He was a prodigy who began to play golf at the age of two. In 1978, he putted against comedian Bob Hope in a television appearance on The Mike Douglas Show, this was the first ever glimpse of a champion to be, the greatest sportsperson of the new millennium He turned pro in 1996 and up till now he has amassed a whooping 71 PGA tour titles and 38 European tour, 3rd in the all time list behind the “Perfect Swinger” Sam Snead and Jack “The Golden Bear” Nicklaus.
Eldrick (Tiger) Woods, now at the age of 34 has had an unprecedented career as a golfer. He dominated the golf world over the last decade and is the hottest choice as a marketing tool. He landed deals with the likes of Accenture ,AT & T ,NIKE, Gillette, TAG Heuer, EA Sports, Gatorade to name a few in the unending list of sponsorships and deals. A total rundown of sorts as an endorser. He is the world’s first athlete to make a billion dollars. An epitome of true sportsman he is considered the American hero, little weird though as he refers his ethnic make up as “Cablinasian” from Caucasian, Black -American, Indian, and Asian. Off the course also he is just perfect, The Tiger Woods Foundation, launched by Woods and his father in 1996, has raised millions of dollars to help underprivileged youth get started in golf and succeed in life.
It seemed he just cannot take a wrong foot, but he did. The lightning hit him, or rather his Cadillac hit a fire hydrant and all hell broke lose, by December the sports page regular Woods had pushed the likes of Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian etc. to the obscurity of inner pages of leading Tabloids. Tiger woods had become the Tabloid celebrity of the year.
It all started with Rachel Uchitel, and he ended up with half a dozen porn stars, couple of models and some waitress. Woods went into hiding while Tabloids were having a time of their life. Tiger’s wife, Elin Nordegren his very loyal but a very feisty wife had every reason to be angry, form filing divorce papers, to moving out with their children to hitting with a golf club she made her stand clear on the issue of her beloved husband’s infidelities. Tiger in order to save his marriage decided to take a break from golf, a right step in a long time, just imagine if Tiger would have been playing amidst this fiasco and after each hole sprang a new mistress out of the spectators, wow then it would have been tough to keep the count. Anyways, on 19thFeb,2010 Tiger decided to come out of the woods and his rehab(ha, what a joke) to give a public apology in front of a select few, I guess he did not want any golf clubs or shoes flying at him, that’s why he hand picked his audience.
According to the great golfing legend Sir Arnold Palmer, Tiger Woods 13 minute painstaking apologia was sincere enough. But the hype and frenzied build up before the press conference was just too much, even back in India were very few people indulge in knowing golf as more than a sport of putting a the ball in a hole, news channels were at top gear for this telecast, Times Now’s Arnab Goswami abruptly stopped a discussion on unlawfulness in India to get the live feed of Tigers press Conference.
And the verdict, not convincing, many a sports journos thought of this as completely staged managed, lack of Human warmth, not having a sense of true remorse.For many business analyst this apology looked more like trying getting back his endorsement deals, more than anything. From Buddhism to work at his foundation he put in a lot in his apology and that also kind of backfired. The surprising thing came at the end of the speech, about his golfing career, thats what people wanted to know and the answer was a bleak one, he would come one day, but did not know when. This was one thing his fans and supporters cared about and he came out with the lamest of all responses.
Well on the Hindsight, this scandal could be regarded as the most ill treated malicious gossip by the media, and poor John Terry and Ashley Cole are also facing its similar kind of backlash. This scandal though had its beneficiaries as well, Tiger Woods official site got more hits in these 2 months than ever before, and he became most talked about celeb and as for his endorsement deals, those guys can still make some bucks out of the woods by reducing the deal money and fitting in Tiger Woods. And as for the mistresses, they are smelling the moolah, One of them has landed a job on TV, another one is going to write a book, no prizes for guessing the plot.
In the end if Tiger really wants to apologize, he should do it to his own wife and no one else, and once he comes back to the course and becomes the Tiger Woods we know, this whole incident will be done and dusted with and the world will once again call him the greatest exponent of “The Greatest Game Ever Played”.
