Rick Reiley recently published his idea of how the game of golf (aka the golf game to my WMEB peers) should be played. He, like every other professional sports purist out there, calls golf a gentleman's game; that players should police themselves and call their own penalties (read the article), and that Tiger Woods needs to stop his "Tiger Tantrums" and clean up his act.
While that is mostly true of the game, there is no need for Woods to do so. If this was 1997, then yes, Tiger shouldn't be acting like this. But he is at the very top of the PGA hierarchy. Without Tiger Woods, golf would be as popular as professional soccer in the U.S. If we were talking about any other player in the Pro Circuit, then Reiley would be right. But let me say this: Tiger Woods deserves to play the game the way he wants to, just like every other person who is the greatest in their sport deserves to. I am not saying that he can start breaking the rules because he had a bad day on the links, but as long as he stays within boundaries, the rest is just BS.
I am not the biggest fan of golf, but I am an admirer of anyone who works as hard as Woods does to become the top dog in their profession. Our generation has seen some of the greatest individual athletes of all time pass through--Lance Armstrong, Roger Federer, Woods, Bode Miller (laugh it up, but he was the greatest skiier in the world at one point)--and it is all because these guys took it upon themselves to not only work their asses off, but to make a point of becoming the faces of that profession.
So when they become arrogant, moody, greedy, etc--let them do it! Lance Armstrong deserves to be a cocky MF because guess what (we've all heard it): he's done more in life with one testicle than you or I or your next kid or that kid's dog will ever do in our lifetimes. Bode Miller can drink a 30-rack of Schlitz, come out of retirement, and STILL win a Downhill circuit if he wanted to.
Tiger Woods is just acting like the top dog in his sport should be. He has slipped a little bit, and he's pissed off about it. So what if Tiger curses and slams his clubs down after hooking a shot? EVERYONE who has made a bad drive has done the same thing. So what if he confronts photographers who snap their noisy shutters on an important tee-off? In Reiley's column, he criticized Woods' antics, saying, "It's disrespectful to the game, disrespectful to those he plays with and disrespectful to the great players who built the game before him." It's also disrespectful to make your camera go CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK during a tee-off. I don't hear photography critics saying that guy is disrespectful to his profession.
Before he had his knee surgery, fans and media alike were wondering if Tiger was even human! These "Tiger Tantrums" are only showing us that the greatest can have bad days, just like the rest of us. In fact, it makes me think higher of Tiger because you KNOW he is going to practice even harder for the next match.
So let Tiger drop a few f-bombs here and there, or huck his clubs into the grass. He deserves to get pissed off when he slips a few degrees below the perfection he has achieved for the better part of a decade. He isn't cheating, he isn't going out and shooting up night clubs or degrading women, he is simply a competitor.
Golf is a gentleman's game, but it is a GAME before anything else. And right now, it is Tiger's game. Let him play the way he wants to play. Are theses guys babies sometimes? Yes. Do I NOT enjoy watching some of these athletes piss and moan about little things all the time? You bet. But, when someone else achieves Tiger Woods' status, then they can play their game.
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