Weekend Wrap - Groundhog Day Edition

We've got the two obvious stories to blog today.  There's the upbeat testament to a man's ability to survive the unimaginable, even more remarkable when that man seems to be one of the best-liked guys out there.

Then there's a matter of more prurient interest, one that also includes a not insignificant measure of personal vindication.  Because, as regular readers know, I have never been a card-carrying member of Tiger's cult of personality.  In fact, even before this latest Eff-Up, I've had several people acknowledge my consistency.  Comments tended to be along the lines of, "You've been telling me for years that he's a Dick.  I didn't see it initially, but now I do."

To this observer, Tiger's absence from Rome and Bethpage should tell golf fans all they need to know.  To wit, he can't even be bothered showing up....

Tigergate, A Continuing Series - Have we seen this movie before?  You know Hollywood and their tentpoles, they'll keep rolling out the sequels....  Someone better at the digital stuff than I needs to do a mash-up of all four mug shots, no?

The hard part for a blogger is simple, what is there to add to this Greek tragedy?  The first thing to note is the media reaction seems, well, familiar.  Whether it's Harvey Weinstein, Me-Too or any of the mirror image awakenings, we find something notable in the reactions.  See if you can suss it out from this fine example of the genre from Mike Bamberger

Tiger Woods’s latest car accident leads back to same difficult conclusion

It has been an open secret in the tight circle around Tiger Woods for years: If you want to have a serious conversation with Woods — about his charity and architecture work; about the future of

the PGA Tour; about his 15 wins in Grand Slam events — you do it in the morning. Woods, famously, is a poor sleeper and an early riser. The broad picture you get, from people in position to know, is that if you’re in the circle, you can get him early. As his days wear on, Woods becomes less available and less predictable. This is not idle, mean-spirited speculation. More like observations borne in care, if not worry.

If this all sounds depressingly familiar, it’s because it is. In 2017, Woods was arrested by Jupiter Police department in South Florida at about 3 in the morning on a DUI charge. He was found asleep and incoherent on the side of four-lane road, about 10 miles south of the scene of his Friday crash. He spent that night in the Palm Beach County Jail. A breath test that night revealed that Woods had not been drinking but a blood test revealed he had five prescription drugs in his bloodstream.

In 2021, about 22 months after his stirring win in the 2019 Masters, early on a dry weekday morning in Southern California, Woods drove off a rural road, over a median, across two lanes and down a ravine. His vehicle was stopped by a tree, pirouetted and flipped. Woods’s injuries were extensive and his golfing life was permanently compromised. Asked once in a press conference to explain the incident, Woods said tersely, “It’s all in the police report.” But police reports revealed nothing about Woods’s state of mind in the single-vehicle crash. A report did indicate that, per the car’s black-box recording device, Woods had the gas pedal virtually floored through the incident, driving well over 80 miles an hour in a 45-mph zone. Los Angeles County police officials did not test Woods for drugs or alcohol and no arrest was made.

I've been known to refer to Mike Bamberger as the conscience of the game, but see how we like him right now.  Like with the scandals above, they all knew....  the only issue they're forced to deal with now if that the wider public has been let in on it.  So Mike, why exactly did you help cover this up?

Just to reinforce, the man is a sundowner before hitting age 50, but we're putting the future of the game in his hands?  And all of the so-called adults have been covering up his addiction?

Geoff isn't having any of it:

Tiger

Once again.

In the most pitiful form of deja vu all over again, Tiger Woods embarrassed himself, his family, his “team”, his enablers, his foundation, his pride, and the game he loves. For the fourth time.

It’d be swell if his latest car accident served as a wake-up call for Woods and his addiction issues. But we know better. The world of golf should slap him around if it would like to see him turn gray, bald, and generate a 125 ball speed in the Honorary Starters Ceremony.

But if you’ve been around golf long enough, you know this is the same sport that’ll tear a rotator cuff to pat itself on the back for its nobility. So golf will once again scold, scoff, lecture, shake heads, and then, because he’s a once-in-a-lifetime gravy train, write off the latest could-have-been-so-much-worse car accident where good lawyers will get him out of another DUI.

