A Few Thoughts on Tiger Woods, Choice, and Being a Good Person

Woods: Yeah, I know this is hard for you to accept, it’s hard for you to understand,
you’re playing the devil’s advocate, I know that. But at the same time, history, if
you review it on other television programs, you will find that I always and
consistently said that Tiger could be anything he wants to be. He wasn’t raised to
be a golfer. He was raised to be a good person.

Rose: And to be tough?

Woods: A good person. All these other things go with it, but to be a good person
first. And I’ve said, if he wants to be a fireman, he can be a fireman, I don’t care, as
long as he’s the best fireman he can be.

-Earl Woods and Charlie Rose on The Charlie Rose Show, May 7, 1997 (shortly after
Tiger Woods’ first Master’s victory)

We all make choices in life. We all decide, either actively or by implicit

consent, what kind of work we want to do, if we want to be husbands or wives,
fathers or mothers. A lot of these major decisions come pretty early in life, say
before we’re thirty or thirty-five. Then the difficult part really begins. And the kind of
people we are, whether we’re good fathers or insurance men or teachers or wives,
is determined with the thousands of tiny choices we make every day. They can be
as simple as making sure we have a good tone with our spouses when we get home
and talk about our day. Or making sure our kids have a good breakfast before they
go to school. Or choosing not to be angry with our family when we’re tired and
frustrated and they make an annoying comment, realizing that they’re probably just
as tired and frustrated as we are. Of course some of this is out of our hands, but
every day of our lives we do make choices that determine the kind of people we
really are. And the difficult thing about these choices is that so often the easier
choice is the one that has negative repercussions. Who hasn’t been in the situation
of getting into an argument with a friend or loved one without even realizing it? We
make a choice and unthinkingly escalate the situation and before we know it, we’re
shouting. Now most of the time, through careful and patient communication, we can
resolve such situations. But it takes time and conscious acts of will. It takes choice.
And it’s a lot harder to get out of such a mess than it is to get in. But these choices
are what determine our character. We are free to choose whatever we like, freer,
perhaps, than most of us realize. But we are, as Sartre might suggest, condemned
to freedom, because, of course, with freedom comes responsibility. So, if we’re, say,
a golfer by profession, maybe even a famous golfer, one who is looked upon with
awe and admiration by everyone from rural kids to corporate executives to middle-
aged talk show hosts, and we, for instance, choose to be a husband, and then a
father (twice), then we’re also responsible, at least in the eyes of many, to not, for
example, sleep with cocktail waitresses and porn stars. Sure, we’ve got a lot more
opportunities to do so than the average man. But that’s just the point; it can be so
easy to do the wrong thing.

I am writing, of course, of Tiger Woods, golf superstar, winner of fourteen

major championships, 10-time winner of the PGA Player of the Year award, and
recent cause célèbre for the wagging tongues of our culture to engage in a nice
little public flaying regarding morality. Yes, it turns out there are a lot more cocktail
waitresses that want to sleep with Tiger Woods than Bob Jones of Omaha, NE who’s
been saving up to visit Vegas for the better part of a decade. And, if media reports
are to be believed, Mr. Woods took advantage of pretty much every opportunity
that came his way. The sheer volume of opportunities for infidelity for a star of his
stature truly cannot be overstated. All temptations, sexual or not, are exponentially
greater with power. And money doesn’t change character; it merely gives it the
opportunity to reveal itself. It’s important for each one of us, if we’re to judge the
actions of Mr. Woods, to honestly account for how each one of us would act in his
position. Unlike any of us, Woods actually had (from a young age) the means to
quite literally satisfy any desire he had. So, if we’re to judge Mr. Woods without
reckless dogmatism, it’s important to grapple with the dark realms within our own
souls. How would we act with practically unlimited means? What are our desires,
and how would we choose to satisfy them as one of the most famous people in the
world?

Still, if Tiger’s going to have his entourage pick up the hottest women in Las
Vegas bars for “dinner” with him, most would agree he’s got the responsibility, as
someone who earns around a hundred million dollars a year, to actually tip the
waiter for his tab that runs to couple grand (seriously, he was actually a non-tipper.
Even Quentin Tarantino could lecture this guy).

Of course, we’re all free to do whatever we want. But we also have to live
with the consequences, which are a lot more serious than losing endorsement
deals. As David Foster Wallace said, “The really important kind of freedom involves
attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other
people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every
day.” And maybe that’s the problem. In a culture that values someone who can hit a
ball really far (and the TV ratings and ad sales that creates) more than it cherishes
fidelity and honesty, it can be tremendously difficult to learn how to be a good
person. When you start winning sports cars and signing multimillion-dollar
endorsement deals before you’re old enough to walk into a bar and get a drink
(without a fake ID), there’s no one who will ever tell you about sacrificing for people
in “petty, unsexy ways.” And you probably wouldn’t listen anyway. Being a
genuinely good human being in such a culture is difficult enough as it is. It’s just
much easier to follow a self-centered path.

