Friday F-Ups

OK, not the most promising start to a day's blogging, discovering that yesterday's post was never published...

So, go read it now and I'll be here when you get back.

The Tiger in Winter - A week to ten days ago we had reports of Tiger stepping up his golf , actual playing holes....(yawn).  The we had this report of the man at a Nike-sponsored junior clinic, including video.

But most of the world's attention is on this long ESPN article provocatively titled The Secret History of Tiger Woods.  I think the fact-checkers would give it One-and-a-half Pinocchios, as there's no doubt new stories though nothing in essence that's new in the piece.

Spoiler Alert: Tiger had Daddy issues, though who among us doesn't?  This bit rings true, and fills in some helpful background on one of his positive relationships:

Sitting at a steakhouse in the Bahamas one night, Begay is quiet for a moment. He's here

for the Golf Channel, forced years ago by his own bad back to make the same admissions that Tiger is making now: The dreams he dreamed as a boy are ending. They met as children -- Tiger was 9 and Notah was 12 -- playing youth golf in California. They saw each other, perhaps the only nonwhite, nonwealthy people around, and Notah walked up to Tiger and told him, "You'll never be alone again." They've been friends ever since, passing together through each stage of life. A few weeks ago, he and Tiger were hanging out at the house in Jupiter when Woods realized they needed to make a carpool run and get his kids at school. They drove over and parked in line with the other parents, about 30 minutes early, and to kill the time, they laughed and talked about Stanford. "Tiger and I do a lot of looking back," Begay says. "He loves to talk about college." 

Tiger told stories about how his daughter likes soccer and is already a prankster, and Begay said how his girl loves gymnastics and drawing, and then they both looked at each other and just started laughing: Can you believe we are sitting in a carpool line? Tiger is facing the reckoning that all young and powerful men face, the end of that youth and power, and a future spent figuring out how those things might be mourned and possibly replaced. This final comeback, if he ever gets healthy, will be his last.

This rift was news to me:

As Tiger got famous, Earl traveled the world with him. The definitive book about Tiger and Earl, Tom Callahan's His Father's Son, details the women in Earl's orbit. There was a "cook" at the 2001 Open Championship, and when Callahan said she must be a good cook, Earl grinned and said, "She sure knows how to keep that potato chip bowl filled up." At another event in South Africa, a stream of escorts made their way to Earl's room. Callahan reports that near the end of Earl's life, Tiger and Earl stopped talking for a while. "Tiger's mad at me," he told the author, and implied that he'd gotten into some sort of woman trouble that his son paid to make go away. Ultimately, Callahan wrote, Tida is the one who persuaded Tiger to make peace, telling her son that he'd regret it if Earl died before he made things right. 

"He's going to be gone and you're going to be sorry," she told him.

The piece tops out at 11,000 words and there are some strange detours, including a strained attempted to attach significance to this book that happened to be in the Escalade:

The title is Get a Grip on Physics, and I'll conceed that someone needs to get a grip.  And who says journalists don't do any shoeleather reporting these days:

The forces kept working until finally his wife found text messages from Rachel Uchitel on his phone and he ran his Cadillac Escalade into a fire hydrant (that car, incidentally, is owned by a man in rural Arkansas, who bought it used from a local dealer, neither of whom knew its own secret history).

Well, they do now... But while there's lots of damning bits, it's hard to discern a larger purpose to the piece.  There's way more detail on the Navy Seal bit as a for instance, but we all knew that Tiger had a cheap side....

Shack focuses on the Michael Jordan connection, and His Airness' moniker of "rabbit Ear" for Tiger is notable.  You also can exercise the option to read Cam Morfitt Eleven Things We Learned summary and save yourself some time, though this should be stricken from the list:

2. While many celebrities customize the tail numbers of their private planes, Woods had his blocked to thwart tracking websites.

Ummm....he named his yacht Privacy, I think we might have guessed this... 

Another Fine Prediction - This one is notable more for the timing of is denouement than the wrongness of my forecast, at least that's my story...  Remember that post from yesterday that I made you read today when I finally hit the publish icon?

Well, in the immortal words of Emily Litella, never mind:

Louis Oosthuizen of South Africa won't be taking part in golf's return to the Olympics this year, the third major champion to withdraw in the last week as the deadline nears to confirm participation. 

Oosthuizen, who won the 2010 British Open at St. Andrews is No. 12 in the world, said Thursday he was pulling out because of family and scheduling issues.

One example is an anecdote, two a trend.... I still don't see an avalanche of non-attendance, but one can readily see the risk if others follow suit.  No one wants to be the last man to die in a losing cause....

A Fine Bromance - We humans are a curious species, prone to emotional expressions at the most curious times.  But them times don't get much curiouser than here, in which Brandell Chamblee gets weepy over his disagreement with Frank Nobilo over Tiger's drop at the 2013 Masters:

"At noon, (Nobilo) came in and sat down and he brought a perspective that I had not thought of. I remember, he was on the air and he was speaking. And it was ... it was just beautiful. I just thought 'that's a great mind.' And to see someone with that passion ... you know, I remember thinking 'He's doing his job.' ... When I see someone, in anything, that is passionate about what they're doing, it moves me. And he is and that's why I love working with him."

He's doing his job?  Can you give me a sec here, I'm getting a little weepy...

That will have to be sufficient to get you through the weekend.