The World Has Tiger by the Tale
By wchung | 22 Feb, 2025

Tiger Woods doesn't owe the world an explanation but the world will take its pounds of flesh anyway.

You don’t become a Tiger Woods without an indomitable will. You also don’t become a Tiger Woods without mortgaging the deepest recesses of your personal life to the media’s insatiable appetite for red meat.

Once again we are about to see what happens when the public decides to foreclose on the personal life of a great one.

The public doesn’t need to be told that Tiger was acting in extremis last week when his Escalade roared down his driveway, took out a fire hydrant, then slammed into a very solid tree. The public isn’t buying the initial version Tiger offered up to police — that wife Elin heard the crash and came out to save him by smashing out the back window with an iron.

I will admit that I am curious how Tiger came to be pealing out of his home in such a state as to destroy two innocent stationary objects. But the better part of my morbid fascination is fixed on the morality play about to unfold before our collective eyes — the ages-old tale of a mighty figure who thinks he has attained sufficient stature to shrug off the curiosity of mere mortals about a deeply embarrassing personal episode.

Legally and morally the public has no right to press the issue beyond having Tiger pay for the damages to the hydrant and the tree and maybe even a fine for reckless driving. Morality and legality is what makes it so difficult for someone in Tiger’s shoes to recognize that he is not only not above the law in such situations but actually beneath it.

When someone has for so long ridden public adulation to such heights, the desire to let an embarrassing episode quietly blow over smacks the world of insensitivity, selfishness, ingratitude, hubris. I have no doubt that our demand for details is morally wrong. Unfortunately, it’s reality. That reality is never palatable to someone who has come to feel that because he leads a charmed life he is exempt from life’s little embarrassments — magnified a million times by the lens of global media scrutiny.

Tiger has a deeply stubborn streak that will draw this thing out much longer than is necessary, to the media’s great delight. It will be interesting to see exactly how many pounds of flesh are extracted from him and whether his career as golf’s great one survives.