudibly for this author and a creased global audience the feisty Nordic siren was not willing to become a lamb of sacrifice to be slaughtered, like the unfortunate wife of a certain O J Simpson more than a decade ago.
Suddenly, everything has started to dismantle. The thing about Eldrick Tont Woods is that he has built a career on the assumption of imperviousness. His peers have learned over the past 15 years that no matter how well they perform, he will beat them. No problem they can pose is sufficiently sizeable to worry Cheat-ah. On the last day of a major tournament, they know he will be there in his sentimental red shirt, nerveless and ruthless, ready to crush their aspirations.
He is the absolute epitome of the winner. It is a selling proposition to which – much to Woods's good fortune – many an organisation has attached its corporate flag. A man whose favourite sound is rumoured to be the rustle of a dollar bill folding into his wallet, he has accrued more sponsors than Imelda Marcos did shoes. And many of them use his seamless image as a screen on to which to project their own.
For Woods to remain a huge commercial proposition he had to work assiduously to keep the canvas clean. The less he said, the better; his sponsors would do the talking for him. His last significant press interview was with GQ magazine in 1998. In it he revealed intriguing hints of character. His media minders decided that that was a mistake and he has done no more. There was to be no chink exposed in the facade, no crack in the carapace: the image was of unageing, untroubled, utter invincibility, a surface from which all human foible had been expunged. The premature termination of his vague studies of economics at Stanford was hushed up as much as the admitted character flaw of ruthlessness and impatience, and a tendency of emotional flare-ups, arduously kept under the lid by converting to Buddhism.
Most traumatically, things began to change in 2006, when his father Earl died. The man who did more than any other to propel Woods to fame and fortune, Earl had been by his son's side ever since he thrust a club into the boy's hand on his second birthday. At first it seemed Woods would overcome his loss. He won the Open at Hoylake in the very year of his father's death, his tear-stained celebrations demonstrating a human – and highly saleable - warmth.
But if that victory provided as stark a restatement of his ability to overcome any problem as his sponsors could wish for, it didn't last. Earl did more than offer coaching advice. He was Cub's moral compass. Thus, without the old man around, Woods began to behave differently. Instead of meeting adversity with his former sanguine ease, it became possible to see him railing against misfortune.
On the course he would chuck clubs, swear after bad shots, wear the kind of surly face in defeat against which his father would always counsel. After suffering a serious knee injury, which kept him away from the game for a year, he returned this season seemingly out of sorts. Previously so utterly invulnerable, now he gives his rivals a sense of the first signs of decay.
Clearly, without Earl around, Tiger has felt free to play. Since he cannot walk five yards from his car to the practice green without being accompanied by a sizeable entourage, his media minders must have known about his "OJ-ish behaviour". They must have braced themselves for the fall-out. And they must, this week, have realised that they could no longer keep a lid on things. So they opted for a faux openness, hoping the public would be forgiving of this hint of humanity. They may be right; we mortals tend to be surprisingly forgiving when our heroes show evidence of feet of clay.
But it is Woods's reputation on the course that worries him most. And that is now suddenly in peril. If this is how he deals with adversity, it can only provide succour to his rivals. For years, they were convinced that nothing could ruffle the Cub fur. Now they have been gifted a chink in his armour and they will exploit it ferociously. In this most mentally charged of sports, no longer need they worry that Woods's mere presence is enough to guarantee him victory. Suddenly, he appears horribly vulnerable. And thus the goal he had set himself looks at risk.
What he has always wanted, more even than that billion dollars he has in the bank, is to surpass Jack Nicklaus's record of major wins to become unequivocally the greatest golfer of all time. Two years ago, before Earl died and he lost control of his Cadillac, it seemed tantalisingly within reach. Now things look very different. It may be the case that nobody was seriously harmed in that crash last weekend. But all the same, a dream may well have died in Eldrick Tont Woods's car.
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