This meeting of the He-Man Tiger Woods Haters Club is now in session.
I hate Tiger Woods. I always have. I used to work in the golf business and it would nauseate me how 25-handicappers would come into the shop with idiot grins on their faces saying, "Didjya see what Tiger did today?" as if he were their long lost son. People bought into the marketing hype, thought they had this personal connection to this arrogant and spoiled golf savant who didn't care two cents about anyone or anything other than his pursuit of Jack Nicklaus, a much better person and a much better golfer. (Yeah that's what I said. Jack played with dignity and grace. And he set his records with 3-piece wound balls and a persimmon driver and forged irons with a sweet spot the size of a shirt button, against Hogan and Watson and Player and Palmer.) I hated the way the media fawned over Woods and gave him a pass on all his bad on-course behavior. In golf, a champion should act like one. It's what sets the sport apart from the others.
The off-course scandals just sealed the deal for me. The bizarre sleazeball behavior confirmed what I suspected all along. He's even a bad tipper, ungenerous, crude, self-absorbed. Tiger Woods was a thorough-going phony and a marketing creation. It's been fun to watch him squirm and fume and twist in the wind. Still he's always ready with an excuse. Tiger Woods has never lost a golf tournament. He's just made mental mistakes or there was something wrong with the greens.
It would tickle me if he never won another major. A whole new generation of young guns is coming along now, golfers who grew up imagining themselves lining a crucial putt to beat him on the eighteenth hole, guys from all over the world, McElroy and Ishikawa and Dustin Johnson, and some of his old whipping boys have closed the gap. Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson, two men with far better character, have rededicated themselves and racheted up their games. The intimidation factor is gone. The stare doesn't have the same chilling effect. Last season Y.E. Yang outdueled him at the PGA. Yesterday a Frenchmen ranked 361st in the world played alongside him and made par after par, unrattled. Woods shot four over on Sunday. A poised Graeme McDowell became the first European to win the U.S. Open in forty years.
Woods gave another rude two-sentence interview to the NBC after the match. The entire experience of losing his marketing empire, his wife and family and his carefully crafted and patently false public image has taught him nothing.
Next month is the Open Championship at Saint Andrews, and he will once again be lauded as the favorite. I'll be rooting against him, cheering every missed putt and profanity and thrown club.
Monday, June 21, 2010
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This is the Way the Transformation Begins
"Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say "Why not?"
George Bernard Shaw, Robert F. Kennedy
This is the way the transformation begins.
It begins in me.
It begins now.
It begins with small incremental changes and shifts in attitude
it begins with positive action
failing forward
and suddenly I start looking at the world and my place in it in a new way. I speak differently and dress differently and project a different energy, and the world opens up like a glorious pink azalea bush, eight feet tall and blooming like mad.
photo by Kajo123 from the website flickr.com
Good morning!
An engineer builds a bridge and every bolt and weld has to be exactly right; every measure has to be perfect, or the bridge collapses or fails to take its place. Fantastically detailed blueprints have to be laid out. Impact statements have to be filed, sediment has to be studied, years of effort, months of planning, and a man-made marvel rises in the sky. Park somewhere and take a good look at a bridge, and think of all the skill and knowledge and hard honest work it took to create it. Consider how a few thousand years ago we were living in caves.
It is not so with a dream. Some people are remarkable dreamers and dreams spring whole from them, or they can leap up from bed and pages of creative genius flow out of their pen, intricate and perfect. Most of us though are baby dreamers, new at it and tentative to the trust the power of what we wish for.
Start the dream! Whether you want to go to nursing school or college or learn to play the guitar, take a first step, now, even in the wrong direction. Don't wait for the blueprint to come to you, the environmental impact statement, the permits and the 200-page budget and legislative dream approval. Rough it out, sketch it on a napkin, tell a friend, and take action. Your dream begins the moment you step out in first moment of believing, and the result can touch a thousand souls. Listen to Jim Valvano: never give up, never surrender. Believe in the audacity of action and your fantastic potential for change and new opportunity.
It is not so with a dream. Some people are remarkable dreamers and dreams spring whole from them, or they can leap up from bed and pages of creative genius flow out of their pen, intricate and perfect. Most of us though are baby dreamers, new at it and tentative to the trust the power of what we wish for.
Start the dream! Whether you want to go to nursing school or college or learn to play the guitar, take a first step, now, even in the wrong direction. Don't wait for the blueprint to come to you, the environmental impact statement, the permits and the 200-page budget and legislative dream approval. Rough it out, sketch it on a napkin, tell a friend, and take action. Your dream begins the moment you step out in first moment of believing, and the result can touch a thousand souls. Listen to Jim Valvano: never give up, never surrender. Believe in the audacity of action and your fantastic potential for change and new opportunity.
The Hawthorne Bridge at sunrise, Portland Oregon. Photo by Joe Collver, from flickr.com
Genuine happiness and success start with an attitude of abundance
Make it a daily practice to begin your day with five minutes of thankfulness. You can even do it in your car on the way to work. Do it in your own way, whether it's thoughtful reflection or a prayer or singing out loud, but focus on your rich, amazing, abundant life.
Feeling grumpy or resentful or worried instead of thankful? Change direction! Consider the incredible gifts you have--mind, body, spirit, senses, your family, your friends, your clothes, your car, and the breakfast you enjoyed this morning. By the standards of 99% of the world, Americans are incredibly, amazingly rich. You truly have no idea how richly blessed you are until you start thinking about it. Even the heart that beats within you and the lungs that breathe your air are an intricate and amazing miracle.
Some of my favorite movies are ones that feature a once-defeated character waking up to an absolutely new day: "It's A Wonderful Life," the various versions of Dicken's "Christmas Carol" and "Groundhog Day." How exhilarating it is for George Bailey to wake up and realize his life isn't over, it's just beginning, and that today truly is a brand new day.
"It's a Wonderful Life"
George returns home to everything he ever wanted.
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