Saturday, December 12, 2009

First (and last) thoughts on Tiger Woods

As some of you know, I play golf sometimes. I'm not very good but I enjoy it tremendously.

For the last ten years I have given nary a thought to Tiger. When he was on his game, he was unstoppable. He had this squeaky-clean image of an All-American white kid that just happened to be black and asian by birth, complete with suburban Connecticut accent. He's got a Stanford education. He's a billionaire. He married a supermodel. Basically he's been the paragon of success, and the hero of hypercompetitive malcontents everywhere.

To me, he's just been boring. Uninteresting. Boring because he didn't seem real. I don't mean that in a "I knew it all along--he was too good to be true!" sort of way. I mean that in that way that people that I find interesting are usually layered and flawed; Tiger seemed the opposite of that. In an odd way, this "scandal" actually makes me pay attention, because I am starting to find him somewhat interesting.

The people that I find hilarious in this situation that are cheering his downfall. Like, "Oooh! Tiger's gonna get his now! Did you see Gatorate pulled his product line? He's gonna lose all his sponsorships, the dirty cheater!" Ummm, no. Fucktards.

Let's do a little math here: Eldrick Tiger Woods is a fucking billionaire. Let's be very conservative and assume he's only 10% liquid. Now lets be even more conservative and assume that $100M is only earning him a 5% rate of return. Simple math tells you the man will continue to earn at least $5M a year for the rest of his life if he never swings a club or signs another endorsement deal ever again. And that's a very conservative estimate; in reality it's probably closer to $20M annually.



Tiger doesn't give a shit what you think, or what I think. Nor should he. He doesn't give a shit what Gatorade or Phil Knight or Tim Finchem thinks either. More than likely, the only people who's opinions matter to Tiger are those of his wife and kids, family (his mother and his three siblings) and his close friends.

Regardless of levels of success in any (and every) other aspect of life, from here on out people will be judging Tiger for this indiscretion. That's his business. Not yours and not mine. All the same, I can't but help and find the whole thing...interesting. Finally.

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