While Woods is entirely responsible for his latest embarrassment, the sport he’s given so much to is once again in a position to send him a signal. Unfortunately, profit and cult-of-personality worship have a funny way of benching principled stances in a sport that can’t wait to tell the world how it plays by the rules.

Unfortunately, I don't think his lawyers will have to do all that much of anything..... these crimes are all misdemeanors.  Shall we allow Geoff to rant on?  Yeah, again that was rhetorical:

While the latest crash has been blamed on enablers, the media, and everyone but Woods, golf has also never really put its foot down when it comes to his accidents. Sponsorships have continued. Partnerships with elite institutions were started after car incidents two, three, and four. Then again, this is the same sport that essentially doxxed a police officer because another No. 1 player was late for his pre-round physio session and acted like a jagoff when there were flashing lights everywhere. So are we really surprised that Tiger’s struggle with addiction has been allowed to fester?

For a change, it’d be really nice if those in power would step up in the name of helping the man face his issues. If nothing else, maybe they would do it in the name of other drivers on Beach Road?

Golf’s leadership does not even have to preach the way Masters Chairman Billy Payne once did. Or go out of its way to embarrass an obviously flawed man who has turned to painkillers after making a mess of his body in pursuit of excellence (and one last major). Nor is a punishment pile-on the right course for someone who hasn’t been the same since the loss of his dear mother, Tida.

So, Geoff asks a lot of golf's governing structures and people, as they're not therapists and/or health care professionals.  But we're told by Mike Bamberger that it's an open secret that Tiger can't function as the day goes on, so by all means let's give him the keys!  They've told us for the last few years that our game will be saved by a low-functioning addict.  

Now I think back to all of the unexplained stuff that's gone down.  The biggest one is, of course, Tiger refusing to captain last year's Ryder Cup team, explained away by his intensive involvement in negotiations with the Saudis.  We've been told those discussions were going nowhere because the Saudis had lost interest....  Maybe, but is it possible that the return phone calls from His Excellency came in after to Vicodin kicked in?  Similarly, did Tiger beg off because he couldn't stay awake for the afternoon fourballs?

How about Presidents Cup Saturday in Australia, when Tiger suddenly couldn't play.  Was it the back, or was he on a painkiller bender?  

Tiger should not be at The Masters next week. Nor should he be allowed to attend the opening of The Loop par-3 course at The Patch. The Lords of Augusta National meant well by bringing one of his foundation’s learning labs to the town, while adding a fun pitch-and-putt designed by Woods. But they should ask him to stay home. Because other than Payne’s lecture in 2010, they’ve accommodated Woods as a five-time winner. They have the power to stop him from being a five-time rollover specialist who has miraculously not killed anyone.

Woods has also been allowed to sully special moments of others, and that needs to stop. Gary Woodland just won a Tour event in one of the great comebacks in golf history. Rory McIlroy will be returning the Green Jacket to a very special Masters, where an incredible dinner is planned among golf greats. As nice as it would be to have all of the living career Grand Slam winners there to toast McIlroy, Woods would diminish the proceedings after his latest incident.

The PGA of America needs to move on to Plan B for its 2027 Ryder Cup captaincy. A decision was due from Woods soon for a gig he has shown an odd ambivalence toward.

The PGA Tour needs to drop Woods from the committee making major decisions about the future until he shows he’s understood how—can’t believe I’m typing this—it’s a privilege to get in a car and go to Medalist to hit balls without risking the lives of others.

In the spirit of vintage values and retro responsibility, it’d be nice to see the sport set aside phony optics plays, dreams of huge ratings, and profit concerns to send Tiger a message. One that will inspire him to ask for assistance from professionals who can help him find ways to manage whatever pains him.

Doug Ferguson adds some interesting timing issues to the mix:

Woods had said earlier in the week he was trying to get in shape for the Masters on April 9-12,

though that was looking unlikely. He turned 50 at the end of last year. “This body, it doesn’t recover like it did when it was 24, 25,” Woods said earlier this week.

