And what has happened to his family has (1) nothing to do with whether his skills and career have gone anywhere and (2) infidelity and divorce are as common as dirt—how is that some rare tragedy for his family?
What has really happened is that the public who loved him too much now hate him too much.
The love was in excess of its cause—come on, he was the best at hitting a tiny ball with a stick … woo fucking hoo … being great at a fucking game shouldn’t be such a big deal. Why aren’t there billionaire champions of long-distance pissing in a pot?
And the hate is for something that’s nobody’s business except his and his family’s.
Oh, and he’s not white. So that plays a part in the swiftness of his fall.
His game went to shit right after this marriage did. I take it you don’t play golf-- it’s the quintessential game that’s played between your two ears. Tiger was “hated” for awhile, but that is largely gone. He still draws crowds and attention when he plays (which is almost never now, but he’s played quite a bit since the car incident).
I think it’s generally fair to say that golf is among the sports in which psychology plays an outsized role. The ball isn’t even moving when you swing at it, and it’s an incredibly difficult game.
But I disagree that fans have done something untoward by treating Tiger poorly after he stopped playing well. I think it is the exact opposite: he has always been an asshole, but people excused it when he was winning. Now he’s being treated generally in line with how he apparently treats others.
He won 10,508,163 in 2009. Thanksgiving 2009 is when he crashed his car during the situation with his wife, sealing the end of his marriage. He had lots of injuries going back to 2002, the back issues started in 2014.
As a newspaper page designer, I would like to think that I would have come up with same “DUI OF THE TIGER” headline that the ever-impish folks at the New York Post did had I been able to fit the story into my section.
He’s recovering from surgery (again). One possibility is that he was under the influence of painkillers. If so, it’s not legal, but (to me) it’s more understandable and forgivable than if he was under the influence of a recreational drug.
Between 1997 and 2009* he was #1 or #2 on the money list every years except one, and even then he was #4. In 2010 he was #68. He had a brief resurgence for a couple years, but never won another major. Injuries happened throughout is career, but it was the break of his marriage (and the death of his father) that seemed to have affected his game before the injuries became dominant.
*his marriage went to shit at the end of that year.
Everyone’s citing the end of his marriage, but that’s also when he had to stop banging a lot of women on the side and head off to rehab for sex addiction. I mean, I agree that it was all a big psychological shake-up that had a major effect on his game, but I wouldn’t necessarily describe it as “the end of his marriage” but more broadly the end of indulging himself without consequences or costs.
And I wonder if the psychological tension either tightened up his physical responses or threw off his workout routine such that his back injuries followed.
To be fair, I don’t know how many mortals could manage to remain humble when you are that good at that age. I know a lot of assholes even without that kind of money or followers.
The comments concerning his career and amount of winnings only cover part of the picture. His total income including sponsorships, is much greater, and shows how much he lost because of the 2009 incident.
Short version: Tiger became unmoored after his fathers death (a career military man), questioned his worth, and began doing intense military training with various military and paramilitary groups. His body couldn’t take the stress and he ruined his knees and back.
Add the increasing womanizing and drinking, and you have the trainwreck we all witnessed.
Apparently it was pills. According to CNN’s article from today, he registered a 0.0000 BAC on his breath test, and claimed that he had an unexpected reaction to new prescriptions he was taking. He was also found asleep at the wheel of his Mercedes with the engine running, brake lights on and turn signal flashing.
Tiger’s swing just wasn’t a swing you could use for a lifetime. It’s one thing for a 25-year-old to swing like that, but over and over, year after year into your 30s and it’s going to ruin your back.
I’ll eat my hat if Tiger’s problem isn’t actually an addiction. With his history of sexual compulsion and back surgeries, I might actually eat two hats if I’m wrong.
I think his more recent losses (would that we could all have such losses!! ) are because he’s not playing any longer. If he was out there playing, the sponsorships money would go up. If he was winning, they would go up even more.
I don’t know if he still does this, but when he was winning like crazy, he had a policy that all his sponsorship money was given away, and he kept all his actual golf tournament winnings for himself. Kind of a bummer that the charity world has lost one of its major donors…
) are because he’s not playing any longer. If he was out there playing, the sponsorships money would go up. If he was winning, they would go up even more.