I'm Rooting for the Other Guy

As a sports fan I've always rooted for the underdogs, the teams and players no one expects to win. I love comeback stories and redemption stories, guys who overcome injury or failure to succeed. I choose a lot of my favorites based on likability. Of course we can never really know athletes, just the glimpses of their public persona, the carefully guarded interviews and appearances, the hints we get from the way they comport themselves after the wins and losses.

I've never liked Tiger Woods. Long before his indiscretions, I liked Phil Mickelson or Ernie Els. I hated the way announcers and interviewers fawned on Woods and excused or overlooked his bad on-course behavior. I conceded he was good, even great, but I always rooted against him, rooted for the crucial putt to lip out. I thought he was phony and scripted.

I even hated the way everyone called him "Tiger," as if they were chummy with him. Nicklaus was Nicklaus, Hogan was Hogan, but every breathless commentator would say, "Here's Tiger on the 16th tee." It was though he had home court advantage everywhere in the world. Even Muhammad Ali, maybe the greatest and most world-impacting athlete ever, was "Ali." But Tiger got first name status, like Elvis and Madonna. It rankled me, the favoritism and the small hyprocrisy of it. I used to work in a golf shop, and people who wouldn't have given a black person a bite of a sandwich would stroll into the shop with ridiculous grins on their faces and say, "Did you see what Tiger did today?" as if they were bosom buddies or brothers from another mother.

Our love of sports and sports figures is inherently ridiculous, and the cult of Tiger worship, particularly after his embarrassing and self-imposed downfall, was exposed as a sham and a monstrosity. And now talk of his comeback has dominated the sports shows and even mainstream media for a month. Will Tiger be ready? How will he cope with the attention and pressure? How will he perform after his layoff?

I'm cynical too about his rehabilitation. He's reforming his behavior chiefly because he got caught and exposed in a particularly embarrassing way. And now he is making a great show of saying the right things and expressing remorse. Missing from his declarations is any sort of apology to the series of women he used and discarded over the last several years, apparently without so much as buying them dinner or an occasional gift. The various inside editions and tell-all updates exposed him as cheap, ungenerous and socially retarded, kinky and twisted, insatiable and impressively endowed. The focused, fierce, disciplined competitive drive he displayed on course gave way to another person, someone that lacked morality, self control or human decency. I don't think he would have changed at all had he not crashed his car and wound up in the tabloids.

All that is parenthetical however, to the simple fact I never liked Tiger Woods as a athlete, the fact that he got the lion's share of attention even when someone else won. A great store is made over his race to overtake Jack Nicklaus' career majors record, but the Golden Bear set his mark in a golden age of golf. He had to earn his victories against Hogan and Palmer and Player and Trevino and Watson and Norman and Faldo. He beat Hall of Famers to earn his victories, finishing second nineteen times and in the top five 56 times. The competition was stronger and the equipment was far less advanced, persimmon drivers and aluminum shafts. Golf was a different and more difficult game. Stuff like this gets overlooked.

At the Masters this week there are plenty of storylines and inspirational beginnings. Tom Watson shot a 67, five under par at age 60. Fifty-year-old Fred Couples leads the tournament at minus six. Ricky Barnes, who finished second at last year's U.S. Open, is just off the lead at minus four. Barnes was a highly touted amateur player who has struggled as a pro, and a win at Augusta could turn his career around. Phil Mickelson made five under as well, and he is playing for his wife and mother, both of whom are recovering from breast cancer.

Inside the ropes there are plenty of athletes who have competed nobly and avoided indiscretion. A cascade of praise is heaped on Tiger Woods for doing what he should have done all along. The only thing he's coming back from is his own mess, and I'll be tickled to death if he falls short and fails.