The Rookies

Woods needs to clean up his act

Tiger, please, where are your manners?

Oh boy.

Tiger Woods has outgrown those Urkel glasses he had as a kid. Outgrown the crazy hair. Outgrown a body that was mostly neck.

When will he outgrow his temper?

Umm…probably never? Because, alongside said temper, he has become the greatest golfer of all time? Think if you were able to write an article once, just once, that wasn’t all irrelevance and subtle pining for bygone (read: nonexistent) times. Think of all the people that would like that. You’d probably want to keep doing that.

The man is 33 years old, married, the father of two. He is paid nearly $100 million a year to be the representative for some monstrously huge companies, from Nike to Accenture. He is the world’s most famous and beloved athlete.

And yet he spent most of his two days at Turnberry last week doing the Turn and Bury. He’d hit a bad shot, turn and bury his club into the ground in a fit. It was two days of Tiger Tantrums — slamming his club, throwing his club and cursing his club. In front of a worldwide audience.

A worldwide audience that, as you just mentioned, LOVE HIM. His face is worth more than the cars, houses, and children of everyone who will ever read this combined. He is as close to a god as someone who swings a metal stick at a tiny ball will ever be. So why would he do anything to change anything about who he is?

A whole lot of that worldwide audience is kids. They do what Tiger does. They swing like Tiger, read putts like Tiger and do the celebration biceps pump like Tiger. Do you think for two seconds they don’t think it’s cool to throw their clubs like Tiger, too?

I’m going to say something I’ve never said in my entire life. Alright, here it goes:

Kids are not stupid.

Whew! Wow, that…was written by me, aself-proclaimed child hater who glares with such rage when a child starts to cry at a public place! LOOK WHAT YOU’VE TURNED ME INTO, RICK REILLY.

When I hear people say stuff like this, that children will blindly emulate anything they see on TV, I think of Jerry Lee Lewis. Not because of the cousin-touchin’, no. I remember seeing a video on TV when I was younger of Lewis playing “Great Balls of Fire.” He was doing his normal routine: standing up, pounding the hell out of the keys, playing with his elbows – the whole shebang. I remember getting up, going to our family piano, and replicating the actions. I then remember my dad grabbing me by the shoulder and telling me to knock it off. “When you can play like Jerry Lee Lewis, you can play like Jerry Lee Lewis.”

What does this mean? Any kid that thinks it’s totes kewl to go out there and have a Tiger Tantrum after a bad shot will immediately be told to knock it off by whomever is teaching them to golf. If not a parent, then a coach. If not a coach, then some of the older folks who see them out on the course. I golfed in high school, and swearing meant you lost. Throwing anything meant you lost. You were done, that was that. The ENTIRE ENTERPRISE OF GOLF is built around punishing kids for swearing and throwing their clubs. The PGA logo might as well be Arnold Palmer in a nun outfit wagging his finger at you. This will not lead to a generation of tantrum emulators: it will lead to a generation of kids who throw one tantrum and then get whacked on the head by their khaki shorts -wearing fathers.

It’s disrespectful to the game, disrespectful to those he plays with and disrespectful to the great players who built the game before him. Ever remember Jack Nicklaus doing it? Arnold Palmer? When Tom Watson was getting guillotined in that playoff to Stewart Cink, did you see him so much as spit? Only one great player ever threw clubs as a pro — Bobby Jones — and he stopped in his 20s when he realized how spoiled he looked.

Tom Watson is almost 60 years old. The only time you see people near 60 curse and throw things is when they’re in the throes of a heart attack. The other people in that group probably weren’t raised by a father that served as a Green Beret in Vietnam, had experienced racisim in sports as a ball player when he was younger, and who put immense pressure on them to be great golfers from the time they were, like, three. All of those factors probably lead to a very different path than the other three. Not to mention that golfers today are genetic freaks who hit the weights and work on their swings 8 hours a day with maddeningly advanced equipment that allows them to drive the greens of certain Par 4s without much surprise. Not to mention that Tiger is so advanced that Augusta National, the hallowed ground of golf in this land, changed the layout of their golf course so it would be harder for him. Not to mention he has the eyes of every fan and player in the world on him on almost every swing. Boy, sure does sound stressful, eh? Even I wanna throw a five iron right now.

Oh yeah, and that line about Bobby Jones stopping his tantrums in his 20s -  You know what else he stopped in his 20s? PROFESSIONAL GOLF. He quit when he was 28. Here’s a quote about that from Bobby:

“It (championships) is something like a cage. First you are expected to get into it and then you are expected to stay there. But of course, nobody can stay there.”

Then we get this fun little anecdote:

I can still remember the 1997 Masters — arguably the most important golf tournament ever played. Woods, then 21, was playing the 15th hole on Sunday. He had just hit a fairway wood out of the rough and was watching it. A young boy came up from behind just to touch him — just to pat the back of this amazing new superhero. That’s when Tiger pulled the club way back over his head and slammed it down, nearly braining the kid he couldn’t see behind him. And this was with a huge lead.

I’m sorry…what the hell was that kid doing there? Why did his parents let him run up behind Tiger right after his swing? Why wasn’t there enough security to stop him? Most importantly: what does Tiger have to do with this? Should he just assume there’s a child behind him at all times? That would really get creepy after awhile. Probably make him shorten his follow-through.