He also was days away from a decision on whether to be the next U.S. Ryder Cup captain for the 2027 matches in Ireland. Two officials from the PGA of America did not immediately return phone calls from The Associated Press seeking comment.

And on April 5, he is scheduled to be in Augusta, Georgia, with Masters chairman Fred Ridley to celebrate a project at “The Patch,” the nickname of a municipal golf course where Woods’ design team created a short course to go along with a major upgrade to the public course.

Woods also is the central figure as chairman of the Future Competition Committee that is reshaping the PGA Tour model of tournaments. Tour CEO Brian Rolapp predicted meaningful progress this summer.

Geez.  How could they possibly trust him with the Ryder Cup captaincy at this point?

Am I the only one amused that the photo of Tiger above includes a...wait for it, fire hydrant?

This might be the funniest bit to be found, though maybe it's sadder than funny:

Perhaps the most high-profile example is that of Barstool Sports personality Sam Bozoian, widely known as simply “Riggs” in the golf community. Just over an hour after Marin County Sheriff John Budensiek announced Woods’ charges at a press conference on Friday evening, Riggs, who, along with his cadre of Fore Play buddies, has grown close to Woods in recent years, posted a video admitting he had informed Barstool’s digital team not to post about the DUI charge and then absolved Woods of any wrongdoing.

“You think I told our team to not post about Tiger Woods’ DUI to protect him? You’re goddamn right I did,” a smirking Riggs said. “You want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. We’ll protect Tiger Woods until we f*cking die.”

The video seemingly came in response to an earlier social media post from Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, who posted a text message from an anonymous employee that read, “Riggs told me not to post Tiger DUI fyi if anyone wondering why we haven’t yet.”

When they tell you their job is to protect Tiger, I'd recommend that you believe them.  The real question is why, knowing that, you'd ever read them.

The Tour Confidential panel has long been notoriously sycophantic about Tiger, so this was always going to be a tough morning for them.  They don't exactly duck it, but their flailing also doesn't get much traction:

Tour Confidential: Tiger Woods’ arrest raises thorny questions about past, future

Tiger Woods was arrested on suspicion of DUI on Friday after he was involved in a two-car accident near his Jupiter Island, Fla., home. Police said Woods’ vehicle clipped the back of a trailer, which caused his SUV to flip on its side; neither Woods nor the driver of the truck pulling the trailer were injured. Woods blew 0.0 on a breathalyzer test, but investigators on the scene said Woods showed signs of impairment. He was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor DUI with property damage and refusal to submit to a lawful (urine) test. So many questions, but let’s start with your first impressions. What was your immediate reaction when the news broke?

Alan Bastable: I wish I could say shock but that would be disingenuous. I think I quickly shifted from a feeling of “not again” to “how did this happen again?” Why is Woods yet again behind the

wheel in an allegedly impaired state, endangering both his own life and the lives of others? How frequently has he been doing this? Who, if anyone, is enabling him to do so? If he’s sick and needs help, has he received that help? Received it and worked at it? Received it and shirked it? If he’s sick and needs help, how has he been managing his many duties, in particular his stewardship of the PGA Tour? How much has his poor decision-making been driven by his litany of injuries and surgeries, of his inability to be the player he once was, of the pressure, generally, of being Tiger Woods? There are so many unanswered questions, many of which we may never get answered. From the outside looking in, this latest chapter stirs up all kinds of emotions — sadness, sympathy, anger, disappointment, bafflement, curiosity, disinterest. The public is entitled to feel all of these emotions. Or none of them.

Sean Zak: My gut was to believe (out of optimism) that this was just a bad-luck incident. But as the details came in, it was a reminder of what we’ve been through before. With such a private person, it will be impossible to know. But when these incidents happen, it gets a lot easier to connect the dots about what we’ve seen from Woods in less-severe moments in the past. His TV broadcast appearances, which haven’t always felt lucid. His Ryder Cup press conference in 2018, at which he basically fell asleep. It’s easy to forget these things when nothing bad happens. It’s really easy to remember them when bad things happen.

Josh Sens. A mix of emotions. Part sympathy for a guy who has never struck me as especially happy; part relief that no one was injured; and part anger at the combination of arrogance/selfishness it takes to get behind the wheel when — as it appears based on the initial reports — you simply don’t belong there.

