Watching Golf Bite the Hand that Feeds It

“Ingrate” is far too nice a word to use to describe the professional golfing industry and its recent treatment of Eldrick T.“Tiger” Woods.

And that’s really saying a mouthful.

When I was young, there were very few things people could say that could hit me so hard – whether they said it about me or somebody else.

The term, "hissed" by my mom and other adults about people we knew, always made me think of a person who was the lowest form of life, untrustworthy and disreputable. An ingrate, as I understood it, was a person who took freely from others and benefited immensely while, somehow, being able to feel absolutely no appreciation for what had been given to them. An ingrate was a person who curiously felt no obligation, whatsoever, to return a favor.

That sounds very much like the way the Professional Golfer’s Association (PGA) treats its most valuable commodity and most important player, Tiger Woods.

Yeah, yeah, yeah….I have read and heard, like you, hundreds of times, now, all of the sordid details of Tiger’s marital problems, the now-infamous "driveway incident" and his ongoing series of affairs with a seemingly never-ending number of women of European descent.

In addition to creating embarrassment and damage for the formerly pristine and “bulletproof” Tiger Woods “brand” and for his family, that stuff also happened to sell a great number of newspapers and kept many eyeballs trained, for millions of hours, on TV screens and computer monitors.

For awhile, there was more Tiger Woods news than anybody on earth could reasonably consume, and virtually every bit of it was negative for the golfing legend.

Indeed, in December of last year nearly 20 percent of all content on the morning television news shows was devoted to information about the “Tiger Woods Scandal.” Carole Bartz, president of Yahoo, reported that searches for Tiger’s name had increased by nearly 4,000 percent in the 30-day period following his “driveway accident.”

The PGA bills itself as the “largest professional sports organization in the world,” with 28,000 members, and sits at the top of an industry whose golf courses generate $19.5 billion in annual revenues (compared to $6.2 billion for Major League baseball, $6.0 billion for the National Football League, $3.2 billion for the National Basketball Association and $2.4 billion for the National Hockey League). The PGA clearly has one consistent, most valuable player – Woods – who has won the Golfer of the Year Award ten times and, in December – after the news broke about the scandal – was voted the Associated Press’ Athlete Of The Decade.

With 56 votes, Tiger easily beat out six-time Tour de France-winning cyclist Lance Armstrong, who received 33 votes; tennis great Roger Federer, 25 votes; Olympic Gold Medal phenom, Michael Phelps, 13 votes and multi-Super Bowl-winning New England Patriot quarterback Tom Brady, with 6 votes.

It’s not just Tiger’s athletic prowess that makes him so important to his chosen profession and to advertisers. The fact is that Woods puts “butts” in the seats and attracts viewership like no other single athlete.

As great as the PGA believes that golf, itself, has become, it is clear that it makes a huge difference for the sport, for media carrying the events and their profit-driven sponsors, whether Tiger plays or not.

When Tiger left golf in 2008 and 2009 to rehabilitate his knee, the sport's weekend TV ratings declined by 47 percent, according to Nielsen rating services. Conversely, when he returned to participate in the PGA Tour Championship, there were reports that ratings actually increased by 83 percent. When the Tiger scandal “broke,” there were estimates that TV audiences for golf would again shrink by about half and that Nike, alone, might lose up to $30 million in sales.

And when Tiger decided to rejoin the Tour after his five-month-long, scandal-related hiatus, CBS News President Sean McManus predicted that the opening round at the 2010 Masters would probably qualify as the “biggest media event of the past 10 or 15 years, other than the inauguration of Barack Obama.”

It turned out that this year's Masters’ first round was the most-watched golf telecast in cable history, beating out the previous most-watched golf event – Tiger beating a fairly anonymous pro named Rocco Mediate in the 2008 U.S. Open.

While no one can ever condone Woods’ late-night, off-the-course activities, the great hypocrisy is that the premise for the many lectures and admonitions sent his way following those disclosures was that no other professional golfer, and by extension, no other professional athlete, has had, or is currently having, extra-marital affairs. The other premise is that the sport of golf, itself, has had a pure, fair and ethical track record and is beyond reproach.

Both concepts, of course, are ludicrous.

Regarding other golfers, let me just say that I sincerely pray that the newly “sainted” Phil Mickelson and his family will be able to live up to the “holier, more deserving, more pure and more American-role-model-like” image that has been given to them by media outlets, following his Masters victory last week.

Trust me, Phil can’t possibly be that perfect. It’s unfair to expect him to be, but the event managers and the media contingent have leaped at the opportunity, anyway, to present the “on again, off again” hero, Mickelson as the “anti-Tiger,” and as living proof that “good guys" can actually win.

The Wall Street Journal, that bastion of global business journalism, even ran a photo of Phil and his wife, Amy, on the front page of its Monday’s edition, the day after the Masters. On that Tuesday, the same newspaper carried a full-page ad by one of Mickelson’s sponsoring companies, Bearing Point, congratulating him on his victory and his strong “family values.”
I just hope Mickelson can withstand the scrutiny.

Even worse than the fawning by the media regarding Mickelson’s victory was the high-handed criticism delivered about Tiger, as he arrived at the Augusta National Golf Club, by the club’s chairman, a man by the name of Billy Payne.

Payne's club membership is still about 98 percent comprised of white males – and no women. His tournament, until 1983, still demanded that players use only the black caddies provided by the club, and his participating pros, themselves, were virtually all-white. The Augusta National course is built on the grounds of a former plantation and its top, non-cash prize is not just the highly publicized "green jacket," but a silver-plated replica of the former plantation’s “Big House.” Despite that shameful history, Payne, somehow, felt he had the moral standing to remind Tiger, publicly, that he thought his conduct had been “egregious” and that Tiger had “disappointed all of us and, more importantly, our kids and our grandkids.”

Say what?

Was this the same golf club whose former chairman, a guy who went by the nickname “Hootie,” vowed that women would only be admitted as members at the “point of a bayonet?”

Is there nothing at all in Augusta National’s questionable, racist and sexist history (and present) that children and grandchildren should be “disappointed” about other than Tiger Woods?

Hey, Billy Payne, “Wake up and stop biting the Cablinasian man’s hand that’s been feeding you.”

Tiger Woods, though admittedly human and consequently imperfect, is still the very best thing that has ever happened to your sport and to your racially and gender-insensitive tournament.

You should try treating him accordingly.

As to your grandchildren, if you play your cards right, perhaps one day you’ll be able to tell them that you once met, and had a cordial conversation with a man named Tiger Woods, the greatest golfer who ever played the game.


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