TIGER AVOIDS TROUBLE
Woods’ focus on his game, not political controversy
NORTON — Here was Tiger Woods yesterday afternoon, on the fifth hole at TPC Boston, mulling the possibilities after his approach had landed some 25 feet beyond the cup, settling at the top of an awkward-looking slope.
Woods studied the situation for a good long while, and from different angles. He lowered himself to a catcher’s crouch to get a look from one side, and then moved to the other side, dropped down to one knee, and pondered some more.
Now he made his move, directing the ball a couple of feet to the left, at which point, just as Woods had forecast, it darted to the right and to the hole.
And lipped out.
Woods had done his homework on this one. Rather than acting impulsively or without a game plan, he called upon years of experience, years of training, years of personal observations. He considered both sides of the issue. He took a stand: Go to the left on this one.
Woods had a fine day yesterday, shooting 66 to put him 7 strokes behind leader Webb Simpson. As he put it later, “A good, solid day all around. In (the first round) I had a couple of bad shots. (Yesterday) I did not.”
The 25-foot putt on the fifth hole? That was not a bad shot. He was just a little off.
This is precisely what can happen when you’re a public person who decides to dabble in politics.
We know this to be true not just because of what happened to Woods on the fifth hole at the Dell Technologies Championship yesterday, but because of what happened last week when he was criticized for not taking an imaginary 5-iron out of his bag and using it to symbolically beat President Trump about the head and neck.
Somebody had asked him about Trump. Woods responded with an assembly line of Fun Facts, such as how he knows the president because they’ve played golf together. Reaching back to his seventhgrade civics class, he noted that it’s important to respect the office of the President of the United States. Asked if he’d like to say something about race relations in the United States, he said, “No. I just finished 72 holes and (am) really hungry.”
So here we have a case when a public person chooses to say nothing and still gets criticized. This wasn’t Tom Brady displaying a MAGA cap in his locker. This wasn’t Bill Belichick being asked about a pro-Trump letter that was allegedly written and that the soonto-be president-elect read aloud at New Hampshire campaign rally. This wasn’t Red Sox owners John Henry and Tom Werner and thenGM Theo Epstein stumping for John Kerry in New Hampshire a few days after the Sox had won their first World Series in 86 years.
This was Tiger Woods being asked to dance, and saying, no, thank you, he’d rather not dance ... and then being verbally hacked to pieces for not dancing.
Let’s be grown-ups about this. If you’re a public person and you make political statements — and this includes ball caps and love letters — you’re going to get asked about it. But if you’re a public person who chooses to remain on the bench, or who simply isn’t in the mood to talk politics while headed for he clubhouse, that doesn’t merit the kind of beatdown Woods took last week.
It’s one thing when your friendly neighborhood leather lung mangles the facts while talking politics or history at the corner bar. For decades, this is the kind of stuff that TV and movie writers turned into comedic gold, such as when Archie Bunker made reference to “Richard E. Nixon,” or when John Blutarsky from “Animal House” talked about the Germans bombing Pearl Harbor.
But that’s fiction. In the real world, public figures pay a terrible price if they venture into politics or history and get their talking points mixed up.
Let’s go back to that fifth hole yesterday: Woods gave his 25-foot putt plenty of thought and study and almost nailed it ... but still was a little bit off.
It’s the little bit off that can get you into trouble when you’re talking politics, especially when you’re on an empty stomach.
Besides, Tiger Woods, like Donald Trump, has a base. In Tiger’s case, the base is the thousands of adoring fans who crowd the rope line every hole he plays, hoping for so much as a glance at a chip shot or drive. The rest of the world may want Tiger to take a stand or be a voice; this little slice of the world just wants the golf.
“I grew up watching Tiger Woods,” said Mike Quinn, a 28-year-old from Fall River who followed Woods from hole to hole yesterday. “He still has that thing ... that magic, that presence. That thing that nobody else . . . well, maybe Phil (Mickelson) has it, but only a little. Not like Tiger.”
Quinn, a pragmatist, pointed out that “some of Tiger’s transgressions have been bad, but he’s been held accountable for them.” And the politics?
“I don’t need to know what his opinions are,” he said.
From John Geer, a retiree from Lowell, to Colin Caso, a 15-yearold from Uxbridge, the sentiments were the same: Nobody showed up yesterday to get Tiger’s views on race relations in the United States.
That’s not a good thing. It’s not a bad thing. It’s a pro athlete exercising his right to keep his yap shut.
As for that 25-foot putt on the fifth hole, Woods never thought it was going in.
“I was just trying to get it close,” he said. “It was an interesting little read, though. It was breaking hard left to right coming down the hill, but it streams up ... it wants to be tugged to the left edge of the green, and it definitely did.
So there. Tiger Woods spoke for the left and the right. Everyone went home happy.