Yes, please give us your first reaction to his fourth such incident.  Just spitballin' here, but maybe if you guys had reacted to the first three incidents...

I don't much remember that 2018 presser, though the whole week was very weird.  Here's an AI take on it:

Yes, at the end of the post-match news conference following the U.S. team's loss at the 2018 Ryder Cup, Tiger Woods appeared to be falling asleep or was extremely exhausted.

• GOLF.com +1Circumstances: After losing his match to Jon Rahm on Sunday, Woods appeared at the team press conference looking visibly tired and dejected.
• Cause: Woods attributed his exhaustion to an intense schedule, having played seven out of nine weeks leading up to the tournament, which included the Open Championship, WGC, playoffs, and the Ryder Cup.
• Performance: The fatigue contributed to a poor tournament performance where Woods went 0-4 and later cited extreme exhaustion from the long season.

While some reports described it as "sleeping" during the presser, it was widely acknowledged to be extreme fatigue following his comeback year.

Back to the TC gang: 

Woods has an alarming track record of car incidents and accidents. In 2017, he was arrested by Jupiter police on a DUI charge after he was found asleep and incoherent in his vehicle on the side of the road; a blood test revealed he had five prescription drugs in his system. Four years later, in Southern California, Woods was badly injured when, driving well over 80 mph in a 45-mph zone, he swerved off a road and struck a tree; L.A. police did not test Woods for drugs or alcohol and no arrest was made. Does this latest accident change how you look at the framing of what happened in 2021 and ’17?

Bastable: Of course. How can’t it? It’s hard to look back at that L.A. accident and not be mystified by why police declined to blood-test Woods for drugs or alcohol — for many reasons but especially given the high speed at which Woods was traveling and the fact that, according to police, he didn’t apply the brakes before impact. We’ll probably never know the full picture of Woods’ mental or physical state on that morning but, yes, this latest episode absolutely raises more questions about what went down.

Zak: Similar to my answer above — it becomes really easy to connect the dots of these instances. It feels responsible to do so. I imagine a judge will feel similarly.

Sens: I’m not sure it changed how I look at those past incidents, particularly the L.A. crash. It seemed pretty clear that Woods got preferential treatment in that case.

And he'll get preferential treatment in this one as well.... I do think the LA cops treatment was egregiously lax, and at least in the prior Florida incident we got some details.

As of this writing, neither Woods nor his representation have issued any public comments about the accident. How much, if any, transparency does Woods owe the public in terms of exactly what happened Friday?

Bastable: This is Tiger Woods we’re talking about; transparency isn’t among his strong suits, and I don’t expect that to change in the wake of this latest arrest. Also, presumably he and his team are walking a legal tight rope in terms of what Woods can/can’t say or should/shouldn’t say. You’d like to hear ownership for putting lives at risk. You’d like to hear an explanation for how he wound up behind the wheel in his alleged impaired state. And you’d like to hear contrition. We shall see.

Zak: Yeah, I don’t expect any transparency that Woods isn’t forced into offering in court. But it comes at an interesting moment: with a Ryder Cup captaincy in the balance, the PGA Tour’s future partly in Woods’ hands, and a tournament in Georgia he so badly wants to play just a couple of weeks away.

Sens: The idea that Woods “owes” the public anything doesn’t sit well with me. It seems part of the same dysfunctional relationship we have with celebrities that does no one much good. What he owes is an honest account in court.

I don't know what point Josh Sens is trying to make, but the judicial system isn't designed to help golf writers deal with their hero worship.  Yes, I think the LA officials cut him way too much slack, as our society seems determined to not use shame for positive reinforcement.

But the bigger issue we'll find is with the leaders and other participants in our little golf fishbowl.  Think back to everything you've heard about Tiger's role in the game since Jay Monahan put him up to be our savior, all the while they all knew he was a drug addict....  which is a fine segue into their last bit:

Woods’ last official PGA Tour start came at the 2024 Open Championship but he still wears many important hats on Tour. He is a player director on the Tour’s Policy Board; chairman of the Future Competitions Committee; and vice chairman of PGA Tour Enterprises. What does or should this latest arrest mean, if anything, for his involvement in Tour leadership?

