Tiger needs to appreciate his own genius

WATCHING Tiger Woods winning again last Sunday night, I was reminded that Tiger is a bit like The Beatles, in that they are both under-rated. Yes they are universally regarded as being great. But there is perhaps not enough understanding of just how great they are.

If there had been, Tiger would not have been excoriated in the way he was, for a few lifestyle issues which were nobody’s business but his own, and that of his then wife Elin (right) — it was justified by the jackals who pursued him on the grounds that he had been “hypocritical” due to his supposed cultivation of a “squeaky clean” image, when anyone who had followed him would have known that Tiger was famous for cursing and swearing and spitting and banging his clubs and being whatever is the opposite of “squeaky clean”.

No, this was an indictment of a culture which had lost its way, which couldn’t recognise that here was a bona fide genius and not just some celebrity chancer, a culture which couldn’t tell the difference between what matters and what doesn’t matter.

Indeed he was the polar opposite of a celebrity chancer, the polar opposite of a Trump — Tiger really did all those amazing things, with his 14 majors he didn’t have to tell 14 lies just get his heart started in the morning.

Which brings us to the only way in which he has been a disappointment to me. No, I don’t mean that public apology which he never should have made about the “cocktail waitresses” and so forth, I mean his apparently easy acceptance of Trump. Not that this makes him any different to any other leading US golfer, it’s just Tiger is better than that.

Then again, there’s this old saying in the game of golf, that when they’re giving out the talent, even the genius, the gods always hold something back.

So maybe this is what they’ve held back from Tiger — this awareness that he represents everything that Trump is not, leading us to wonder if one of the people who don’t understand the scale of the greatness of Tiger Woods, is Tiger Woods.

No doubt he’ll get over that too. ÷ Next week RTE will be continuing its first Champions League campaign without either John Giles or Eamon Dunphy on board. There is much executive tomfoolery in this world, as we know, but in the modern era, in the face of the stiffest competition, this idea that RTE’s football coverage might somehow be improved by the absence of Giles and then Dunphy, is probably without parallel.

It is truly unforgiveable, not just because it leaves us without Giles and Dunphy, but because it also takes away Gary Cooke’s impersonations of them — I expect that “Apres Match” will be advised to “move on” from the two Founding fathers, lest we be reminded of old times, and much, much better times.

But Gary Cooke, after a suitable period of mourning, will be playing a character who is somewhat different in disposition to Giles or Dunphy, yet whose contribution to our culture is no less than theirs in certain ways — Michael Jackson is The Man In The Mirror, the title of a one-man play written by Ken Sweeney and due to be performed in the new year.

It also features the character of Ray O’Hara, the taxi-driver who “minded” Jackson and became his friend when Jacko was here for six months in 2006, recording in Grouse Lodge, Co Westmeath.

Being from Westmeath myself, I’ve always felt that this period in Jacko’s life when he was knocking around Moate, being driven in a Volkswagen peoplecarrier, has been underappreciated. The story of the friendship between Jackson and O’Hara was the subject of an awardwinning radio documentary in 2013. Next year will be the tenth anniversary of Jackson’s passing, but he will live again in the person of Gary Cooke — and every night after the show, he will be driven home by his old pal, Ray O’Hara.