It's period the public evaluate tiger in the context of a nonher(prenominal) misbehaving athletic supporters
Tiger Woods says he's endorse, and the statistics certainly agree. He's winning again, sometimes charge dominating. He's happy on the course. He's happy off the course. His next tournament is the Masters, the major he always is most likely to win.
It would be wrong, how ever so, to say that he has come all the way back to where he once was, to the moment right before his image and his c arer fell off a cliff in late 2009. Tiger competency be No. 1 again on the golf course, but he'll never be No. 1 again in our hearts.
Not that he attendings, or that he even should bring off anymore. It appears that Tiger is finally, completely, being Tiger. He's no longer trying to be something he was not, the good family military man and wonderful guy with all the mainstream endorsements. All those companies without a train association to sports dumped him, and he's probably the cleanse for it. He clearly doesn't daughter the money, and he can be who he wants to be, date who he wants to date, and live precisely the way he wants to live.
This, to Tiger Woods, is the net win-win. He spends time with his two chelaren, he's seeing Olympic move gold meda count Lindsey Vonn and he's winning again on the golf course. I'm guessing he didn't spend one minute torment nearly the recent Forbes poll that rated him third on the list of the nation's most disliked athletes, right behind Lance Armstrong and Manti Te'o. He probably also doesn't care that Dallas research firm merchandise Arm announced that consumers ranked Tiger's truthfulness at 2,735th among about 3,000 celebrities, on a par with Mike Tyson.
Crash-landing into this landscape is a new ad from Nike, the one company that we can be sure will always stand by Tiger. Nike boldly reminded us of just how bullish it is on its client Monday wickedness after his ascension to the field No. 1 ranking by putting out an online ad featuring a brief of Tiger reading a putt, adorned with this quote from him: " winning takes care of everything."
Leave it to Nike and Tiger to drag us right back to the moment when he ran his SUV into that fire hydrant Thanksgiving pass of 2009 and triggered the massive public scandal that ended his marriage as well as the respect and adoration of galore(postnominal) sports fans, in particular women. Grandmothers who used to plan their Sundays around Tiger's tee time powerfulness not appreciate such a dismissive, devil-may-care ad alluding to the ruination of one's family life, but that's vintage Nike, and vintage Tiger too. They are going to do exactly what they want to do, and they really don't care what Grandma thinks anymore, if they ever really did.
Tiger also doesn't much care for being a role model to your kids anymore, if he ever really did. We know this because he continues to swear into open microphones on live television at golf tournaments. He knows exactly what he's doing, and he keeps on doing it. He's much happier that way.
If Tiger is finally being honest with us about who he really is, it's time we became more honest about him and evaluated him in the context of other recent well-known misbehaving sports figures. Rehabilitation by comparison might be a sad commentary on our sports world today, but it's also our reality.
Less than two years after Tiger's self-induced alight from grace came another sports scandal: the terrible case of child rapist Jerry Sandusky at Penn State. Several months later, Armstrong's lies started to unravel. Right after Armstrong's gloam came another awful saga: Oscar Pistorius' fatal shooting of Reeva Steenkamp.
Just like with Tiger, these stories transcended sports and travel right to the front page and the lead of the evening news. It seemed like it was one after another: Tiger, Penn State, Lance, Oscar. But these stories are not at all alike. In this company, Tiger's transgressions don't appear so bad, do they? What he did ruined his marriage and family life, and disappointed and surprised many of his fans and endorsers, but, in the end, that's really his problem, not ours.
We look at Tiger these days with knowing eyes. The unhealthy adulation many showered upon him as some kind of gift to the world, a theme his late father publicly launched in the 1990s, is long gone. We know better now. He's a terrific golfer, nothing more, nothing less.
Materials taken from USA Today
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