Home Game

Where do I begin? How about with this!

Tiger Woods is douche. Singularly the worst person on the planet. I mean he really gives sociopaths a bad name. Mr. All-About-Change was more of an ass#@!& then ever this past week. It started with a 30 second ad for sneakers and went downhill from there.

The Nike Ad was pretty basic. Super tight, one shot with a High-def lens, striped of color and slowed to like 20 frames per second for dramatic effect. Oh and voice over work featuring Earl Woods telling Tiger to "Use the Force." If Tiger was any kind of a real person he would have punched the smarmy Nike exec that suggested USING his dead father to garner sympathy. I'm not kidding either. He should have literally leaped across the table and decked the person that brought it up. It's creepy, amoral and reprehensible. 

We'll never know his reaction to the initial pitch but we will always remember the ad as the perfect example of Tiger's willingness to USE anyone and anything for his own benefit. Nobody has said it yet, but didn't the national media and Red Sox fans kill Ted Williams' son for basically doing the same thing? The only difference is that Ted Williams' kid still hasn't made a nickel from sticking the Splendid Splinter's head in a freezer on a tuna fish can, while Tiger had to be paid scale for his work in the Nike ad. Don't ya think?

I'm not going to get on Tiger for his swearing on the course or the new sunglasses look. Nothing makes you more accessible than wearing sunglasses. But how about his press conferences and interviews. Wow, no wonder he picked The Masters for his first tournament of the year. Oh, and by the way, stop calling it a "comeback," it's not a comeback. A comeback implies that he was away from the game for reasons that were out of his control. He's just starting his season late because he felt bad that he got caught boinking a bunch of Porn Stars and Hookers. 

Which reminds me of another annoyance this weekend. If you didn't know anything about the Tiger Scandal and watched every single second of Tiger at the Masters you would've thought that he was making a comeback from his own cancer struggle, a gunshot wound,or  maybe a really bad case of the flu, but you would be completely unaware of what Tiger has actually been through. And for the record I would say that that list includes: excessive drug use, domestic violence, his personal knee specialist, Dr. Anthony Galea being under investigation for HGH, the loss of major sponsorships and...wait a minute, I know that there's something else...don't tell me...oh yeah, his requesting for inappropriate use of urine. [editor's note- if you are discussing the idea of purposely peeing on people (alliteration!) than you are a very angry person that hates women. Period, end of discussion. Lock 'em up!]

Not one question about any of those topics. Not one. CBS, ESPN and The Masters itself should be ashamed. Well maybe not CBS, mostly because they have none. Let's face it CBS has proven repeatedly that they are The Masters lap dog.But I had hoped ESPN would be up for the challenge. That organization considers itself the foremost authority on all things sports. 

I was encouraged when they picked Tom Rinaldi to follow Woods for the week. He did a nice job during that weird five minute exclusive a couple weeks back. He asked tough questions and put Tiger on the spot several times. We didn't get a lot out of it but at least he was trying. Instead Rinaldi went full schmaltz and gave us piece after piece about Tiger's march toward a fifth "Green Jacket."  With Pirate music accompaniment, you know because Tiger's such a swashbuckler. Playing in a Major Championship without the benefit of a tune up tournament. Five months without playing competitive golf. It's Ben Hoganesque.  What? No. Ben Hogan was in a car accident and many of the doctors thought that he wouldn't WALK again. Tiger was being treated for having the urge to pee on prostitutes. It's a little different.

During the press conference after the first round, someone asked if his first competitive round after the "long layoff" was special. Not only did he refused to acknowledge that his best opening round at Augusta ever, coupled with the warm reception of the fans made him feel good, but he also glowered at the reporter suggesting that he has the ability to FEEL... anything. I wonder if he's a cutter? 

Look I understand that guys like Tiger are successful because they have the ability to hyper focus on the task at hand, but why not acknowledge that posting a good score in the first round, and the fan support during it, meant more than a typical first round at The Masters? Allowing for emotions, that don't involve fist pumps, doesn't make you a weak person Eldrich...it makes you human.

The interview that took the cake was the one with Peter Kostis after the final round. Pathetic. First of all Kostis seems to be using one of Bill Shatner's used rugs, I mean why don't these guys call Sean Connery's wig fitter? And secondly I was less comfortable watching him ask Tiger questions than I was watching Kathy Ireland at the Oscars. 

The second comment Kostis made during the interview was really more of a gosh-Tiger-you're-so-great-I-can't-image-that-you-could-ever-lose kind or comment. He suggested that Tiger was playing without the same emotion and that that might have been why he lost. He was basically sucking up to the Cheetah, and yet Eldrich responded by saying that people were making too big a deal out of his lack of enthusiasm. 

Pretty benign right? Except that he had just finished his round. Why would Tiger even be aware of what the announcers were saying while he was playing? I mean he literally had JUST gotten of the course. Talk about rabbit ears, he had to have been following the telecast during the round. Um, really? That's just pathetic. Do you think Tom Brady checks in between drives to hear what Vern Lundquist is saying about him? How 'bout LeBron James? Does his nose get bent out of joint during a timeout because Jeff Van Gundy suggested he wasn't playing good defense? 

He had an opportunity to show the world a new side of Eldrich Woods during that brief interview and instead we got the same old Tiger. Angry, bitter, confrontational. Someone that thinks grace is the featured performer in the Champagne Room at the Rick's Cabaret.

Well, whatever. Nobody seems to care about this whole Tiger thing anyway, at least not in Augusta...or in Bristol, CT for that matter. Eventually it will come out that he has a prescription drug problem, that he was jacked up with HGH for the better part of a decade and that Elin is just waiting for the 5 o'clock whistle. Other than the win, Tiger got exactly what he wanted out of last weekend... a home game.