A pair of jumper cables walk into a bar and order a beer.
“OK,” says the bartender, “but don’t start anything.”
That brings us to Tiger Woods’ selectively indignant — or highly forgetful — agent, Mark Steinberg, who has been boldly threatening to sue golf pro and Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee unless he unconditionally retracts his claim, made in a website column, that Woods holds a “cavalier” regard for golf’s rules, and reminds him of a fourth-grader caught cheating on a test.
Wednesday on the Golf Channel, Chamblee said he should have left it with Woods’ “cavalier” treatment of rules. He apologized to Woods for that, via Twitter.
So the legal ball is now back in Steinberg/Woods’ court.
Now if that happens, if Team Tiger sues Chamblee on behalf of Woods, Woods’ next move should be to find himself a new rep firm.
Ya see, the last thing that Tiger Woods & Co. should want is to force Woods to swear to tell the truth — not commit perjury — in a defamation suit, a civil suit brought by Woods and a suit in which Woods would have to both establish and defend his character.
In other words, certain curious matters would be brought up by the defense.
For example, why, on more than three occasions, was since-convicted Canadian HGH doctor Anthony Galea flown to Florida to treat Woods? What, exactly, could and did Dr. Galea do for Woods that others — local doctors or doctors from New York to Los Angeles couldn’t — or wouldn’t?
If I were Chamblee’s lawyer, I’d be eager to put such questions to Woods.
Then, as another matter of character, Woods would be asked if his serial cheating on his now ex-wife doesn’t reflect on his character, doesn’t establish him as, well, a cheater.
As for matters of cheating at golf, that, too, might be something Team Woods should be eager to avoid.
While golf’s often open to one’s personal interpretation of both the rules and cheating, it’s clear Woods was first given a sense of excessive entitlement, and he then came to both expect and enjoy a sense of excessive self-entitlement.
Even as an amateur, the rules were abused for Woods; implausible denials never were even solicited. While amateurs are not allowed to hire agents, Steinberg’s previous monster firm, IMG, funded Woods’ far-flung amateur career by hiring Woods’ father as a “talent scout.” Earl Woods scouted one talent, his son.
But the USGA, surely pleased to have an African-American star on the horizon to help eliminate golf’s racially exclusionary image, just let it go.
And on the day Woods turned pro he immediately was delivered to IMG, indicating the rep deal was long ago negotiated. Heck, IMG already had Nike producing Woods ads that appeared within days of Woods declaring himself a pro.
Early in his pro career, the PGA and the media added to Woods’ sense that the rules do not apply to him.
In the 1999 Phoenix Open, Woods’ shot stopped directly behind a boulder. About a dozen yahoos in the gallery then gathered to shove that boulder clear of the ball. Woods, adhering to the spirit of the rules, should’ve stopped them. He didn’t.
The PGA then determined that it was, well, OK, that a boulder, which needed a dozen men just to shove, was a “loose impediment,” like a twig or a pebble. Preposterous.
But the media and TV showed and told that episode as a matter of fun, evidence of Woods’ popularity, when it likely solidified a growing sense within Woods that, like those boulder-pushers, golf can take its rule book and shove it.
Issues and interpretations have followed. In September, how Woods missed the fact his ball moved while he was leaning over it, his hand inches from it as he removed genuine loose impediments from beside it, well …
But that’s not to say that rules haven’t always been a matter of who.
Larry Ziegler and Tom Shaw, two fairly successful PGA tourists into the mid-1970s, once sat in a club’s grill room, telling stories of how, even on the Senior Tour, there are “rules and rulings for us” and “rules and rulings for Gary Player.” They didn’t blame Player. “That’s just the way it is.”
They knew no one paid to watch them win.
So, if that’s the way it was and that’s the way it is, agent Steinberg would be well-counseled to let this one go, that is, unless he’s out to prove that Brandel Chamblee’s original claim that Tiger Woods is a cheater has enough merit to be a matter of opinion.
Fantasy football warps rooting interests
Dear Abby: My younger daughter, Samantha, has been lost to fantasy football. I tried to talk her out of it, but on-the-job peer pressure was too great.
It’s her first year and she’s doing well enough to care a lot, although she now threatens to trade Wes Welker after she made me feel as if he’s my son-in-law.
Last week, she sat down to watch a game that included none of “her” players. She asked me what to do, who should she root for and how should she root.
I told her to root for both teams’ stars to break their legs.
As a sports fan and a father, am I sending her the wrong message? — Signed, Concerned Dad
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Thursday, throughout NFL Network’s Bengals-Dolphins, Mike Mayock didn’t take even one play off from drowning the telecast in genuine gridiron gibberish and providing lectures on what “I like” and what “I don’t like.”
After a Cincy fumble, he expertly said, “and the quickest way to lose a football game when you’re a heavy favorite is to start putting the ball on the ground.” Not only did he choose new-standard seven-syllable nonsense for a two-syllable word, he didn’t know what he was talking about. The Bengals were “heavily favored” by 2 ¹/₂ points.
Three times in just the first half he called a fumble “putting the ball on the ground.”
In the second quarter, Mayock noted Miami WR Mike Wallace caught a pass because “he sells vertical.” Reader Paul Curran asks, “Is that legal on the street anymore? Near a school?”
But cest la TV. Third and 10 for the Bengals, no score, late first quarter, and NFLN chose that as the perfect time to cut to fans in Fred and Wilma Flintstone costumes. Real feel for the game.