Whether or not you agree with Dan Jenkins’ recent take on Tiger Woods, it’s one of those situations where you just have to get down on your knees and give the “We’re not worthy” bow to the words themselves. Jenkins, IMO, is every much a technician at the word processor as Woods is on the golf course; I often imagine him living his retirement off on a ranch somewhere, grooming nouns and adjectives like champion racehorses, pausing for an hour each day to supervise the polishing of his vocabulary. It was inevitable that the former writer for Sports Illustrated and author of Semi-Tough and Dead Solid Perfect would shift his focus to Affair le Tigre, and the result — his Feb. 18 column in Golf Digest — is revealing, pointed and, ultimately, devastating.
What set Jenkins off, evidently, is when Woods’ agent, Mark Steinberg, referred to his client as a “kid.” As in, the media should “give the kid a break.” Key excerpt:
Kid?
Kids flew B-17s in daylight bombing raids over Germany in World War II. Kids fought in Korea and Vietnam. Kids are serving today in Iraq and Afghanistan so Tiger Woods can live in a world where he can win 14 majors and match that number, the last time I counted, with 14 casting couches, most of them reserved for blondes.
Hoo boy. Here we go.
Kid?
Tiger Woods was a month away from 34 years of age when his debutantes began turning up in the news. He was a grown man with a wife and two children. Well, we supposed he had a wife, but that was before we learned she was only an ornament.
… Now excuse me a moment while I try to envision Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus playing video games and eating Fruit Loops while they try to deal with a career problem.
Of course, Hogan, Palmer and Nicklaus never set themselves up to become future statues in Central Park.
They never pretended to be the All-American Daddy-Pop Father of the Year Who Also Wins Golf Tournaments.
They never sold themselves as the greatest Family Values brand ever, and conquered the marketplace with it, shamelessly scooping up hundreds of millions of dollars while saying, “My family will always come first.”
They were never what Tiger allowed himself to become from the start: spoiled, pampered, hidden, guarded, orchestrated and entitled.
I’ll tell you what Hogan, Palmer and Nicklaus were at their peak.
They were every bit as popular as Tiger, they endured similar demands on their time, but they handled it courteously, often with ease and enjoyment.
They were accessible, likable, knowable, conversant, as gracious in loss as they were in victory, and, above all, amazingly helpful to those of us in the print lodge who covered them.
That was their brand. All the things Tiger never was.
And now, the capper:
Never in my knowledge of history has any famous personality — in sports, show biz, or politics — ever fallen so far so fast. Tiger Woods is graveyard dead, as the Southern expression goes.
Life as Tiger has known it is over. His reputation is ruined, possibly forever. His name that once meant mastery over competitive golf now invokes cringes, giggles and all the Internet jokes you want to pass along.
That’s what it’s like being deconstructed by a master; something that makes one take pause and think that, yeah, Tiger’s image is going to need major reconstructive surgery after all. It’s not a problem that a month at Gentle Path and a take-no-questions press gathering is going to fix. Tiger’s burden now is not only to fix himself, but to “win the crowd.” That’s not going to be easy with a majority of the public who now knows him only for his celebrity, and not his talent. Winning back golf fans will be easy. But most people aren’t golf fans, believe it or not. This “kid” has an enormous mountain to climb.
***
Nice (Not) Knowing You [Golf Digest]
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- George Benda - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:43 PM
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Only in America does a married man get castigated for being with other women. That’s what real men do all over the rest world! So stop moralizing yet.
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- b stephenson - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:43 PM
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Tiger, Tiger who.
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- Jodeman - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:43 PM
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It has nothing to do with being white or black you ignorant @$$. It has to do with the golf community didnt want to tarnish itself so it could save face for all the atta-boys it threw Tigers way. He has been a billionare for years and they could have pounced on him then. It took his wife knocking his block off with some clubs to get the message out. Most of the golf community knows that for people like Tiger and Ben and Jack and Arnold, they pay days would be small. They want him back even if they know he has thrown a cloud over the game. Tiger will continue to be great at golf and will make tons of money but his endorsements have dried up for a long, long time. Color had nothing to do with it!
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- Charlie - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:44 PM
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This black man? You mean this Thai man, right? Race cards don’t work, Hawk, but if that’s all you’ve got……
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- John - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:44 PM
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I agree on his take but…. Palmer and the rest were around during an era when the media were respectable and covered the athletes as such. You never heard about their families or had the media following them during their personal lives unless it was scheduled and part of a larger piece, put together in a respectable manner. The media today is a totally different animal filled with just as many unprofessional reporters as unprofessional athletes.
Woods deserves every bit if criticism and more but can you imagine the media asking Arnie or Jack about how often they drank and if they did so before, during and after a tournament.. no way, even if they might have. Today it would be considered a resonabile question to ask anything if it was juicy enough. I think the media also needs to take a look at their standards to which is a whole other topic.