Look, in every other case, I think Tiger Woods has been an A-plus role model… But this punk act on the golf course has got to stop. If it were my son, I’d tell him the same thing: “Either behave or get off the course.”

Come to think of it, if I were the president of Nike, I’d tell him the same thing.

WHY RICK REILLY ISN’T THE PRESIDENT OF NIKE: A ONE-ACT PLAY

(NIKE PRESIDENT’s plush office)

NIKE PRESIDENT: Tiger, you have to stop throwing stuff and swearing while you golf.

TIGER: I have made you millions of dollars. I have made golf relevant to people under the age of 35 more so than anyone in the last thirty years. Without me, you could argue there would be half as many people buying Nike golf products, if not less. I am also the greatest golfer of all time.

NIKE PRESIDENT: Oh yeah right my bad. (Hands TIGER giant bag with dollar sign on it)

TIGER: Thanks. Man, that Rick Reilly sure sucks, doesn’t he?

NIKE PRESIDENT: Totes.

FIN

Put it this way: Will Tiger let his own two kids carry on in public like that?

IF THEY WIN 14 MAJORS YES.

I know what you’re saying. We see more Tiger tantrums because TV shows every single shot he hits. And I’m telling you: You’re wrong. He is one of the few on Tour who do it. And I keep wondering when PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem is going to have the cojones to publicly upbraid him for it.

Golf is a gentlemen’s game. Stomping and swearing and carrying on like a Beverly Hills tennis brat might fly in the NBA or in baseball or in football, where less is expected, but golf demands manners. It’s your honor. Is my mark in your way? No, I had 6, not 5. Golfers call penalties on themselves. We are our own police. Tiger, police yourself.

Something about this subject really, really rubs me the wrong way. First of all, Tiger woods has changed golf. He just has. He had democratized it, taking it away from country club sensibilities and giving it to the masses. This means that we don’t have to worry about all the honky pleasantries that have made golf clubhouses seem like a combination of a board room and the soundbooth of CarTalk for so long. Has Tiger ever fudged his shot count? Has he ever left his mark in someone’s path? I sincerely doubt it. Reilly is suggesting that anger, passion, and cussing somehow make golf a worse place to be. To this, I say: who gives a shit? He is incredibly, unrelentingly, viscerally GOOD AT GOLF. So he makes you and your pink polo shirt a little uncomfortable. FUCKING WORK ON YOUR SHORT GAME AND DEAL WITH IT.

More importantly, Reilly is insinuating that the times haven’t changed, that the world does not evolve, and that everything should be the stagnant and silent tombs that they were when he was a wee little lad. In her excellent take down of Bob Costas’ response to Usain Bolt’s celebration after he won the 100 meter dash at last year’s Olympics, Salon tv writer Heather Havrilesky typed one of my favorite lines of all time, in anything, ever: “What in the world is Costas, space alien from Planet Honky, talking about?” Well, it feels like Reilly has beamed himself down, so clear a spot for his intergalactic Lincoln Towncar. He states that “less is expected” in football, baseball and the NBA (two out of three are dominated by black athletes, by the way), and then attempts to drop some knowledge on the way we do things around here. You’re trying to educate Tiger Woods on how to act at a golf course? How ridiculously persumptive can you be? How arrogant, how much of a simpleton are you to think that you have any right to decide how the greatest player who has ever lived should act? The fact that you, you constant professsor of the beauties of the game, are not constantly prone at the feet of this spectre of golf greatness shows that something you are doing is wrong. Something about you is wrong, Rick Reilly. You are off-kilter; you have a screw loose. You probably aren’t racist, but you are talking the talk.

Tiger does a boatload of work for kids. He raises millions for his Tiger Woods Learning Center, which has helped teach thousands. But teaching goes the wrong way, too. Tiger is teaching them that if he can be a hissy hothead on the course, they can, too.

He’s also teaching tons of inner city kids that if they want to golf, they can too. That it doesn’t matter if you weren’t raised as the son of rich parents three blocks from a country club. He is providing kids that never ever ever would have had a chance to learn golf that very chance. Here Rick doesn’t sound so much like he’s defending the game; it sounds like he’s trying to prevent the infiltration of things that are unseemly.

I remember Tiger’s dad, Earl, telling a story. One day, when Tiger was just a kid, he was throwing his clubs around in a fuming fit when his dad said something like “Tiger, golf is supposed to be fun.” And Tiger said, “Daddy, I want to win. That’s how I have fun.”

Well, it’s not fun to watch.

Oh for the love of…NO ONE CARES. No one cares if you, Rick Reilly, are enjoying yourself? You know how tournament ratings go up a ridiculous amount when he plays? That’s because people like seeing him play golf! You don’t, your ilk doesn’t? Then you, my friend(s) have a problem. You are obviously not inspired by greatness, by dominance, by fucking perfection. You want every tournament to be won by Rocco fucking Mediate. You cheer for Phil Mickelson, not because he’s the best, but because he smiles at you. That’s not commendable; that’s you having issues. Learn to deal with those on your own time, you crotchty milksop. We’ll keep watching Tiger tear up the course, cussing and throwing his way into the record books.