If you were a pop psychiatrist hoping for a little insight into Tiger Woods’ soul yesterday, then you may have walked away from the 35-minute Q & A he conducted with the press at Augusta National with less than you arrived. There were no broader explanation of what happened Thanksgiving night at Chez Woods.
He also seems incapable of saying the words, “sex addiction” in public. But if you are a professional golfer, and you had grown accustomed to life without the ever-looming specter of Tiger the Assassin . . . well, your little vacation through Shangri-La is over.
Humbled Tiger is dead. Meek, retiring, apologetic Tiger is about to join him. Self-deprecating, self-assailing, self-flagellating Tiger, the version we saw in February, the one that was still alive and kicking two weeks ago? Take a picture. He’s going out, too.
“Everything has changed,” Tiger insisted at the start of his first public press conference since he hopped in his SUV Thanksgiving night, a point when he was still wearing his scarlet letter, still saying things like, “Look at what I was engaged in. When you’re living a life that is a lie, life isn’t fun. That’s been stripped away. It feels fun again.”
And yet not 20 minutes later, he would say this:
“Nothing’s changed. I’m going to go out there and try to win this thing.”
I believe the second quote a lot more than I believe the first, and you know what? That’s as it should be.
Famous people doing stupid things always has been a gleeful national pastime, whether those famous people are snorting, smoking, or shooting things they shouldn’t be or stepping out on their Oscar-winning wife with a woman with tattoos on her face.
Really, it was just Tiger’s turn. What he chooses to do trying to salvage his marriage is up to him, same as what he decides to do in trying to woo his old sponsors. The other stuff? It was clear Tiger had tired of it. Asked to specify the nature of his rehab, prickly Tiger made a triumphant return: “It’s personal, thank you.”
And that was really as much a signal as anything. Eldrick Woods’ nickname always has been more than that, after all, since he has attacked golf the way a riled tiger would, eliminating distraction and marginalizing emotion and simply hitting golf balls as well and as consistently as they ever have been struck before. It sure sounds like he is ready to resume that old persona again.
What does that mean for his marriage and his empire? That’s something only he can know.
What does it mean for the sport that gave him the enormous profile that allowed him such an egregious fall? We’ll know that starting Thursday.
Don’t plan on it being a pleasant weekend for the rest of the men who play it. That party’s over.