Tiger Woods's recent car roll and arrest dominated golf's headlines over the weekend, overshadowing Gary Woodland's heartwarming win at the Houston Open on Sunday.Reinhold Matay/The Associated Press
Kudos to Tiger Woods for working almost single-handed to maintain the rich niche of celebrity mugshots. It used to be that you couldn’t seriously admire any cultural figure unless he (and occasionally she) had a few low-impact felonies on their jacket.
Woods’s modern wrinkle to this is that as the alleged crimes become sadder, and the resulting pictures even more so, his relevance increases. Never before has an athlete who did less athletics had more profile.
After getting arrested for another DUI a couple of days ago, there was a run on the polo Woods was wearing as he was booked. Give him this much – Woods rarely golfs any more, but he always looks as if he is about to golf. He may sleep in cleats.
He was still wearing the same powder blue number when he was released. Often, famous people have some vassal bring them a change of clothes before they get out in front of cameras again. Not this guy. He’s long past trying to spin these setbacks. At this point, the setbacks are the spin.
You can’t buy that shirt any more. It’s sold out. It’s from Woods’s newish personal apparel brand, Sun Day Red.
Tiger Woods released on bail after arrest at crash scene on suspicion of DUI
The tagline of Sun Day Red is “From the Vision of Tiger Woods – Performance apparel for those who share Tiger’s passion for competing, on & off the course.”
No wonder no one watches comedies any more. Like Peter Cook once said, real life is so much funnier.
In any case, Woods is the only person in the world for whom rolling their car on a random workday afternoon is a business opportunity.
At the Houston Open this past weekend, golf was reasserting itself as a safe space for bros who just want to be themselves out in public. A number of Fulbright scholars were photographed walking the course in #FreeTiger t-shirts, complete with mugshot.
Woods's mugshot became a meme, while the shirt he wore sold out on his clothing brand's site. Fans showed up at the Houston Open to support Woods, who commands the attention of sports fans with every move, positive or negative, he makes.Mike Mulholland/Getty Images
Golf devotes a lot of energy these days to wondering why people don’t like it as much as they used to, back when Woods was in his ascendancy. It’s not the quality of play or the lowered wattage of current stars. It’s that golf is the official sport of the guy you hated in high school.
Which is too bad because at that same tournament, golf provided the ‘Awwww’ sports story of the year so far.
Gary Woodland won this year’s Houston Open. Woodland isn’t famous for his game, but he was known for having had brain surgery to remove a lesion.
As it turned out, things got worse from there. Woodland developed PTSD and became erratic. He’s only just started telling people about his troubles. Now he’s won a significant tournament and a bunch of money.
He should be the big deal going into the Masters in just over a week’s time. As we speak, the people at CBS Sports are holding hands and saying a prayer.
Gary Woodland, seen here with his wife, Gabby Woodland, put together one of the best sports stories of the year with his win at the Houston Open on Sunday.Erik Williams/Reuters
But you know in your bones that it won’t be Woodland people want to know more about. It’ll be Woods. Unless he goes away and stays away, it will always be Woods.
It could only work this way in golf. If Roger Federer suddenly takes a turn into darkness, it’s a one-off story. Because however great Federer was, he is no longer viable as a tennis player. Were he to try coming back now, he would more than likely embarrass himself (which should be a warning to Serena Williams, who continues to play public footsie with the idea of a return).
Federer, like every aging pro in every other sport, has been ejected from the tribe. There’s no returning.
But not golf. Golfers don’t fade away, they die. Fifty, 60 years old, it’s still theoretically possible that they could have one great weekend. A long series of terrible weekends doesn’t change that.
Why do you think the likes of Mike Weir, 55, keep showing up at the Masters? You think he thinks it’s going to go poorly (which it always does)?
No, some secret part of him – the part that allowed him to win the Masters nearly 25 years ago – thinks he’s going to win it. That he’s going to shock everyone.
The only cure for that level of self-belief is fear of humiliation. Hockey players are born with it. Golfers aren’t. Even the best of them are accustomed to losing, and often losing badly.
This is why Woods won’t go away. As best the rest of us can tell, he’s only done one thing really well his whole life. Everything else is a shambles.
He’s slowly swapping every bone and joint in his body out for a titanium replacement. He’s waded through the most humbling sex scandal of modern times. He’s survived car crashes and legal implosions.
In the midst of all that, he won another Masters and is still selling out shirts. You’d think you were superhuman, too.
Meanwhile, pro golf can’t bring itself to be shot of him. He’s the guy who steadied them during that brief time when it looked like the Saudis were making inroads. He’s the face of their weird indoor league. He is still apparently the most authoritative voice in the room when it comes to where the game is headed. And until a few hours ago, he was going to make another comeback in Augusta.
Unlike any athlete before, Woods has passed into whatever lies beyond celebrity based on performance or heat or anything at all positive. He is permanently fixed at the top of the game. Every time he wants attention, good or bad, he can have it. Whatever he produces, sells. Whatever he says is listened to.
How would that warp your self-perception? And having been formed by years of that treatment, who could give it up?
I’d feel sorry for the guy if I didn’t know the only cure for whatever ails him is leaving. Feeling sorry for him is what keeps him coming back.
It’s no longer a question of what golf needs, more Tiger Woods or more Gary Woodlands. It’s what golf is – a place where once you have reached a certain level, you never need leave, even if that’s what would be best for all concerned.