Tiger Woods, the Press, and the PGA

He called Tiger Woods "selfish" and "gutless."

Gutless.

Moreover, when prompted, he suggested that all of the players felt that way about Woods, some of whom have chosen to open their pie holes as well.

Ernie Els chirped about Tiger. Rory McIlroy suggested that there was something less than repentance in Woods' choice of date and time for his first public statements since Thanksgiving.

We already have Jesper Parnevik on record. First Rick Reilly, then Mike Lupica offered tips to Tiger on how to rehab his image...because he obviously doesn't know what he's doing, if you read between the lines.

My advice to everyone that feels like kicking dirt on Tiger Woods: get it all out now. Get every bit of vitriol and hate and jealousy, yes, jealousy out in the open for all of us to see.

Forget for a moment what he did to his family; everyone burning him in effigy now has had an ax to grind about Tiger Woods for years. All it took was one public incident and the gutting knives came out.

Don't get me wrong. I am not trying to minimize what Woods did to his family. It was at least selfish, and certainly reckless, and above all the kind of wrong one would hope that a public figure like him would have easily avoided. However, I will suggest that the level of contempt for Woods' person seems to me to be far out of line with his transgressions.

Kobe Bryant was at least unfaithful to his wife on one dark occasion in Colorado several years ago. Strange; no one seems to be taking him to task for his philandering ways now.

Leonard Little killed someone while driving drunk, and when he returned to the NFL, the sports pages weren't filled with jeremiads about him the way they are about Woods.

Michael Vick financially supported, participated in, and organized the torture and killing of over 50 dogs and did a federal perp walk for the crime.

Not even PETA protested Vick's return to the NFL.

But the overwhelming national discourse against Tiger Woods has gotten so ridiculously acrimonious in such a short time that it makes me believe that something else is behind all of this. There is something deeper that is festering beneath all of these fire-and-brimstone declamations.

They don't hate Tiger Woods for what he did to Elin Nordgren Woods and his kids.

They simply hate him, period.

They hate him like he was home-made sin. There are three reasons for this, and none involve Woods' ethnicity.

The first is his gift. He is not just better than everyone else in golf, he renders everyone else meaningless. The man has 82 victories and 14 majors in his career, and he's only reaching his mid-30s. He competes for every inch on a golf course. He doesn't merely demoralize his opponents, he dismisses them entirely. Professional golfers as a whole are a proud lot, because they really can work wonders with a golf club. All of them, deep within themselves, know this for a simple fact: if it was "anyone" and Tiger Woods standing 18 holes from victory, "anyone" comes in second.

Anyone.

The second is his drive to compete. Phil Mickelson looks like golfers did back when Tom Watson was taking majors away from Jack Nicklaus, kind of round in the middle. He's the last of his kind because of Woods. Woods showed up thin, strong, and ready to win every Thursday and suddenly all the fat guys on the Tour (John Daly notwithstanding) rediscovered their treadmills. This wasn't a paycheck for him. This wasn't the easiest 4-day workweek in the world. There was a leaderboard out there and he meant to be on it every time he teed it up...otherwise, what was the point of having a leaderboard? Any idiot could consistently place 50th on the PGA Tour and live like a king. It took hard work to consistently place at the top of that board. His conscious and burning desire to win every golf tournament he ever entered collectively shamed an entire sport. Most golfers are all too willing to concede that 'maybe this week ain't my week' or that 'those conditions sure were tough out there.' Woods set a U.S. Open record in a howling gale. Conditions do not concern him. Asteroids do not concern him. Making the cut doesn't even concern him. Being in the final pairing on Sunday? That concerns him all the time.

The third is his aloofness. He doesn't buddy up to the competition. He doesn't cozy up to the big name sports writers. He restricts access to himself like an emperor. There is a very good and well-documented reason for this. The one time he let his hair down around a reporter, it got splashed all over the pages of GQ Magazine. He was and remains determined to never let that happen again. Thus, he talks when he wants to talk, for as long as he wants to talk, and that's it. He doesn't feel a pressing need to entertain the ink-stained wretches more than mere professionalism demands, and once he's done that, he's out. He doesn't hang out with the boys on the Tour. He doesn't trade drinks with guys he's just finished destroying. He's not picking up the check at the 19th Hole. He really doesn't care if Sergio Garcia or Nick Faldo likes him, because none of that has ever helped him sink a 10-foot left-breaking putt with a tournament on the line.

But why am I thanking Alex Miceli? Why am I glad that lesser lights like Els and McIlroy and whoever else consistently finishes in the middle of the pack has decided that now is the time to speak?

Because Tiger Woods shares something with Michael Jordan: an acute sensitivity to being slighted.

Like Jordan, Woods has been known to take all slights, real or imagined, and use them to fuel his legendary competitive fire until it was something that could melt steel.

I am thanking everyone for coming out and being so honest about their disgust for Tiger Woods because it will only have one result.

Tiger Woods will come back and destroy everything in his path, and he won't even have to be nice about it anymore. He went to Stanford, once upon a time, so he's familiar with the concept of schadenfreude; he's making a list and checking it twice. Anyone who thought he was a competitive S.O.B. before will look back on the kinder, gentler, pre-Bimbogate Tiger with longing, because what's coming will not be pretty.

As I have pointed out before, the man won 82 tournaments worldwide and 14 majors while sleeping with everything in sight and trying to hide his many indiscretions from his wife and the world.

The cat's out of the bag now. Everyone knows. He performed miracles while hiding a secret that nearly destroyed him. How good can he play with nothing tugging at his conscience? What feats will he be capable of, now that he no longer fears a ringing phone or an unguarded text message?

Tiger Woods is in his physical prime as a golfer, finally has no distractions, and all he has for motivation is an ocean of Hater-aid from the press and the rest of the rank-and-file of the PGA. (By the way, has it occurred to Els, McIlroy, or any of those other knuckleheads out there in the PGA that A) Woods has made all of them a lot more money, and B) Woods is still better than all of them right now? It sez so right here that Woods could give McIlroy three a side and still beat the cleats off of him while playing with a mashie niblick...but I digress.)

I sincerely hope that he comes out of rehab a better man, husband, and father for having faced his demons...because I have no doubt that he will come out a better golfer.