TiSO TIGER has decided to take an indefinite break from professional golf, which is expected to end early next year. Tiger is going for a cooling-off period. Meanwhile, a cold wind will blow over the fairways of the world – yes, an even colder wind than usual. And there will be grim times at the top of the golf industry, writes ANN MARIE HOURIHANE
Last season, when Tiger was missing due to injury, viewing figures for the big tournaments fell by 47 per cent. Truly Tiger Woods holds the whole golfing world in one hand, and a cocktail waitress in the other. This equation has only recently been revealed.
“They’ve very hard lives,” said one golfer sympathetically. But he wasn’t talking about cocktail waitresses, he was talking about professional golfers. “For six months of the year they have to move every four days.”
Apparently this extraordinary migratory pattern takes place during the six months of the major golf competitions. The golfer recommended watching a film called Follow the Sun, a docu-drama about another very good golfer, Ben Hogan. But, strange to say, most of us do not care about the hardships endured by professional golfers. We are too busy looking at the girls Tiger chose.
We’re not interested in the morality of the situation – in fact, nobody is. We’re interested in the icon being tarnished, in the glimpse it gives us into someone else’s private life. The most startling thing about the Tiger Woods story is the single-mindedness of his father, Earl, in making the little boy into a golf machine. Where this determination in Earl Woods came from is not clear. He had served in the Vietnam War, so perhaps Tiger’s ruined childhood and lonely adolescence are one of the more unlikely consequences of that conflict.
I have written before about how the parents of sporting prodigies are guilty of child abuse. The sports world seems remarkably sanguine about primary school children caught in this drudgery. Andre Agassi has written about how his father’s treatment of him made him hate tennis. All are agreed that the rearing of a sports superstar is no foundation for adult life. In fact the way sporting children are treated by their parents is a much greater scandal than the fact that Tiger Woods has had sex with an awful lot of adult women.
The most startling thing about Tiger's sexual taste is its chilling consistency. If anyone ever wondered how many big-breasted, long-haired all-American blondes Tiger Woods could have sex with, the answer is 11. Tiger went all the way up to 11, like the amplifier in Spinal Tap. The thing is that, unlike the amplifier in Spinal Tap, Tiger kept right on going. It will be a long year of writing cheques and drafting confidentiality agreements for Tiger's tireless lawyers. They may even have to move cities every four days.
But they won’t have too much trouble identifying their quarry – big-breasted, long-haired blondes every one of them. It is a striking uniformity. God knows that there is no shortage of beautiful young women in the world; it does seem strange to choose just one
very simple type and start a collection.
The most obvious thing about these women is their whiteness. The white blonde seems to be the ideal sexual partner for sporting heroes, a living trophy in herself.
In America the black community has had its problems with Tiger Woods. An interminable list of blonde good-time girls will not help in this matter. But there are other subjects of interest in this scandal.
For example, it is interesting to look at Tiger’s birdies in contrast to the beautiful and blonde Mrs Woods. Elin Nordegren was a model before her marriage and modelled lingerie, amongst other garments. Nevertheless, her body is much slimmer than those of her rivals for her husband’s attention. Her breasts are much smaller. Her hair is much shorter.
It is as if Nordegren is the good-taste model for use within the gated community and for public display during golfing triumphs. The bigger, bustier girls are for sex, obviously. Nordegren looks sophisticated, the sort of woman any man would be proud to be seen with in public. The other girls look rougher, and presumably sexier: the kind of girl Bill Clinton used to not have sex with. In fact, the women Tiger Woods has had sex with look like a collection of adolescent fantasies; two of them are from the fantasy factory itself, having worked in the pornography industry.
Individual sexual taste is not usually subjected to public scrutiny – Bill and Tiger deliberately courted disaster – and of course there are patterns within it. The big-breasted blonde is one of the oldest templates of female beauty that we have. Not too many men have to be persuaded to desire her. In this instance though, it is the sheer number of the same type of woman which is striking. Tiger’s birdies bring us straight back to the longings of a lonely teenager, a boy who cannot now be reached, but who will back on the first tee shortly.