http://phillysportsdaily.com/featured/2010/08/10/stephen-a-smith-the-jig-is-up-for-tiger-woods/
It’s over for Tiger Woods. Officially.
It’s just time to say the obvious.
The dominance. The intimidation. The aura of invincibility, evaporating before our eyes along with that world No. 1 ranking he’s held for nearly five years. It’s all gone now…even if we’re not quite ready yet to write a final epitaph on his actual game. His greatness.
There is no longer a question about whether Woods’ game is gone. Nor why it’s gone, because we know the answer to that, too. Now is the time, instead, for all of us to contemplate the lessons that can be learned from Woods’ demise. At the very least, we might as well try to grasp something constructive from the mess Woods has made of his career and his life – if, indeed, we’re truly sincere about teaching lessons to our youth, correct?
The jig is up for Woods. That’s the reality when a greatness once accentuated by 14 major championships before the age of 34 has disintegrated into what-might-have-been status before the man has reached age 35. We know this after watching Woods shoot a 77 at the Bridgestone Invitational this past weekend, shooting over par on 25 of 72 holes, failing to par any of the four rounds, and finishing tied for 78th in an 80-player field.
If that isn’t enough, he confirmed our suspicions in the aftermath of the worse performance of his career when he simply stated: “It’s been a long year. … It’s been a long year.”
Add to that Woods’ inability to hit off the tee, to putt, to zero in and focus, and it’s clear Woods is no longer the golfer he once was primarily because he’s no longer the man he so desperately wanted all of us to believe he was.
So what’s the lesson in all of this? For all of us. Not just Woods.
“Be yourself,” one high-profile Philadelphia athlete told me just weeks ago, right around the time Woods was scheduled to arrive for the AT&T National at Aronimink, the tournament that used to bear his name. “Don’t be phony. Tiger’s problem is not that he made a mistake. Or a bunch of them for that matter. His problem was that he was a prisoner to the image he worked so hard to create. The moment someone noticed something different, his world came crashing down.
“If Tiger had a little Charles Barkley in him – someone with the ability to tell the world to go to hell without flinching – his game would barely be affected, if at all.”
The same could be said about Tiger’s life.
The big elephant in the room, the one no man should want to touch is that, by and large, most male fans never had a problem with Tiger. They saw the relatively attractive man in his 30s, knew he’d earned about a billion dollars then asked themselves, “why the hell did Tiger get married in the first place?”
In the insiders’ world of professional sports, infidelity is expected. So is adultery. And about the worst any male would dare question privately was A) the amount of women Tiger allegedly hooked up, which was reportedly 24, and B) why Tiger was so sloppy (i.e. “Hello, it’s Tiger….on a mistress’ answering machine).
But it’s different for Tiger because Tiger is different. As one marketing executive privately explained to me: Americans want to treat Tiger like he’s one of us. African-Americans want to treat him like he’s Black. But everyone is forgetting who truly raised him.
It wasn’t just Tiger’s father, Earl Woods. His mother, Kultida “Tida” Woods, she of Thai-and-Chinese descent, had something to do with his upbringing, as well.
Woods was raised in a culture where appearances matters. Where image matters. Where saving face and putting on the right face is of paramount importance.
When Woods didn’t show his face for nearly two months following his Thanksgiving accident, when all his dalliances were exposed, many believed to be in-the-know swore he was curled up in a ball, so overwhelmed with shame, that it was more difficult for him to show his face in public than it was to show his face to his wife and children.
To many of us, such speculation was an exercise in hyperbole – just the latest maneuver, manipulated by public relations hacks, to hook us all into feeling sympathy for golf’s first-ever-exposed X-rated star.
After watching Woods play over the last few months, we now know it wasn’t a ploy, at all.
There’s nothing else to be said when the golf world goes from betting Tiger will catch Jack Nicklaus’ 18 major championships by the age of 40 to questioning whether he’ll even be relevant by then.
Things are that bad because Tiger has looked that bad. So much so that maybe – just maybe – the time has arrived for our judgment of Tiger to give way to our compassion for him.
True, Tiger did bring all of this on himself. But does anyone deserve such a public, precipitous fall? While our kids are watching?
You can check out more from Stephen A. Smith at www.stephena.com.
