Tiger, The Fall

Yesterday's post ironically included a couple of Golf Mag. writers crediting our hero with newfound candor with respect to a post on his website.  The premise was pretty thin....  a sentence to the effect that he truly, madly, deeply wanted to play professional golf again....

A few hours later this new broke:

It's not—as the various credible news sites have it—a pretty timeline. Tiger Woods was arrested on a DUI charge in Jupiter, Fla., on Memorial Day at around 3 a.m., booked at a Palm Beach County jail at 7:18 a.m. and released under his own recognizance around 11 a.m. By high noon, his mug shot was all over the internet. 

Woods lives up the road from Jupiter on the secluded barrier beach of Hobe Sound, but his restaurant, the Woods Jupiter, is in Jupiter, a beachside almost suburban in the northern tip of Palm Beach County. He was pulled over, according to local news reports, near the intersection of Military Trail and Indian Creek Parkway, about three miles south of his restaurant and further from his home. It was not immediately known whether there were passengers in the car.

My first reaction was that he's so committed to a return to the Tour, that he was in the gym until zero dark thirty....  Oh, did you want to see that mug shot?

It's a time of day when few look their best, but this one will get old for him in a hurry....

Here is Mike Bamberger's take on the photo:

The mug shot, not surprisingly, shows Woods as you have never seen him before. It is disturbing. In it, the iconic golfer, 41, a single father of two children, wears a white T-shirt and he looks bloated, exhausted and unkempt. DUI in Florida is a state crime, according to a state government website, triggered by "impairment of normal faculties or unlawful blood alcohol or breath alcohol level of .08 or above." The broad terms cover both drunk driving and impairment by drug use. A first offense typically does not carry any prison time. Woods spent eight hours in custody on Monday. There is no known record of him ever being arrested before.

No, no arrests that we know of, but a strange history as relates to holiday weekends....  And while he's a single man and the young 'uns were presumably with their mother, what the heck was he doing on the road at 3:00 a.m.?  Chasing tail is the obvious response, but can one engage in such activity when one can't twist ones' body for months?  I know, that's above my pay grade as well....

Shack was first to the post with an open letter to Tiger at Golfweek:

All of those and many other stellar accomplishments are in danger of being forgotten. 

The latest chapter in your demise, complete with a mug shot that will follow you for life, threatens to overshadow the legacy you’ve built. 

Worse, the chance to grow old with dignity is now in play. 

Gone are the days you’ll be a blue-chip pitchman. Let that go. In November, 2009 you were arguably still the world’s most revered athlete and one of the most famous people on the planet. Everyone wanted their children to be like you. But those days of raking in millions off your smile, charm and playing prowess are over.

Perhaps a tad overwrought, but shall we let Geoff continue?

With a 3 a.m. DUI after last week proclaiming online how good you felt, the stakes are much greater. Your life, your children and your legacy are on the line. Will you finally reach out and let others in the close-knit world of golf help? 

The track record says no. You like to do things your way and now look where it’s gotten you. Your behavior of late has raised eyebrows and made heads shake. You no-showed to the Genesis Open even when you were in town and the tournament host, WD’ing from a press conference and a surprise meet-and-greet with kids. Just last week you missed Tiger Jam for the first time ever, even as you then wrote on your website that you finally had the surgery necessary to alleviate pain.

Geoff, you have to let go....  As a wise man once said, it is what it is.

Good buddy Notah Begay took time out from his coverage of the NCAA's to offer this:

Begay first touched on how he felt after learning what happened, saying "I'm saddened by the news; it's embarrassing for Tiger." Begay continued by noting his own DUI arrest 17 years ago, and how it changed his life. "It's hopefully something that he'll learn from, he'll grow from and take responsibility for and use it to make some changes."

This is important, as Notah dealt with his own DUI in a forthright way, much to his credit.  But while Notah makes the case that this should be embarrassing to him, that Tiger feels embarrassment is an assumption awaiting confirmation...

Jaime Diaz, who has written extensively on the fall of Tiger, has a longer piece that includes some interesting reflections from Earl.  But he notes that in this case the acorn fell far from the tree:

It would seem unlikely that Woods will publicly be forthcoming about his inner life, including this latest ordeal, even though some professionals in the mental-health field would advise him that it would be productive. If he follows precedent, after an initial statement he and his camp will never voluntarily mention the DUI, and hope that if and when Woods begins playing competitively again, public curiosity will have dissipated, and even transformed from condemnation to sympathy and forgiveness. Especially, as has been the pattern, if Woods gives indications that he can play well again. His historical greatness is such that the majority of those who love golf will continue to hope that he can again exhibit a genius the game has arguably never seen.

