Tsk Tsk, Tiger: Golf’s Good Guy Finally Misses The “Clean” Cut.

Aside from Mr.Clean, no one had less dirt on them than Tiger Woods, until now. 

He’s the best golfer on the planet, and one of its (if not, the) highest paid athletes. 14 major golf championships, 71 PGA Tour events, more career major wins and career PGA Tour wins than any other active golfer, and PGA Player of the Year a record ten times. He’s held the position of “World Ranked #1” for the most consecutive weeks and for the greatest total number of weeks. He’s received uncountable other media adorned accolades, and is generally credited for increasing the global popularity of golf. He also founded and participates in numerous charitable organizations and events to benefit children, married a model, and even wrote a book called “How I Play Golf” to give bad aspiring golfers false hope of being as good as he is. Good dude, right?

Michael Jordan had his gambling. Wayne Gretzky had his (alleged) tie to a gambling ring. Now, Tiger Woods joins the world’s elite in another category: Sports’ most dominant athletes that have an actual or alleged character tarnishing event attached to them [note: Jordan’s the only non-“alleged” of the group].

Before recent events, all the media had on Tiger was a slump in 2003-04, and a little bit of course rage. The staff of TMZ and The National Enquirer must have made a(nother) deal with the Devil, because they got an “Cablinasian” Smorgasbord of a story dumped straight on their plates. Dinner’s served, media outlets and gossip-hounds; dig in.

Tiger had been as “squeaky clean” as those high-beam pearly whites of his. That is, until he soberly left his home at 2:30 am one morning, crashed his Escalade into a fire-hydrant, and then a tree at a speed too low to inflate the airbags, but high enough to cause himself bodily harm (quote from his website “I have some cuts, bruising, and right now I’m pretty sore”); to the affect that his wife had to smash his windshield with a golf club to get him out, and to force him to withdraw from his own upcoming tournament, citing the afore mentioned injuries. Oh, and he had allegedly been having an affair with one, maybe two, or maybe three women that aren’t his wife. Oh, and one of them has evidence to prove it.

Tiger says his wife acted “courageously,” as she rescued him, but I gotta wonder, at that speed, could the vehicle’s damage been so bad that just opening one of the multiple entry points by the handle was out of the question? Smashing the window? Did she drag him out through the shattered glass, sling him over her shoulder, and narrowly escape a fiery explosion as well? You can’t spell “courageously” without “rage”, after all (no domestic violence charges were laid).

Alright TMZ, we get it, you took the pics. All the doors still seem accessible, don't they? How do you put your car horizontal on a driveway sober, anyways?

And the jokes, oh the jokes. “The Driver lets Tiger down, yet again”, “I finally outdrove Tiger”, and the likes will probably haunt Woods for… ever.

In addition to the estimated $8000 to fix his truck, local police have issued Tiger a fine of a whopping $164 (yes, that figure is only 3 digits long, no zeroes attached) for careless driving, and some points on his license. Way to go cops, surely he’s learned his lesson now.  Way to show him he’s not above the law.  

We couldn’t have just let him be really good at golf, and let him get away with appearing to be an overall quality human being, could we? We love our heroes when they’re doing great and historic things on the playing field; but when they do something of the equal opposite in life, we love to read the stories and watch the news reports that have been milked by reporters, and hang them out to dry like we knew it all along, don’t we?

Is this even a story if it happens to any non-celebrity? Minor traffic violations? Extra-marital affair accusations? Yeah, those never happen to anyone. Unfortunately this time, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer (or more famous/rich) guy. It doesn’t justify any of the afore mentioned actions, and granted, it’s no one’s fault but his own; but should all the media scrutiny just be chocked up to the price of being a world-renowned celebrity? If it were say, Dennis Rodman or Danny Bonaduce, this would all be “par for the course”(pun) and less people would care because there sort of things are almost expected from them. But “Super-Tiger” has finally shown a weakness, and that’s what’s really interesting to people, and worth exploitation to people looking to make money off of other people’s misfortunes. He’s human after all folks, alright, mystery solved. You guys really got him good this time. Everyone happy?

Leave the guy alone, and let him clean up his life, so he can get back to doing what he does best: being better than anyone else on Earth at golf. Sure he made some mistakes and he’s paying for them, but I’d rather see him continue to frustrate Phil Mickelson’s attempt to better his World Ranked #2 ceiling any day; not to mention thwarting any other golfer’s attempt to win a tournament that both he and Tiger are both in. Isn’t that the Tiger Woods we’d all rather watch, hear and read about?