Contact Philly Sports Daily national columnist Stephen A. Smith at sasmith@phillysportsdaily.com.
It’s over for Tiger Woods. Officially.
It’s just time to say the obvious.
The dominance. The intimidation. The aura of invincibility, evaporating before our eyes along with that world No. 1 ranking he’s held for nearly five years. It’s all gone now…even if we’re not quite ready yet to write a final epitaph on his actual game. His greatness.
There is no longer a question about whether Woods’ game is gone. Nor why it’s gone, because we know the answer to that, too. Now is the time, instead, for all of us to contemplate the lessons that can be learned from Woods’ demise. At the very least, we might as well try to grasp something constructive from the mess Woods has made of his career and his life – if, indeed, we’re truly sincere about teaching lessons to our youth, correct?
The jig is up for Woods. That’s the reality when a greatness once accentuated by 14 major championships before the age of 34 has disintegrated into what-might-have-been status before the man has reached age 35. We know this after watching Woods shoot a 77 at the Bridgestone Invitational this past weekend, shooting over par on 25 of 72 holes, failing to par any of the four rounds, and finishing tied for 78th in an 80-player field.
If that isn’t enough, he confirmed our suspicions in the aftermath of the worse performance of his career when he simply stated: “It’s been a long year. … It’s been a long year.”
Add to that Woods’ inability to hit off the tee, to putt, to zero in and focus, and it’s clear Woods is no longer the golfer he once was primarily because he’s no longer the man he so desperately wanted all of us to believe he was.
So what’s the lesson in all of this? For all of us. Not just Woods.
“Be yourself,” one high-profile Philadelphia athlete told me just weeks ago, right around the time Woods was scheduled to arrive for the AT&T National at Aronimink, the tournament that used to bear his name. “Don’t be phony. Tiger’s problem is not that he made a mistake. Or a bunch of them for that matter. His problem was that he was a prisoner to the image he worked so hard to create. The moment someone noticed something different, his world came crashing down.
“If Tiger had a little Charles Barkley in him – someone with the ability to tell the world to go to hell without flinching – his game would barely be affected, if at all.”
The same could be said about Tiger’s life.
The big elephant in the room, the one no man should want to touch is that, by and large, most male fans never had a problem with Tiger. They saw the relatively attractive man in his 30s, knew he’d earned about a billion dollars then asked themselves, “why the hell did Tiger get married in the first place?”
In the insiders’ world of professional sports, infidelity is expected. So is adultery. And about the worst any male would dare question privately was A) the amount of women Tiger allegedly hooked up, which was reportedly 24, and B) why Tiger was so sloppy (i.e. “Hello, it’s Tiger….on a mistress’ answering machine).
But it’s different for Tiger because Tiger is different. As one marketing executive privately explained to me: Americans want to treat Tiger like he’s one of us. African-Americans want to treat him like he’s Black. But everyone is forgetting who truly raised him.
It wasn’t just Tiger’s father, Earl Woods. His mother, Kultida “Tida” Woods, she of Thai-and-Chinese descent, had something to do with his upbringing, as well.
Woods was raised in a culture where appearances matters. Where image matters. Where saving face and putting on the right face is of paramount importance.
When Woods didn’t show his face for nearly two months following his Thanksgiving accident, when all his dalliances were exposed, many believed to be in-the-know swore he was curled up in a ball, so overwhelmed with shame, that it was more difficult for him to show his face in public than it was to show his face to his wife and children.
To many of us, such speculation was an exercise in hyperbole – just the latest maneuver, manipulated by public relations hacks, to hook us all into feeling sympathy for golf’s first-ever-exposed X-rated star.
After watching Woods play over the last few months, we now know it wasn’t a ploy, at all.
There’s nothing else to be said when the golf world goes from betting Tiger will catch Jack Nicklaus’ 18 major championships by the age of 40 to questioning whether he’ll even be relevant by then.
Things are that bad because Tiger has looked that bad. So much so that maybe – just maybe – the time has arrived for our judgment of Tiger to give way to our compassion for him.
True, Tiger did bring all of this on himself. But does anyone deserve such a public, precipitous fall? While our kids are watching?
You can check out more from Stephen A. Smith at www.stephena.com.
Contact Philly Sports Daily national columnist Stephen A. Smith at sasmith@phillysportsdaily.com.
GTFOH! 