Earl Woods should know. Not only was he an essential part of Tiger’s
development as a golfer, he was instrumental in turning Tiger Woods from a young
golf talent into a global corporate spokesman (just as an example, listen to him
positively gush on that same 1997 Charlie Rose show about young Tiger jetting
around from engagement to engagement, working for Nike, hanging with Kevin
Costner, ad infinitum). In the midst of the media flurry surrounding the wave of
Tiger’s infidelities that finally washed up onto the shore of public consciousness, it
would have been easy to miss one of the most authentically revealing stories. It
came from Tiger’s high school girlfriend, one Mrs. Dina Parr (née Gravell), who
admitted having to console Woods through high school as he dealt with the troubles
that arose in his parents’ marriage after the revelation of an affair that Earl Woods
had had (by the end of Earl’s life, he was living in a separate house from Tiger’s
mother, Kutilda Woods). The connections between the actions of Earl Woods to
Tiger are not difficult to draw. The only difference is the amount of opportunities
Tiger had as compared to Earl. The pain that he felt as a young man watching his
father with other women is sure to be nothing compared to that of his children, who
will have the luxury of reading coarse text messages he sent his conquests when
they are old enough to use the internet. The sins of the father shall be visited upon
the son….

I should also add that this isn’t intended to be some kind of looking-down-the-
nose-of-moral-rectitude-rant. It’s one thing to sleep around as one of the most
famous people in the world. Plenty do. Who’s to judge such actions between
consenting adults? Not I. But I would think that it enters a different realm of
morality when one is married with children. If one wants to sleep around as an
attractive, famous person, there’s certainly plenty of precedent. And some of it is
even genuinely responsible. Take George Clooney or Derek Jeter, both of whom
decided that, for the present time, they didn’t wish to be married. Fine. There’s
nothing wrong with that. Their personal decisions will only ever affect adults who
are consciously aware of the circumstances.

And of course it’s certainly vexing that our culture can be so intrusive into
someone’s personal life as to reveal the endless details that appeared following the
Woods car accident (over the internet one can, for instance, view and save a .pdf
file of the letter with which Woods broke up with the young Miss Gravell in 1995).
Certainly his personal life ought to be less relevant than that of a politician who
makes daily decisions requiring contemplation and character that affect the lives of
other people. But if anyone should have known about the intense scrutiny of
celebrities, it’s Tiger Woods. From his first TV appearance putting against Bob Hope
at age 3 to the frenzy around his mid-decade “slump” when he went several years
without winning a major, he’s learned to live under the glare of media attention.
And, after all, it was Tiger that benefitted from all that media hype for over a
decade. It helped him project the calm, collected exterior that left businesses
chomping at the bit to sign him for endorsements. Clearly, in the ferocious world of
the contemporary American media, he who lives by that glittering sword dies by it
as well.
 When the news first broke about Woods’ infidelities (or the suspicious car
crash that instigated it all), there was near-uniform expression of surprise, including
from yours truly. Woods had simply never projected that aura publicly. But there
was at least one person who wasn’t. Back in 1997, Charles Pierce dared to write a
piece for GQ in which he calmly made the case that Tiger Woods was not, in fact,
some sort of ambassador sent to earth to reconcile the tribulations of American life
(which was not, if you actually read the article and other press from the time, a
hyperbolic characterization of the kind of coverage Woods was receiving), but
actually a massively talented twenty-one year old with a huge group of
friends/handlers who all spoiled him and treated him as if he was as close to a
capital-G God as they were ever going to experience on earth. Oh, and he happened
to have a big taste for nasty, tasteless, weirdly racist jokes. (These jokes were
tasteless enough that I actually feel uncomfortable just including them for
criticism’s sake. I’d genuinely advise you to just trust me on this. I am not a big fan
of racist, sexist, and homophobic jokes.) When the article was released, Pierce was
immediately denounced. Earl Woods called him “unethical” for daring to tape record
his extremely brief time with Woods (beware of people who say the media “tricked”
them). People questioned his journalistic skills. People questioned his right as a
mere journalist to print such things about such an important, groundbreaking
athlete. So, one knows that Pierce had to feel a bit vindicated when, a dozen years
out, the character that Pierce had briefly glimpsed was revealed in all its tawdry
emptiness. Indeed, GQ brought him back for his comments on the scandal and to
write an incisive little piece on the story behind the article, which, along with the
endless ramble of stories about Tiger losing sponsors, is particularly revelatory in
showing just how much athletes (respected, recall, for their human physicality) can
become purely corporate constructions, a budget issue as inhuman and vacant as
the CNBC stock crawl.

I’ll also add here briefly that I am in agreement with Frank Rich that the
Person of the Decade (at least metaphorically) is Tiger Woods. Who could be more
representative of America? This decade did much to reveal those who successfully
projected calm, competent auras as frauds. The tenacious media strategy of the
Bush administration and its “CEO presidency” was revealed to be nothing more
than a smokescreen for an inefficient, unreflective, group of power-hungry
ideologues. The calm, cool young bankers who promised greater gains and
increased safety were proven to be inept fools doing anything for a short term gain.
Yes, like Tiger Woods, they could keep a straight face under pressure. But it was all,
like so much in this decade, an Oz-like deception.

But no matter what one thinks of corporations or Tiger Woods’ character and
humanity, there are two children who happen to be very human that will now be
forced to grow up with a father who, they will one day learn, cheated on their
mother both before and after they were born. They will have every material need
met, with greater splendor than most in this country of ours can even dare to
dream. But they will never have the kind of guidance that real fatherhood entails.
And yet, that fate was sealed long before Tiger Woods drove his 2009 Cadillac
Escalade into a fire hydrant. We are who we decide to be every day.

Right at the end of that 1997 interview with Earl Woods, Charlie Rose was
chatting very amiably with old Mr. Woods. They were happily dismissing GQ as
having “smutted” Tiger when Rose happened to comment cheerily that his family
always said that the proof was in the pudding. Earl agreed with a grin. “The proof is
in the pudding. My mother said the same thing.” They didn’t know how right they
were.