Tiger-Gate

The recent drama surrounding Tiger Woods just keeps unfolding. In the past few days he has announced that he is taking a break from golf. An indefinite break at that. His reputation is in shambles thanks to his flagrant infidelity and I haven’t seen so many women coming out of the woodwork claiming to be sleeping with a guy since Dallas went off the air. Tiger seems to have had his mule hitched to every post in the Western hemisphere. No wonder he’s been looking so gaunt lately.

All this hoopla surrounding the Woods family is, in my humble opinion, getting out of hand. The media is really having a field day with this scandal and I have to wonder what is at the heart of their fascination with Tiger’s fall from grace. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that until all this got started he had possibly one of the shiniest personas in the whole celebrity world. Not only was he at the top of his game (pardon the pun), he was also married to a beautiful woman with whom he had started a family. His endorsement deals were bringing him big bucks and he was rumored to be a billionaire. How much luckier can a guy get?

Then came that Friday night, right after Thanksgiving, when he drove his Escalade over a fire hydrant and into a tree, and the rest as they say is history. History that is still being made, I might add.

When last I wrote about this story, there were possibly three women who Tiger Woods was reportedly having affairs with, not counting his wife. Now there are at least nine and the news hasn’t ended for today yet! There might be more just waiting to get a call through to their local media outlets. If all these stories are to be believed, then Tiger Woods has more stamina than any man I know. I’ll bet rabbits stare at him in awe. They should name a condom after him. VH-1 will be on his doorstep first thing you know asking to film a reality series around his exploits.

Why am I making these wisecracks? Well, the way I see it, the media is turning this whole thing into a big joke without any help from me. It really isn’t that funny once you get past the witty remarks either. Tiger Woods and his wife are undoubtedly in an emotional spiral right now. Just last weekend it was reported that his mother-in-law was taken to the hospital in an ambulance where she was treated and released for some kind of spell that overtook her. She was here from the Netherlands to support her daughter. I’m glad somebody is supporting her. Elin Nordegren might be a beautiful woman with a lot going for her, but right now she is a wife who has a cheating husband who has dragged their entire family through more mud than a Monster Truck extravaganza. I feel sorry for her.

Strangely, I also feel sorry for Tiger. A little. I know that sounds funny but I have to imagine how he must be processing the events that are now out of his control. He’s dealing not only with having to confess his sins to his wife, but also with the fallout from losing some of his more lucrative endorsement contracts, plus seeing his professional reputation take a nose dive and also the latest trauma stemming from his impending “break” from golf. He must also be wallowing in the knowledge that he brought all this on himself. And that is possibly the bitterest part of this whole drama for him to be dealing with.

Tiger-Gate is not over yet. In the coming weeks there is no telling what we’re liable to find out about the sports world’s most celebrated figure. I don’t know that I can stomach any more revelations right now. There are a lot of people out there who are just waiting for the next bombshell out of this fiasco but I think it might be time for the media, and everybody else, to butt out and let the Woods family alone for a while. Just today I saw an entire show about Tiger’s friends in the golf industry who feel that they never knew him at all, no matter how close they felt to him. I found the show tasteless and a ridiculous waste of money to produce. You can’t know anyone as well as some of these people claim to have known Tiger Woods. Not unless they lived with him, which obviously they did not.

I’m taking a break from Tiger-Gate. I vow not to watch one more show about his personal problems or read one more headline about them either. I hope he and his family can work things out. I wish him the best. I hope he’s back on the golf course beating the hell out of everybody else in no time. More importantly, I’d like to see the news focusing on things that are of more consequence than somebody’s marital difficulties and flaws of character.

And that is my sole focus for now…