December 14, 2011
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The Eye of the Tiger
With the weather turning wet and cold for the winter, and with an ever increasing family, I decided it was time to invest in a big umbrella so that when we head out together, pushing the Noodle in his push-chair (assuming he actually decides to stay in it of course) we can do so in the rain, with all of us keeping dry at the same time. There is a golf shop on the way to work, but of course in the morning it is not open, and in the evenings I am not going to stop there, because I want to go home.
Thankfully though, last weekend we headed up to Joanne’s sister’s place to drop off some stuff, and as we were leaving, stuck at the traffic light, there was another branch of the golf shop, so I pulled up outside, jumped out and – 2 minutes later – got back in to the car, complete with my cool purchase. A massive TW golf umbrella.
I told Joanne it was a Tiger Woods one, with TW on it. She suggested that it mst be a Taiwan umbrella. I said anyone who knows golf will understand it is that adulterer Tiger who is being referred to. She responded that anyone in Taiwan will think TW stands for Taiwan, and will therefore be well pleased to see me, as a non-Taiwanese, carrying it.
Now whether or not people look at it as a Tiger or Taiwan brolly, the end result is the same. I and my family keeps dry, the rest matters not a fig.
But it also got me thinking. There was a huge amount of publicity surrounding Tiger’s infidelity, and he was cricified several times by the press for what he did. He was – of course – the role model for many people, living what seemed to be the perfect existence. He had a wife, children, a Buick Rendezvous (if you believe the adverts anyway) a nice house, and damn if he wasn’t the most amazing golfer of his generation.
However then, to use a phrase from the movie Ronin, he bollocksed it up. Obviously stardom got the better of the man, and he began to think that he could do anything, to anyone, at any time, and not need to bear any consequences. Affairs here and there were had, and as long as he didn’t get caught, it was all fine.
What he didn’t count on though was getting caught, and everything coming out in to the open. And not the British Open. Oh no. In to the most public domain, where he would lose his wife and family, his credibility and his golfing form. And quite rightly he suffered for what he did. A couple of years of very poor form, no tournament wins, loss of sponsorship revenue as corporate accounts did everything in their power to distance themselves from the man who was – up until recent times – so squeaky clean, he could have been a mouse just exiting the mouse disinfecting station.
And then all these women came to the fore, claiming they had slept with Tiger. Women who knew he was married, and had children, yet still decided they had no self esteem, or wanted to claim that they had had an affair with a golfing legend. Women with no morals whatsoever, who were as guilty as Tiger himself for the breakup of his family, yet who still managed to come through the thing with rather a lot of wonga for selling their stories to the tabloid press, who ate it all up like a hungry child who has just been given a small bowl of gruel after eating nothing for days. And, just like that child, the press was hungry for more.
Tiger, it has been duly noted, lost a lot from these affairs. But those women he slept with, they all seem to have gained a lot. The guilt and blame lies evenly between Tiger and any and each of those women, yet it seems to me that there are some who have managed to come out of this whole media hyperbowl relatively unscathed.
Tarts.
