So Tiger's a sinner but he'll still be a winner

SIDELINE CUT: Yesterday's carefully choreographed press conference only served to confirm that even now we still don't know much at all about the world's greatest golfer

TIGER, TIGER, burning bright. Yesterday’s apology to the world for everything that ever happened from golf’s number one was predictably cringe-worthy, with a dash of Clintonian contrition and plenty of vows to be a better man. More interesting has been the murmurings from Woods’ professional colleagues.

The petulant words emanating from Woods’ would-be competitors hammered home the fact the elite players can no longer escape the truth: no matter what they achieve in the game, they will amount to little more than sidekicks on the Tiger show.

They are forever destined to be “The Gang” to Woods’ “Kool”.

Woods’ first public appearance since his exposure as the original sinner marks the beginning of an entirely new level of fixation and obsession with Mr Golf. If the other best golfers in the world felt they lived the in his shadow up to this point, imagine what it is going to be like after he returns to the circuit, starts hoovering up Majors again and ushers in the second act of Tiger’s sporting life, where redemption, humility and newfound wisdom are all achieved through the act of whacking a ball around a manicured field with more proficiency and talent than anyone else on earth.

His carefully measured television appearance yesterday was a stinging reminder of just how tightly he kept the lid on things for so long. That he decided to time his conference to clash with the World Matchplay championship irritated his erstwhile colleagues on the field. Some of the comments were pretty brave – kudos to Rory McIlroy, who offered an indifferent opinion on the subject before adding: “I am sick of hearing about it.”

But McIlroy is young and relatively new to the circuit and therefore not (yet) institutionalised to the reality of playing out the majority of his career as one of the cast of merely talented mortals tasked with trying to tame the Tiger. The irate comments of the normally placid Ernie Els spoke volumes. The South African scolded Woods’ selfishness in holding his press conference when he did, saying that he felt “sorry for the sponsors.”

Is it genuinely possible to feel sorrow for a global management company? Does Ernie feel aggrieved for all 186,000 folks living in 52 countries who are on the Accenture payroll or is his sympathy limited to the executive board who show up to talk swings, grips and Lear Jets with the elite golfers at the events they sponsor – unless, of course, Tiger isn’t playing as he is the only golfer they really, really want to see and speak with.

Els' chagrin was probably representative of the feelings of the majority of world's leading golfers, with the honourable exception of John Daly, who might have something genuinely interesting to say on the matter – if he was asked. Because Tiger's fall from grace is bound to have given his would-be rivals cause for some serious introspection. Not long after the mythology that Woods so carefully constructed around himself began to fall apart last November, Pádraig Harrington was on the Late Late Showand confessed himself utterly stunned by what he was hearing and reading.

He noted Tiger had sometimes said that “Paddy” was his friend, but in the wake of the revelations then appearing on a daily basis, he had to conclude he never really knew the guy. Harrington was moderate and charming and in that disarmingly truthful way of his, he created a few comic moments during the interview. But he had hit upon a salient point.

None of the golfers who, one assumes, spend a lot of time obsessing about fine-tuning their game so they will be able to match and beat Woods when it matters – on the 17th hole on a claustrophobic Sunday in Augusta or a wild afternoon at St Andrews – ever knew who or what they were competing with. The myth sold around the world for the previous decade was that Woods’ uncanny genius for the game was attributable to his supreme concentration and single-mindedness.

On the golf course and in press conferences, Woods’ demeanour never changed: he was unruffled, poised, intimidating and, whether he ultimately won or lost, always polite and measured. It must have been comforting for his opponents to think of him as an automaton, as someone who really only functioned and communicated through the game. And now they know they didn’t have a clue.

Now the other golfers know he could remain comfortably their superior even though he seemed to live a private life conjured up from the pages of top-shelf magazines. The complexity of Woods’ life was such that it was a wonder the man found time to play a game of pitch and putt, let alone hold down the role of the world’s best golfer.

It must be sobering for the top 10 to 15 golfers in the world to learn that Tiger was beating them on the golf course even though his mind was clearly elsewhere. It must be privately humiliating for them to learn that he sold the Tiger illusion to them just as easily as to the thousands of spectators who stood behind the thin rope along the fairways. And they must all be wondering this: what is it going to be like if he decides to concentrate solely on the game of golf?

It was amusing also to see the Golf Writers’ Association forsook their places at yesterday’s address to the world by Tiger. The poor old sportswriters of the world, particularly those who have followed the Tiger over the last decade, feel betrayed in all this as well. They too have been forced to acknowledge to themselves that everything that has been said and written about Tiger Woods since his breakthrough year in 1997 has been nonsense.

Newspapers, magazines and television did more than just facilitate the creation of this mythical Tiger Woods, they were responsible for creating it.

Woods was smart and deliberate enough to go along with it and his professional behaviour was in perfect collusion with the marketed stereotype he was expected to portray – the winner, the predator, the supreme golfer/athlete, the killer on the golf course and the private family man.

It was impossible to see how Woods could have satisfied the masses yesterday short of taking off his shirt and submitting himself to a public flogging. The wounded tone of Woods’ golf fraternity suggests many of them feel as if he owes them and explanation and an apology.

The world at large seems to think that Woods has some explaining to do also.

And he does – to his family, to his very close friends – whoever they are; clearly, they are not the men against whom he squares up on the golf course – and, perhaps, to the God his father Earl, believed had chosen Tiger as a conduit through which to change the world.

But after that, Woods owes nothing to anyone. He has made the safe, moderate, white, nice field of men who make up the professional golf tours incredibly rich by boosting the profile and wealth of the sport enormously. The price they pay is their role is that of prey for the Tiger, tournament after tournament, season after season.

Years ago, when Woods gave the infamous magazine interview in which he told a few puerile jokes and generally behaved like the 21-year-old powerful, slightly geeky alpha male he was, Charles Pierce, the writer of the feature, made the following observation towards the end:

‘I believe in the 21-year-old who tells dirty jokes and who plays Nintendo games, and only the fighting games at that. I do not believe in the chosen one, the redeemer of golf and of America and of the rest of the world. I hope he plays golf. I hope he f**ks around. I believe he can blaspheme himself. And I hope to God he does.’

Mr Pierce got his wish. The rise and fall of Tiger Woods has gone around the world as a 21st century morality tale but all it amounts to is another example of an impossible illusion foisted on yet another celebrity, who apart from his brilliance at golf turned out to be little more than another lost and selfish and, one imagines, desperately lonely young man.

But have no doubt. His day will come.

Before too long, the cheers as he walks up the 18th tipping the logo-ed cap will be louder than ever.