Tiger Woods even has to overcome petty envy in his return to relevance

At the 2008 U.S. Open golf championship one wondered even then if Tiger Woods was literally on his “last legs” as he somehow managed to limp through an 18-hole playoff to win what many assumed in hindsight would be his 14^th and final major championship. Just a year later his whole world would fall apart not just through continuing physical issues but personal ones as well. Money, fame and hanging with “friends” who assisted in fueling temptation with easy women and good times led to disastrous life choices that destroyed his marriage and justifiably incurred the censure of the world, and what followed was (outside of a brief “resurgence” in 2013) was almost of decade of false promises and lost hope. Tiger didn’t just damage his own reputation, but the vicarious connection many people had with his success in a white country club sport that people like him were not supposed to “excel” in. 

Before Tiger, the most successful minority PGA player was Mexican-American Lee Trevino, who won 29 PGA titles, including six majors, and was Jack Nicklaus’ principle challenger from the late 1960s into the early 70s; an injury incurred from a lightning strike probably prevented Trevino from being even more successful on the PGA tour. But Woods blew everyone away; he proved that even those who “didn’t belong” could not only be as good, but even better. His subsequent fall from grace while a bunch of pretenders have tried and failed to assume his mantle was both a supreme disappointment and a major letdown. 

I personally hoped (rather more than believed) that Tiger could somehow “shock” the doubters (for a time even himself among them) and win another major championship. He came close to winning the PGA Championship a couple of times, but winning the Masters again seemed too much to expect so soon on his latest “comeback” attempt. Given the shock and awe expressed by many upon his fifth Masters victory, I wasn’t the only one to feel this way. But that it did happen breathed new life into the dream. It wasn’t so much that Tiger had risen from the “dead” to reclaim lost glory, but that no matter how far you had been beaten down (albeit much of it by his own hand),  nobody could now pretend that he was no longer “relevant.” A “whole” Tiger, even at 43, could still best the latest brand of golf’s privileged. 

Of course Tiger still has his detractors, such as Greg Norman. There was an apparent falling out from Norman’s “mentorship” after the 1996 Masters, which saw one of the most epic collapses in sporting history. Norman had a six stroke lead heading into the final round over Nick Faldo, which in golf terms is like having a 30-point lead heading into the fourth quarter of a basketball game, especially when the golfer happens to be considered one of the “elite” players. As it turned out, Norman only had to shoot par to overcome Faldo’s 67, but he not only failed to do that, but shot six over par to lose by five strokes. As an amateur that year, Tiger failed to make the cut, but having cut ties with Norman’s self-styled “mentorship,” he would win the Masters the next year by a record 12 strokes. Norman has since allowed few opportunity to pass to take subtle and not so subtle jabs at Tiger, such as “he is too old to play,” “I don’t care what Tiger does” and resenting “Tiger talk.” Of course, Tiger himself continues to hold a grudge against Norman, who he believed was trying to take unwarranted credit for his success early in his career and was simply a bandwagon “friend.” 

But sometimes critiques of Tiger can dip into the appallingly petty, as if some people will not be satisfied unless he as a man pays for his mistakes forever. Take The New York Times having the effrontery of publishing a self-serving “feminist” take on his Masters’ win by Lindsay Crouse, who asks “Why don’t women get comebacks like Tiger Woods?” I’m already ill-disposed toward white feminists making veiled racist commentary, but Crouse doesn’t understand that Tiger as a minority success story transcends racial, social or gender lines; Michelle Wie, for example, was another who went on social media to express her intense satisfaction at his Masters triumph, and Serena Williams admitted she was shedding tears of joy upon beholding the event. But Crouse chooses to use Serena in making a highly debatable “analogy” about her “comeback” from pregnancy, calling it a “major” setback (only a feminist would call having a child such a thing). 

Crouse’s petty zingers included the following:

His win “showed America’s eagerness to embrace a man who persevered through years of setbacks, especially self-inflicted ones, regardless of whatever selective amnesia that requires.”

“Achievement in sports somehow makes us more willing to compartmentalize, to forgive transgressions, to make a complicated man more deserving of public redemption. And Woods, at age 43, needed a lot of redeeming.”

“This ability to charm so many different Americans has almost certainly aided his return to grace, while also alienating a large swath of society that sees him as inauthentic.” As does, presumably, envious racists and self-absorbed feminists.

“In men, excessive qualities can be forgiven, even admired — when it works out at least. His trajectory is a reminder of who pays forever for their mistakes and whose transgressions can be set aside.”

“No women have the leeway to behave like Woods and get away with it; a black woman certainly does not. Just imagine the reaction if Serena Williams was caught cheating on her husband, Alexis Ohanian, with numerous men.”

First off, Tiger didn’t “get away” with anything, in keeping with Crouse’ own selective amnesia. For at least a year he was the subject of ridicule and universal condemnation, and his personal failings and indiscretions contributed to a “lost” decade in which he paid dear, little more than a ghost hovering above the golf world, of no substance. Until a year ago he was virtually written-off as even a presence ever on the PGA tour. And frankly, if Serena was caught “cheating” with numerous men, in our society there is just as even a chance that people like Crouse will find some “rationalization” to explain her infidelity, like domestic abuse or otherwise her husband’s own marital misdemeanors. I mean, we live in a society where revisionism like that of one of Disney’s most reviled  villains, Maleficent, is not only turned into a righteous feminist avenger to “appeal” to the current “victim” mentality, but is allowed to live on for a sequel.

And if the most successful American female athletes like Serena Williams are “ignored” by a large swath of the American public, you can thank in part white women who refuse to see a black female athlete as a “role model” to emulate, but rather as an object of petty resentment. Serena has had her own Greg Normans too, like former players Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, who only in recent years have hypocritically jumped back on her “bandwagon.”