Anyone who writes opinions about golf is almost obliged to comment on the Tiger Saga. But Wall Street demands that you do more than tell people what is already known. What is already known is ‘priced into the stock’ so to speak. Wall Street demands that you foretell the future, and that your opinion carry some benefit of insight that can actually be acted upon.
To start with, the idea that current Tiger sponsors had to make an immediate decision is a premise born out of ignorance of the process that sponsors employ. Those that acted rashly will eventually have second thoughts, especially is Tiger conveniently chooses to avoid their tournaments. Can you ever see Tiger playing in the WGC Match Play as long as Accenture is the name sponsor? Until Tiger speaks out about the issues confronting him the sponsors are working in a vacuum. And certain sponsors such as Nike are so indelibly tied to Tiger that they basically have nowhere to go. They have to stay with him. But make no mistake about it, Tiger must and will speak to these issues.
But radio silence at the moment is clearly the wisest course for Tiger. He simply has to wait until every girlfriend, waitress, cocktail lounge act, hostess and gold digger has gotten their fifteen minutes of fame and tabloid photo-ops off. Because when Tiger speaks he will only have one chance to frame the story. He cannot have that defining moment and then have more shoes (or slips as the case may be) drop. He has to define how the landscape is going to look going forward once and for all.
It’s already clear that the shock & awe we were experiencing has begun to diminish. The world’s perception of Tiger will immediately change once Tiger redefines the story. Tiger will frame this in such a way as this crisis is another ‘challenge’ that he has to overcome, and he will make this an epic struggle that will ultimately make him even more heroic because of his ability to defeat even his own human failings. I have no doubt that Tiger will re-emerge from this as popular as he has always been. Possibly even more so. After all, the public loves a tragic Greek drama that results in Gods becoming more human. Sport offers multiple opportunities to recapture the public heart.
In my travels I have marveled at how many women I have met that actually sympathize with Tiger’s plight. The overriding theme seems to be that his position in this world consistently put him in a position of constantly having these women throw themselves at him, and in the end he merely succumbed to the temptation like any man would. While they agree that Tiger was wrong, and that they would murder their own husband for the same ‘transgressions’, they seem to put Tiger in a different category. I met a young woman on a commuter train yesterday who thought his wife should be arrested for assault. Amazing.
I don’t know whether I agree or disagree with these women. But I don’t put much stock in the ‘sexual addiction’ diagnosis, though it may be a convenient and sympathetic out for Tiger if the recent reports are true. It seems to me that this is all basically one event.
At some point in time, Tiger decided to stray from his marriage. After that, the babe count was irrelevant. Once he crossed that line, the buffet available to him was ‘all you can eat’ so to speak. This is not necessarily the case with the average philanderer. But nobody goes to the ‘all you can eat’ buffet and settles for the salad. They go back for seconds and thirds.
Once Tiger does redefine the landscape, the sponsors will begin to make better informed decisions. Some will stay and some will still go. After the self-enforced period of absence, Tiger may actually play more on the PGA Tour. He will want to re-establish his dominance versus the other players. But more importantly, he may want to try to establish relationships with a new crop of sponsors as he redefines his image. Because make no mistake about it, he is coming back. Christine Brennan said in a USA Today commentary that “If he’s as good as he was before Nov. 27, we will have found the most self-centered, focused person on earth”. Anyone who has spent significant time observing the golf industry over the last ten years already knows the answer to that. Tiger has always been the most self centered, focused person on earth!
The nexus of the story can move in strange ways as time goes by. Imagine if you will that Elin finds all this too much to bear and opts out of the marriage. Can any media resist the notion that Tiger immediately becomes the most eligible bachelor on earth? The Tiger girlfriend watch will go on a 24 hour paparazzi unicycle, although I suspect that Tiger will be in his 40’s before another wife shows up on the horizon. If it really is divorce, his absence from the tour will end pronto. See you at the Masters, Tiger.
If they decide to try to make the marriage work then I quite doubt we will see Tiger in the Masters. In order to prove a suitable degree of contrition he simply must throw in at least one major, possibly two. But I strongly doubt he would skip St. Andrews for the British Open. First of all, the Brit’s are for more inured to the traps and trappings of tabloid journalism. One could expect that the crowds would be far more polite during play than ours are likely to be the first couple tournaments back. St. Andrews could easily be the friendly venue necessary to make his return to competitive play.
But none of that is ‘invest-able’ so to speak. I am pretty sure I know what is invest-able though. In reading the accounts from all corners, it seems a high percentage of Tiger’s issues emanated from trips to Las Vegas. It seemed the Vegas community totally enabled this behavior. And why is anyone even remotely surprised at that.
But that has repercussions. I would guess that the all-male golf junket to Las Vegas is dead. Millions of dollars are spent every year on these boondoggles. Even convention-goers have to think twice about Vegas as a destination right now. The cost to the Vegas casino community could easily run into the millions of dollars, if not billions. Any man who goes to his wife in the next year and says he wants to go to Vegas with his buddies on a four day golf boondoggle will get a withering look that says he is already guilty of ‘Tigering’ his way up and down the Strip. You see, you don’t have to actually be ‘Tigering’ your way up and down the Strip. She just has to think that in some corner of your male fantasy mind that you would like to. That is sufficient to boil enough hot water to bathe in your wife’s doghouse forever.
Las Vegas is now a non-starter. You just don’t go there. Let’s face it, what happened in Vegas didn’t stay in Vegas. It went, well, everywhere.
