When you come to think of it that is the secret of most of the great holes all over the world. They all have some kind of a twist. C.B. MACDONALD
Not to sound like Tim Finchem...but there are so many more elements to golf tournament sponsorship than just Tiger Woods. The LA Times' Dan Neil--an incredible auto reviewer and Pulitzer winner--reinforces the that lack of sponsorship understanding in a point-misser piece suggesting Tiger's phony image means all of pro golf is a charade unworthy of corporate support.
Without Woods, the game trails off and rolls back into the weeds of cultural irrelevance, long weekend tourneys among more or less evenly matched men in more or less equally ugly clothes slapping balls around while the real players get loaded in corporate hospitality tents. There is no heroism in golf without Tiger -- at least the Tiger we thought we knew -- no drama, and scant male pulchritude besides. Unless your business is actual golf balls or clubs (Titleist or Ping or whatever), I'd say your marketing dollars could be best spent elsewhere.And, of course, as a practical matter, there will be far fewer eyeballs watching golf on TV. Various estimates have the viewing audience sans Tiger dropping by 50%. Who knows if they'll ever come back.
The illusion that professional golf was somehow a sport with a higher calling, a game of honor and ethics played by fundamentally decent men, has been shattered. This isn't about counting strokes you took while nobody's watching. Tiger's trollop-taking is precisely the sort of thing we've come to expect from pro basketball and football players -- and, shamefully, our indifference implies consent. For the most dominant golfer of all time to be so caddish seems to be a signal that lesser golfers transgress in lesser degrees. In any event, the safe harbor of golf's presumed decency has been drained. Meanwhile, now that the tabloid press has had a taste for golfer flesh, I wouldn't be surprised if we have to live through a season of golf-related exposes. All the more reason for marketers to pull up stakes.
The media coverage debates are heating up and Rich Lerner admits to reading all of the tabloid coverage before fending off critics of the golf world's effort over the years:
Were there times when our reporting bordered on fawning? Yes. Did we miss or dismiss other worthwhile stories because we were focused on Tiger? Yes. But no one that I know called him a God. Great golfer, yes. God, no. Were we surprised to learn of the extent of his affairs? Of course. Tiger ran in a circle that didn’t include any journalists that I know of.
Many have wondered where Golf Digest/Golf World's Jaime Diaz has been during the Tiger crisis. After all, no writer more than Diaz knows Tiger better.
There's a lot to consider in his February, 2010 Golf Digest piece,
I made another cameo with the SI/golf.com roundtable and the Woods saga was kicked around. Here's a fun exchange about future media coverage:
Dick Friedman, senior editor, Sports Illustrated: Yes, this changes everything. Maybe not among the longtime golf media, but suddenly the nongolf media will be out in force, as it is in other sports.
Frank Rich says the Tiger Woods saga is the story of the decade because it sums up the last ten years:
If there’s been a consistent narrative to this year and every other in this decade, it’s that most of us, Bernanke included, have been so easily bamboozled. The men who played us for suckers, whether at Citigroup or Fannie Mae, at the White House or Ted Haggard’s megachurch, are the real movers and shakers of this century’s history so far. That’s why the obvious person of the year is Tiger Woods. His sham beatific image, questioned by almost no one until it collapsed, is nothing if not the farcical reductio ad absurdum of the decade’s flimflams, from the cancerous (the subprime mortgage) to the inane (balloon boy).
Tiger's come to junk mail now...
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