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- Dave - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:44 PM
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And get off my lawn you dang kids!!! I’m sure Hogan, Palmer and this clown walked 25 miles to the course through 18 feet of snow as well. This clueless geezer may not be ‘hep to the lingo’, but Tiger Woods was never a Family Values brand. Sarah Palin and Tim Tebow are Family Values brands. And when Tiger comes back and wins his first tournament, people will remember his golf prowess and put aside the knowledge that he, like all of us, is a flawed human being. And this pompous hack writer will be proven dead solid wrong.
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- Sono - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:44 PM
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Graveyard dead? Dan Jenkins seems a bit out of touch here and it probably has to do with his age and the senility that comes with it. I seriously doubt his opinions are shared by any man under the age of 60 or anyone who actually cares about the sport of golf. If you don’t fall into one of those categories, why would it matter regardless?
Tiger already got some of his big sponsors back and there’s still no one on the PGA tour who even comes remotely close to Tigers ability on the golf course on a consistent basis. That’s really all there is too it.
Here’s how this works, it’s no ones business what he does off the golf course and in his private life. The PGA tour needs Tiger and so do the sponsors. So while they’re not all going to come back at the same time; 90% of them will most assuredly come back.
Dan Jenkins is going to look like a real out of touch know-nothing when Tiger starts winning again. But that was Dan just trying to grab some attention for himself b/c that’s all this really is…an opportunity for unimportant writers, columnists and tv personalities to glom some of the attention that Tiger is getting as a result of his infidelity.
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- VoiceOfReason - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:45 PM
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Oh Lord, here comes the race card again. No one gives a crap that he’s black. They give a crap that he decided to portray this wholesome goody two shoes who’s crap didn’t stink. Well, guess what? His crap DOES stink. He acted immorally, and it makes no difference what color his skin is. To say that whites are only picking on him because he is black is.. well… racist. And ignorant.
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- johnny in bolivia - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:45 PM
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Your blowback is interesting. The black community has wanted so hard to embrace Tiger as one of its own but Tiger has always been in deed and words probably 45% white, 45% Asian, and at most (or usually when it’s to his commercial advantage) 10% black.
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- Yea Right - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:45 PM
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Don’t think for a second that Nicklaus and Palmer were angels.
If you think they were faithful through their careers you are seriously fooling yourself. The difference is that the had the good old boy network to protect their philandering. In todays media stricken gossip-whore world, Tiger had no such protection.
Not that he deserved any.
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- bakery oven - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:47 PM
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Content like this makes me personally so sad, I know it is cleache to ask if we are able to all just simply get along, but how much more of this stuff are people gonna suffer?
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- Konquererz - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:48 PM
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I want to know why everyone thinks Tiger owes them something, anything. Did he cheat on you? No. So shut up. He has a sense of entitlement? Really? Why is that? Is it because his fan deified him and made him out to be more than human? Yes. And no he isn’t living up to the standards you set for him with your hero worship? Oh boo hoo. Spare me your diatribes about how he has some how failed you. He didn’t owe any of you crap. He still doesn’t. What he is, is the best damn golfer of our generation, perhaps ever when its all said and done. Is he going to be remembered in 100 years for his affair or his golf stats? Duh, you know the answer to that. Ruined his reputation? His reputation as what? When did he put himself up as the ultimate family man? And who cares if he did? Did you watch him and idolize him for being a family man? No. So stop this fake outrage over nothing. You idolized him and deified him because he is a golf legend in his own time. As far as I know, his golfing skills haven’t diminished. His reputation isn’t ruined any more than the man in the moon is winking at you at night! He will come back to golf in his own time, get back in his groove, and dominate the game again. And when he does, you will put him back on a pedestal and bow down to a “golf hero” once again and tell all your friends that you never really cared about this incident. And they will all node, agree, and talk about the awesome comeback he made in the face of hypocrites like yourselves who tried to bring him down in the first place.
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- Jumpmaster82 - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:49 PM
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Are Buddest this crase and judgemental?
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- Joe - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:50 PM
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Jenkins, whose books I dearly love, is totally full of crap concerning Tiger. As soon as he starts winning again, this will fade faster than a velvet painting left out in the sun.
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- Marion - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:50 PM
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Dear Hawk,
I am a 60 year old black woman and the only racial issues are “Tiger’s” racial issues, which probably stem from childhood (and his Daddy). Tiger has NO CULTURAL FAN BASE. The Asians don’t claim him (although he laid claim to them) and Blacks don’t want him (he alienated himself years ago). The only people who care about Tiger are golfers, sponsors and the media. BTW, the rich, white men you write about were not trying to impress the world with their virtue.
