Sport Jim White
NASTY BEATS NICE
Nice guys finish second. It has long been the Dick Dastardly of sporting clichés: the presumption that, in the world of sport, decency is somehow anathema to success, and that only swine win out in the end.
And if you want evidence of the truth of the adage, look no further than the strange case of Tiger Woods. A magnificent new biography of the finest golfer who ever lived has revealed something of which his legion of fans were never aware. According to the 250 close witnesses the authors Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian interviewed, Woods was not just a serial philanderer, sex addict and liar. He was also a horrible human being. Spoiled, entitled, utterly self-obsessed, at his peak, away from the camera and the public gaze, he exhibited all the grace, charm and fellow feeling of a great white shark with toothache.
Take his boorish behaviour towards Bill Clinton. The former president had agreed to open a new centre for Woods’s charitable foundation in 2007, his only requirement that the two share eighteen holes. When they played, Woods sat all day in his golf cart on his phone, refusing to engage with his partner, except to make occasionally mocking remarks about the Clinton swing. Or what about when Eagles front man Glenn Frey died? Frey had raised millions over the years for Woods’s charity, appearing many times at functions and benefits. But never mind attending his funeral; Woods couldn’t even be bothered to send a note of condolence to Frey’s family.
Woods was the very exemplar of the adage: this was the horrible guy finishing first.
But here’s the odd thing. In 2009, Woods’s world came crashing down when he totalled his car in a haze of sleeping pills, and the truth spilled out like the lancing of a boil. A man who had made his fortune on the appearance of integrity, honesty and wholesomeness turned out to be incapable of remaining in his trousers while in the company of pneumatic blondes. According to his biographers, his taste was for ‘porn stars, lingerie models, party girls, high-priced escorts and pancake-house waitresses’. And that’s not mentioning the hooker he made out with in the car park of the hospital where his wife was in labour.
At the time of his vertiginous fall from grace, Woods was the wealthiest sportsman in the world, slipping over $100 million a year into his expensively sponsored trousers, money offered up by corporate backers anxious to attach their brand to his carefully honed image. That support collapsed overnight when it became all too clear that he was nothing like it said on the tin.
Why did he jeopardise everything? Not just through the extramarital liaisons, but by doing things such as engaging in hundreds of secret parachute jumps, one of which ended in a tumble that caused career-threatening damage to his back. This was inexplicable behaviour.
Benedict and Keteyian’s intriguing conclusion is that he needed the impetus of a double life to stimulate his golf. When his game was at its best was when he had the most to hide: duplicity was his spur. It is an explanation that offers a logical explanation as to why, since he has come back after therapy and surgery, he has finally appreciated how vile he has been and has made strenuous efforts to connect with those around him, his performances have been so mediocre.
He can no longer play like he did when he no longer behaves like he did. The self-deprecating shrug he gave when fading during the Masters in April was indicative: the more human he becomes, the less effective he is as a golfer. Here is the depressing truth. Never mind finishing second; now he has decided to become a nice guy, Tiger Woods can’t even make the cut.