Can anyone comprehend what it is like to be Tiger Woods? The most ridiculously talented, hyper-competitive, transcendent athlete on the planet has everything come crashing down all in one fell swoop. Thanksgiving night will never be quite the same for Tiger woods after 2009. Tiger will never be quite the same after the fallout. Tiger will have to live with what he did and how will impact his wife, and more importantly, his kids, for years to come.
We all lived through the event that seemingly came out of nowhere. We all lived through the aftermath. Tiger was unfaithful to his wife? With countless women? This has been going on for years? It all came out and Tiger was shamed to the general public. News kept flowing in in the following months and it became much more clear how despicable Tiger had behaved in his personal life. Then came the guessing game of what Tiger had to say about everything and when he would say it. Then we all lived through the apology.
Watching Tiger's "apology" The Jeff Report was personally insulted. Never have I seen such a ridiculously scripted and PR riddled speech. It was as painful to watch for us as I'm sure it was for Tiger to give. Tiger has lived his life in strict distance from the media. He didn't play by the normal rules and was seemingly the only athlete of his caliber able to keep his private life private. Now he was forced to play by the rules that everyone else had to. He not only had to be accountable to himself and his family for his actions, but to the media and the American public as well. Now we are left with the next question in the ever unfolding saga of Tiger Woods: when will he come back?
Now, with that question comes others as well. Will he be changed? How will these events affect his game? Will he ever be back to the dominant form he was in in the early 2000's? Only time will tell but it is the opinion of The Jeff Report that when Tiger returns he will be better than ever and will be an extremely scary force in the golf world. There are a few reasons I have this feeling that I will detail further (some of this was gone over in my previous Tiger post, some will be new).
I feel there are few reasons Tiger's life spun out of control as it did. I think the death of his father Earl Woods played a much larger role than people would think. Earl Woods was the only person Tiger ever answered to in his life, the only person that was ever able to keep Tiger in check and hold him accountable. Tiger never answered to the media, he never answered to his critics, he never answered to the "old guard" (or the new guard for that matter), he only had one person to keep him in line. Once his father passed on, that presence was no longer there in his life. Then slowly things began to unravel. Nobody was there to tell him what he needed to do, to keep him focused. Nobody was there to hold him accountable for his actions. Not having this presence allowed him to slowly slip into the mindset that if there was nobody to hold him accountable, then he in fact wasn't accountable. If you've heard of the term slippery slope, this was the definition, only Tiger slid completely off. Keep in mind I have no basis for this opinion whatsoever for it is just that, my opinion on why Tiger's life turned the way it did.
So with that presence his father provided gone, why would I think he will come back better than ever? There are a few reasons. As aforementioned, Tiger's life just spun out of control and I feel like Tiger simply felt like he was powerless to stop it. His infidelity had reached such out-of-control proportions that not only could he not stop himself, but he couldn't turn back and couldn't come clean. That is why I feel like it is almost a relief for Tiger that he was caught. Hiding something that much amount of infidelity would be extremely taxing on an individual and Tiger would be no exception. Now that the secret is out, he can deal with it in his life and no longer have that secret weighing on his mind.
Earlier in his career Tiger seemed unbeatable. Nobody struck as much fear into people's hearts as Tiger. That mystique had somewhat disappeared in the last year or two. Rocco Mediate gave him all he could handle at the US Open in 2008. He choked away the PGA to a relative unknown this past year which never happened before. It is my personal feeling (and nothing more than that) that it was this secret weighing on Tiger that made him not quite himself. With that now gone things will easier.
However, the biggest part that cannot go unnoticed is Tiger's competitive-ness. Tiger is the most ridiculously competitive athlete on the planet. With everyone doubting him and his greatness in question Tiger will never be more motivated to destroy everything in his path upon his return. He will want to prove that no matter what happens to Tiger the man, Tiger the golfer is better than everyone and it's not even close. Taking the most motivated competitive athlete on the planet and giving him more motivation to be more competitive is a scary thought. This is why I think Tiger will return better than ever. Or I could be completely wrong, we will see.
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