Bastable: Tiger Woods is still Tiger Woods, and the PGA Tour is still the PGA Tour; it’s hard to imagine the Tour taking any disciplinary action. Big picture, all of the posts Woods holds now seem so inconsequential, as does any prospect of Woods playing competitively again anytime soon. Stating the obvious but his sole mission in the coming weeks, months and years should be getting better, in whatever ways that is necessary.

Zak: I’m not sure it’s going to mean anything for his place in Tour leadership. He’s too deep in it, and the Tour is too far down the road on establishing its future that it would feel drastic for him to be any less involved. It’s one of the few things Woods feels so strongly about — that involvement.

Sens: I don’t see the arrest in itself as relevant to his role in Tour leadership. The real question is whether Woods has deeper problems that might prevent him from fulfilling his role to the best of his abilities, and — more important — whether he might be better off focusing on his personal health and well-being rather than spending time on the Policy Board.

 Wow, did I tell you guys are dead-enders, or what?

I think that Alan Bastable answer might need to be kept near at hand, because it's pitch perfect.  Tiger Woods is still Tiger Woods, though I'm hard-pressed to understand why Bastable thinks that's more of a feature than a bug.  He's a national disgrace, putting the public at risk of his God complex, but the PGA Tour has no path forward without him, Alan?  Hard to see how we got here, huh?

Tiger has turned himself into a national fisgrace, and we all helped him by normalizing his dickishness.  He's not just an addict, but he's an addict with a God complex that thinks the rules of society don't apply to him.  The first question Rolapp and everyone else needs to answer is, why would we expect that this won't keep happening?

What needs to happen is that Tiger needs to resign from everything and take himself out of the Ryder Cup captaincy discussion.  I have no problem with Rolapp allowing it to be Tiger's decision, he obviously needs to focus on his own issues and I'm not opposed to that indulgence.  But Tiger needs to be out of any leadership roles in the Tour sooner rather than later because, had Tiger injured or killed a civilian, the Tour would find itself with a lot of explaining to do.

I have one more item for you, then I'm going to get on with my day.  See if you spot anything interesting here:

Why Tiger Woods Has Never Been in Greater Legal Jeopardy

The scales tip toward punishment over treatment for repeat DUI offenders

By Jeffrey Toobin

Wow, given Tiger's sexual history, am I the only one rolling on the floor at that byline? Just Google his name with the word "Zoom", and your memory will quickly be refreshed. Which you'll likely not thank me for, but some of you might be amused.

Toobin is a bit of a blowhard, although I probably should pass on the use of the word "hard" in his presence. But see if he isn't setting a bit of a low bar for a fellow miscreant:

At the same time, the law—and the judges who determine the consequences of violations—have come to recognize that driving while impaired is often different from other crimes, like, say, bank robbery. Alcoholism and drug addiction are, or can be, forms of disease, not fully under the control of those who suffer from them. Treatments, not just punishment, are often seen as the appropriate remedy.

It’s tempting to see Woods in this light. For all the blessings in his life, he has also been burdened with an almost unimaginable series of orthopedic horrors, all of which have caused him great pain. He didn’t choose to live that way, and like anyone whose body has suffered so many insults, he’s turned to medication to get through his days.

Great moments in the use of the passive voice.....  Can you see how Toobin characterizes all those "orthopedic horrors" as just thngs that happened to Tiger.  Tiger is simultaneously God but also has zero agency over his life... Gee, Jeffrey, most of his pain right now seems to come from that accident in LA.  Was that just something that he couldn't control, or did he maybe eff up?

I will regrettably leave you here, the regret being my failure to note Gary Woodland's win yesterday in Houston.  I did mean to get to it, though it's admittedly less a golf story than one of human endurance and grit.  Woodland seems to be one of the most-liked players out there, so it's easy to take pleasure in his well-earned success.  

Have a great week and I'll get back to the keyboard as I can.  Although the calendar will have its challenges there for me.