Tiger Woods is Awesome, Let's Just Leave it at That
I’m not a golfer. Even though I consider myself very athletic, I find golf extremely taxing. A round of 18 holes is a small dose of torture for me, because I stink. At times, I even swing and miss the ball completely. Yes, I am one of those golfers.
Before children, I used to golf with my husband. He’d bring me to a par-3, buy me a cold beer and some peanuts, and then I could handle the complexities of the sport. It only took 2 hours so I was very grateful. After 2 hours of hitting those tiny balls, I often lost focus.
My whole family is into golf. My sister Carolyn and my brother-in-law James are avid players. Once, they made the big mistake of inviting me for a round and witnessed me swinging my club five times before I even connected. It was not cool. They don’t invite me anymore.
Carolyn and James watch a lot of golf on TV. When the news broke about Tiger Woods’s accident on Friday, it was Armageddon! “Tiger Woods is in critical condition!” the networks reported. Carolyn ran in the living room screaming the news like it was the end of all civilization.
Critical condition? Oh no! The greatest golf player in the world is in critical condition! Then they showed pictures of the car and the accident. How could he be in critical condition? It didn’t look that bad.
A couple of hours passed and more news trickled in. It was a minor accident and they were releasing him from the hospital. Hey people, maybe we should get the facts straight before we jump into the headlines. Then the rumors began to swirl. What was he doing at 2:30 a.m.? How could the most precise golfer of our generation miss the road, hit a fire-hydrant and then a tree?
I’ll admit, I went to the dark side. I immediately went to thinking he was having some kind of affair. I’ve been tainted with memories of Kobe Bryant, Alex Rodriguez, and Roger Clemens. Hey, we can trace extramarital affairs all the way back to the Great Bambino. I couldn’t help myself.
But is it any of my business? I hate that I am curious. I hate that I have this desire to know every detail of what exactly happened.
Tiger Woods is a very private person. I have to respect that. I should demand the paparazzi to come down from the palm trees outside his house immediately!
Maybe he has an addiction to rolled tacos that he doesn’t want anyone to know about. Perhaps, in his spare time, he hunts for wayward alligators to wrestle. Maybe he’s an insomniac and goes to the 24- hour pharmacy to peruse magazines while the world sleeps. Or it could be just as simple as his having a gigantic sneeze that made him lose control of the car. It happens. Yes, I know it’s more complicated than that, but nobody is perfect, right?
The thing is, we care. We have watched him grow from a little boy into a man in our living rooms. We relish his talent. We have witnessed him pull from behind, clinch title after title and put a thrill into the game of golf that was unprecedented. We mourned with him when he lost his father. We celebrated with him when he got married and soon after had his children. No, he’s not perfect, but he’s pretty awesome.
I’ve decided that whatever happened, I don’t want to know it anymore. I’m going to let him be. That night is his business. Call me naïve and idealistic, but when it comes to celebrities and iconic figures, I would rather celebrate their talent, than pick apart their private lives.
After all, sometimes even the best golfers miss the ball.