The generally hit or miss Bill Simmons has put forward some interesting (to me anyway) thoughts on Tiger, some of which I agree and disagree with.
Bill Simmons on Tiger:
Part I,
Part II In a way, that's been the most unfathomable part of this story. Tiger Woods dominating the conversation at a holiday party??? For years, nobody had an interesting take on him other than, "Wow, that guy's great." I even wrote an entire column in 2002 titled, "Tiger: What Can You Say?" He designed it that way, avoiding the media other than generic news conferences and cream-puff interviews designed to promote himself or a product. We knew little about his personal life beyond "married a Swedish nanny, lives in Orlando, has two kids."
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By shutting himself off and stripping himself of anything that could be perceived as interesting, Tiger inadvertently made himself interesting. He also opened the door for a feeding frenzy if anything ever went wrong.
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Q: I doubt I'm the only one who thought this and I know it's all speculation at this point, but my first reaction to the Tiger Woods "accident" was "he's been spending way too much time with MJ and Barkley." Can't you picture them giving Tiger endless crap for skipping out on a party because he has to get home to the kids? Tiger's cool and all, but he's not NBA-superstar cool.
-- Mike R., Ann Arbor, Mich.
SG: You just nailed an essential component to this story: the School of MJ. Jordan is that buddy our wives and girlfriends hate. The one who's always trying to get you to go to Vegas, the one who keeps you out until 7 a.m., the one who spends ungodly amounts of money and expects you to keep up, the one who indulges in every vice to excess. In 2001, I was told by someone I trusted that Antoine Walker (whom MJ had taken under his wing) would go bankrupt trying to keep up with Jordan. He did. Again, MJ is a man of excess. And Tiger had the background of a child actor or a hotshot tennis player who was hitting 10 hours of balls a day from ages 6 to 18, the son of a military dad, who obviously wasn't letting off a ton of steam in his formative years. Throwing him to MJ's crew was like throwing young Bud Fox into Gordon Gekko's world. And look how that ended.
Duly noted. It doesn't help Tiger that he's never really been 'funny' or used his flaws in marketing. Charles Barkley can throw a guy through a window and we'll like him more. Heck, Barkley can admit to massive gambling losses, get arrested for driving drunk, and tell the cops he was cruising for a hooker - and we don't even think he'd need forgiveness. Michael Jordan's inner demons were often painted as the flipside of his tremendous will to win - so his image could survive people learning that he was sometimes a total bastard to people.
It doesn't help that he has no reputation as a "fun guy" or a "party guy", or even someone who mixes it up with the 'regulars' from time to time. (As Shaq does.)
So I guess that's my advice to the future megastars... if you're going to be public, have fun at your own expense and let everybody in on one of your very real flaws as the flipside to your success. That way, when you disappoint the public, you've already given them a hook to bring you back with.
Now, if Tiger can come back from those revelations that he was using Titlelist golf balls while endorsing Nike, he could still come back from this. Somewhat. Unless he's also been using PEDs. Then he's hosed. He's still got the "one of the greatest winners of all time in his sport" thing. He can't lose that...