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- Ms. Dee - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:51 PM
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Jenkins did not pen the phrase “graveyard dead”. With a little bit of research, you will see that writers such as Zora Neal Hurston and Langston Hughes also used this phrase. That was decades ago.
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- Jay from Texas - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:51 PM
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Well one thing is for sure,
All you media reporters can forget about any long media Q & A’s after any of Tiger’s future wins. The media blew this whole thing out of porportion, and invaded his private life. Now we will only have small sound bites coming from tiger for many years to come. The Media will get exactly what it deserves! Will he come back to golf? Yes he will. Will he win again? YES HE WILL! Let us remind ourselves that he is a Professional Golfer First, an Endorsements Dream Second, and then a Married Man a very distant Third! I mean come on people….all he did was cheat on his wife! He didn’t shoot anyone, or kill anyone, he was not arrested for drugs or anything like that. So many other athletes commit far worse, yet the media does not hang them out to dry as quickly or as viciously as they have with Tiger.
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- JIM C - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:51 PM
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This is simply a problem in marketing: “Parade Magazine” made money on him on the way up, then “The National Enquirer” made money on him on the way down. There was edifying prose to be written on him on the way up, and scandal prose to be written on him on the way down. Americans have notorious attention spans, and, what’s more, everyone demands a second chance. A second chance at changing his image. What is the man himself? Apparently he doesn’t know any more than we do. Only God knows.
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- scott - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:52 PM
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Dan Jenkins is a joke, a washed-up caricature of himself. Jack and Arnie BOTH paraded around like cultural icons and models of paternal greatness. Regardless of what the good folks at Pennzoil would have you believe, Arnie liked the ladies. Don’t believe me? Go ask an old Tour pro and they will set you straight. Hogan was so irritated by the presence of others at times that he was widely known as a jerk, to put it nicely (but just could not help it, if you believe the old sportswriters). All Jenkins wants to do is get into a time machine and go back to an era where he was remotely relevant to the game, and when players could drink all they could handle and run around without their wives, or the media, finding out under a hail of Tweets, texts, and e-mails. Tiger blew it and lied to everyone, so no one can really debate that. Jenkins, however, is the one that is “graveyard dead”, figuratively and nearly literally. He is nasty old hypocrite who loathes the modern game and takes every opportunity to try to demean it. He is an enemy of modern golf, and his opinion about Tiger has as much value as any of the other poison that he spews: zero.
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- Dan Llewelyn - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:53 PM
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Amazing, the hoopla we’re all willing to make for a man whose only talent (and for which he gets to be a multi-millionaire) is the ability to accurately control the trajectory of a small white plastic sphere. Our society’s priorities are a little strange, to say the least…
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- phil - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:53 PM
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Tiger used, on many occasions, very, um, poor judgment. Many who are being critical, however, have probably cheated too, or eventually will…get over yourselves and move on from this…
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- Megley - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:54 PM
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Wow–really? They why did they LET him earn a billion dollars? Following your ignorant logic, the white man would only let him serving lunch in the clubhouse.
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- golf fan - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:54 PM
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What infuriates me is that he has been compared to A-Rod and McGuire. Tiger cheated on his wife. He owes his family an apology. He did NOT cheat the game, the way these other atheletes did. The same atheletes that are still playing the game today. Golf needs Tiger back. Theratings and the sponsors know this. This will all pass, and he will once again be back on top of the sport that he has made. Come back soo Tiger.
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- hank - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:55 PM
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Tiger is clearly not a kid, and needs to take responsibility (privately with his wife and family) for his actions. To my recollection, Tiger never stepped forward and proclaimed himself to be great role model, off the course. We all perceived him to have the perfect life — success, fame, $$$$, family, etc. — and as a result many of us aspired to be like him and placed him on a pedestal for all to adore. His earnings and sponsorships were all driven by his performance on the course. He did not use his family, or display any aspects of his personal life in any of this.
Should he have lived a better life –yes, maybe, who cares? That is for his family to determine. IF the media does not like his personal life — don’t cover him — win or lose. Sponsors: don’t hire him (though I imagine once he starts winning again the temptation to be paired with a winner will be too difficult to ignore). Fans: don’t follow him in the gallery. Let him play golf, measure him as golfer and ignore his personal life. After all, prio to Thanksgiving that is all we really knew about him anyway.
Lastly, let’s not forget where the term “Arnie’s Army” really originated.
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- jason chambers - Feb 23, 2010 at 1:57 PM
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This Dan Jenkins is off his rocker.
Hogan, Palmer, and Nicklaus were just as popular as Tiger? (Sure, added together and to the power of 10.)
It may just be his old age, but he seems to think Tiger was given what he has and should be dancing a jig at the drop of a hat for the public.
Guess what? Tiger has what he has because of his talent on the course. Nothing more. And he got his talent because he worked at it, relentlessly. It is like any great American story. Hard work pays off.