Why start now, Jaime?  Think how long it would take him to develop his candor feels....

It's kind of a downer of a conclusion:

Through all this, the words of longtime Woods’ friend, Michael Jordan, spoken to Wright Thompson in a 2016 story in ESPN the Magazine, take on extra significance. “The thing is about T-Dub, he cannot erase,” Jordan said. “That's what he really wants. He wants to erase the things that happened." 

All pretty dark stuff. But at the moment, there’s no other way to spin it. The Tiger Woods story, sad for awhile now, has grown sadder.

Obviously in the early hours of the story the operative assumption was that alcohol was involved.  Yanno, it was a DUI after all....  Later in the day, Tiger released this statement on his website:

So, it isn't what it is, it's something completely different..... I feel much better, how about you?

OK, a couple of interesting bit from Morning Read:

The Palm Beach Post, quoting a Jupiter police spokeswoman, said Woods was driving south on Military Trail (County Road 809) at 3 a.m. when he was stopped. His home on Jupiter Island is in the opposite direction, the newspaper reported. Jupiter police were expected to release more details today, including the arrest report.

So, either heading somewhere else or so impaired that he didn't know where he was heading...  I hate when that happens.  And this:

Celebrity website TMZ.com, citing unnamed law-enforcement sources, said Woods was driving a 2015 Mercedes-Benz “erratically, all over the road,” adding that he was “arrogant” during the stop and refused to take a Breathalyzer test. Under Florida’s “implied consent” law, that refusal would trigger an automatic license suspension.

So, by fully cooperated, he means that he gave them the old "Do you know who I am?"  More substantively, because he refused the breathalyzer, his assurance that alcohol was "not involved" is not verifiable.  Note that he doesn't explicitly deny drinking....

And, to circle back to the "candor" that other saw in his recent comments, he called himself "pain free,"  So why the sudden medication cocktail in the dead of night away from home, when he's pain free?

Oh, and back to Jaime for this reminder:

But common sense and past experience tells us such things—among celebrities and non-celebrities alike—don’t usually happen in a vacuum. Woods has unavoidably been subject to rumors, and some have involved speculation about excessive drinking or the use of painkillers. They gained traction after Woods’ car hit a fire hydrant in front of his Orlando home in late 2009. A former mistress said that Woods regularly took Ambien, while other sources said he had taken the drug on the night of the accident. 

In the scandal-infused aftermath, Woods entered a Mississippi rehabilitation center called Gentle Path, which specializes in treating sex addiction. But the center’s website says it also addresses “co-occurring disorders” including those involving alcohol.

Officer, I wasn't drunk, it's just a "co-occurring disorder".... 

There's lots of commentary, with folks understandably struggling to put the nes in perspective and overusing the word "sad".  Ryan Lavner first:

Sad because one of the most recognizable athletes on the planet has been reduced to this new low. 

Sad because the most dominant golfer ever has been betrayed by his body, and undone by his ego, and his competitive future is a mystery. 

Sad because he needs support, and guidance, and it’s unclear who will provide it. 

Sad because he has meant so much to so many, because he has touched so many lives, and his fall from grace has been staggering.

Actually, given the extent to which he has walled himself off, the surprising thing is that the needed support is readily available, with Notah Begay perfectly positioned to play the lead.  The issue is the unwillingness of Tiger to accept it.

But that last sentence deserves a second reading...  Go ahead, I'll wait while you do so.  Has he meant so much to so many and, if so, is that his doing or ours?  He's a professional athlete that has never been especially forthcoming, so why would we assume that we know him?   We might miss his particular skill set on the golf course, but his personal failings should be of no particular import to us....

And Jason Sobel:

Look at those sunken eyes in that mugshot and we no longer see the mercurial golfer who once seemed so invincible inside the ropes. There often was debate during his prime over whether Woods intimidated his opponents. He wasn't just better than them, the argument stated, he also was tougher. It's difficult to beat a guy who holds not just a physical and technical advantage over the field, but a mental one, as well. 

This, though, is Woods at his most vulnerable. It is an image he never wanted to portray to anyone, let alone the entire, gawking world. And it's a sad one, the very portrait of a man who has made mistakes.

I suspect we'll learn much in the nest few days about the incident, but I'll be surprised if Team Tiger shares much about the cause.  We still don't know for sure that he was at his restaurant, where he was headed or even if he was alone in his car.  One assumes that there are many unflattering details to be buried, and that Team Tiger will go to their playbook to do so....

If they can see their way to accepting this vulnerability and sharing Tiger's struggles, I'll be rooting for his recovery.  If it's the same-old same-old, then we'll just have fun with the tawdriness that's sure to ooze out.  That to me is what's profoundly sad....