We Will Always Root For The Idea of Tiger

Tiger Woods made the sports world stand still for 15 minutes this Friday morning with a horribly unconvincing apology.  He sat in front of 40 hand-picked reporters, read prepared remarks with little-to-no emotion, and gave no hint as to when he may return to golf. This man who cheated so furiously on his wife, who lost support from nearly all of his endorsers, who left golf so suddenly and quickly that we didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye…had an opportunity to regain one iota of respect at a time today and, for possibly the first time in his life, failed miserably. He sounded robotic, unhuman, unapologetic. Still, come the Master’s – where I do believe he’ll compete – he’ll find that despite his recent sexcapades and relentless negative press, we – his fans – will still be there for him, unabashedly fist pumping each and every time he approaches the green.

See, the Idea of Tiger has transcended Tiger himself.  He made himself too beloved, too elite, too human. And now, not even his foolish adultery can ruin his prestige, despite our better consciousnesses.  The Idea of Tiger is too precious to let go of so even if we tell ourselves that we must scrub ourselves clean of the awe we perspired, the Idea of Tiger will simply overpower.

Maybe you’re not there yet and you still hate him for being a horrible husband, a horrible father, and a horrible role model. I’m pretty sure that the next time you see him with a golf club in hand, you’ll remember that not even the man himself can tear down the Idea.

The Idea of Tiger ran after Perfection and there is nothing, nothing at all, that we like to see more than the pursuit of Perfection.  (Don’t believe me? See Colts, Indianapolis.)  The Idea of Tiger gets too close to being Perfect to let mere off-the-field, non-violent proclivities ruin that pursuit. A run at Perfection like the Idea of Tiger’s just happens too rarely. It will be too hard not to root for him.  It’s against our nature. We’re too used to smiling at the mere thought of his abilities.  Call it cognitive dissonance, call it laziness, call it what you will.  You’ll see.

When it comes to sexual proclivities, we’re a forgiving society. Politicians, athletes… we have a tendency to forget or look past these things. When it comes to cheating in the sport or violent crimes, less so. Maybe this makes us fools, but I’m pretty sure it just makes us fans.

Perhaps we should try against our better will to continue to hate Tiger. We’ll remind ourselves what he did wrong and the hurt he has caused in his life. But at the end of the day, we’ll see that there simply isn’t that much hope for Perfection in the world. And we’ll hang on to whatever grasps we can reach.  We’ll wish he never cheated on his wife, we’ll wish he never let us down.  But more than anything else, we’ll wish he achieves Perfection. Because anything less would be simply unforgivable.