NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — There’s something about seeingridiculously famous people up close that is both exciting and sad. It’s like
some sort of badge of honor only good for currency at cocktail parties or trips
to the local bar that always comes off as remarkably lame.
Oh yes, I saw Tiger Woods the other day. We had a moment. He told me…
Blah, blah, blah.
Yes, Tiger posed for that picture and signed that autograph because he had to. It’s one of the hardships of the job that’s just like taking out the trash for regular folks. In other words, Tiger Woods didn’t show up at Aronimink Golf Club on Monday afternoon because he wanted to. He did it because he had to. He wants to pile money into his charities and make sure people pay money to come out to watch a bunch of dudes slap golf balls around pristine fields of grass.
He was taking out the trash.
It’s interesting to hear what “celebrities” truly think about interacting with the non-celebrity people in their lives. For instance, it’s pretty common to hear players on the Phillies whine and complain about doing those photo day interactions with the fans and compare notes on making it go as quickly and as harmlessly as possible.
You know, because interacting with people who like you is the worst way to spend a few moments.
Certainly that’s the cynical way to look at it. Then again, guys like Tiger Woods have created many-layered organizations in order to make the “have-to” things as harmless as possible. There are PR people that act as buffers in case fans and the media get a little too close to the celebrities, because if they aren’t as orchestrated and as vanilla as possible, it might cost someone a dime.
That’s the thought I had when Tiger Woods was answering questions about his neck injury and golf game while dressed in the uniform provided to him by his corporate overlords at Nike and TAG Heuer[1]. Of course he was sitting in front of a banner with the AT&T logo, which is one of the companies that invoked a morals clause and dropped him because of the revelations regarding his activities away from the course and home.
Awww-kward!
It seemed as if Tiger didn’t want to say anything when he turned up at Aronimink on Monday. However, because he hasn’t been playing golf well lately, Tiger spent most of the 27 minutes he talked to the media (inside the velvet ropes in the ballroom of the clubhouse) explaining why.
He’s hurt of course… and no it has nothing to do with that accident that happened last November.
That’s what he says, anyway. Besides, it’s a convenient enough excuse until consideration is given to a couple of facts. One is that Tiger is always injured in some way or shape. He famously won the U.S. Open with a broken leg and seems to always be coming back from something. Maybe it’s the way his people try to paint him as some sort of an underdog, and because there is always a need for a compelling story, the TV broadcasts and some of the media buy it. After all, what good is sports if there is no drama? We can’t simply have a guy dominate like Usain Bolt or Secretariat. What fun is that?
So now Tiger is injured again, and very much like his broken swing that needed overhauled and coaching gurus, this is something else to feed the narrative. See, why would a competitor as fierce as Tiger walk off the course at The Players Championship if he wasn’t hurt?
Only this time the injury talk is taken with a grain of salt. Say what you will about them, but the media has a thing about placating people viewed by conventional wisdom as liars or cheats. Moreover, if a guy sets up layers and layers of buffers to keep away the fans and the press only to offer up vanilla, then he has no one else to blame if people come asking for something with a little more flavor.
Yeah, Tiger is probably hurt. Why would someone say that if it wasn’t true. But then again the sad part about seeing someone as famous as Tiger in the flesh isn’t so much the people jockeying to get close to him (that’s sad, too), it’s watching him try to put the curtains back to where they were.
No, apparently there is no less cynical way to see it
[1] The one organization providing him with jewelry since he did not appear to be wearing a wedding band. Does Nike make those yet?