The Great Tiger Debate

So yeah, this topic is a little bit old, but considering that we’ve had plenty of things to talk about in the past week (Tom Watson, Stewart Cink, Greg Norman‘s 54-hole lead at Sunningdale, Evian Masters, and so on), now is a good time to discuss it.

Unless you live under a rock, you probably know that Tiger Woods missed the cut at the British Open. If you didn’t know that, well, I’m glad to be the one to break the news to you.

But even though Tiger’s missing the cut was monumental in and of itself, another hot Tiger topic has been floating about. That being his manners on the golf course.

It got started with Rick Reilly’s column that stated that Tiger needed to drop the profanities and other things of that nature, and clean up his act on the golf course.

And just recently, a personal favorite of mine, David Feherty, defended Tiger, by saying that in watching those actions, we tend to forget about the good things he’s done in recent weeks at other tournaments, such as his in Washington D.C.

Now I ask you, where do you stand on this matter?

As for me, I’ve been sort of going back and forth on this one. I feel like I should take a strong stance one way or the other, but it just seems like there is no right or wrong answer here.

After looking at it more and more though, I can see where Reilly is coming from in his article.

There’s no doubt that Tiger is the face of the game. I agree with Reilly’s points about kids around the world watching him, and saying “well if Tiger does it, so can we.” That’s not the type of promotion that the PGA wants, and I doubt it’s the type of promotion that Tiger wants. It’s not the greatest type of behavior on the golf course, that’s for sure.

However, Tiger is a competitor. Not just any competitor, and we all know that. Tiger can easily compare to the drive that Michael Jordan had when he played basketball. It’s the same type of drive that pushes Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. It’s who they are. They don’t like to lose, and their obsessive winning drive will sometimes rear its ugly head when things go bad.

But that’s not to say that that particular drive comes across well, especially when things are going bad. As Reilly says, we are use to seeing these kinds of behaviors happen in the NBA and other leagues, but not in golf.

Golf is a different type of game, with a different type of tradition. It hasn’t been built around players going nuts after every bad shot, or every missed putt.

It’s also important to note, as Feherty does in his comments, that there is another side to this. It’s not just Tiger swearing and showing anger every week on TV, and that’s it.

We all know he’s got so much upside, and he shows that more often than not. All the work he did on his tournament in D.C. in helping out those in the military and other things similar was just such a great sight to see.

Another great point that Feherty makes is about the use of emotion in golf. He’s right about that in my opinion. Golf is a game where people are going to show emotion after a shot. It’s just the way it is. There are so many highs and so many lows in golf, it would probably be bad to your health not to show some emotion here and there.

So maybe it’s that we expect so much from Tiger that it’s just not too thrilling to see him act the way he does on the course sometimes. If I’m a little kid, and I see my hero acting that way, one of two things will happen. I’ll start to question my alliance to my hero a little bit, or I won’t really understand the circumstances, and think that it’s OK to do that too because my hero is doing it.

Is it ideal to see the greatest player in the history of the game yelling out profanities after a bad shot, or pounding the club against the ground? Not at all. But can we really do anything about it? No we can’t.

We can’t change the man’s behavior, and if that’s what comes natural to him, then so be it. I’m sure there’s other players on the tour who do similar things, it’s just that we don’t know it because the cameras aren’t on them for 98% of the TV coverage, as is pretty much the case with Tiger.

So again, while it doesn’t look good, I can understand it. I’m not saying I support it, but I understand both sides of the equation.

The behavior may change and it may not. But there’s really nothing we can do about it either way.

How do you feel about this topic? Please feel free to leave comments and tell me your opinion!