Tiger needs time to get out of this corner

Jeff Kaley

WAURIKA — One of the problems with allowing your actions to paint you into a corner is that some folks won’t allow you to work your way out.

Ask Tiger Woods.

There’s no doubt the most famous athlete in the world used deception and arrogance to paint himself into a precarious position. Without recounting all the seedy details of the extramarital affairs and such that led to Woods’ fall from grace.

What I’m wondering about, though, is the amateur psycho-analysis that began in November, when Tiger crashed his into a tree, and has continued ad nauseam.

No edition of ESPN Sports Center is complete without a Tiger Woods update, even though there’s been little dramatic news to “update” since he walked out of a not-really-a-news-conference on Feb. 19.

At that event, Woods fessed up and donned sackcloth and ashes, engaging in a self-flagellation exercise that’s been matched by few other public figures in my lifetime.

But there are still radio talk show hosts demanding more pounds of Tiger flesh and skeptics in the print world are continuing to doubt the depth of his contrition.

Self-appointed Freuds among the Great Unwashed — many who wouldn’t know a five iron from a tire iron — are expending a lot of energy trying to figure out Tiger’s “true motives.” Duffers in the 19th Hole are expounding on what needs to happen before they’ll believe Woods regrets his actions and is really trying to clean up his act.

Woods’ fans and detractors have started lotteries to predict when he’ll play again. And there are folks like the caller on a radio talk show Friday, who’s sure Tiger’s scheme is to return at this year’s Masters, because that would put him center stage once again.

We live in a skeptical, cynical age, and in some ways you can’t blame folks for doubting Tiger Woods. It seems too many “heroes” have slipped off the pedestal, although turning sports figures into “heroes” is problematic, because the standard is easily skewed by the over-importance we place on hitting a ball or catching a pass.

I also have some problem with depth of scorn being reached in Woods’ situation. In a society in which over half of marriages fail and sex somehow figures prominently as a cause of those failures, how many of us can cast the first stone?

Even though Woods’ decision to avoid a true press conference angered many media members, to his credit, when facing the music, there was little crawdadding in Tigers’ prepared remarks.

He spoke time and again in defense of his wife Elin, and repeated that he was the only one who had done anything wrong to create the turmoil in his private life.

Isn’t that the acknowledgment of personal responsibility so many skeptics and cynics wanted to hear?

Tiger essentially owned up to having painted himself into a corner, and now this cat has two major tasks in finding his way out: 1. Trying to save his marriage or, at least, salvage some semblance of a family life by helping raise his children; and, 2. Creating or recreating a balanced self-perspective.

Not sure which one of those is more difficult, but it was encouraging when Woods talked about returning to his Buddhist background. A basic concept of Buddhism — which it shares with Christianity, I think — is that the world must be thought of in procedural terms, not in terms of things or substances.

Still, accomplishing these tasks will take time and neither can really be accomplished in the glare of being one of the world’s most well known public figures.

Personally, I think Tiger was sincere during the press conference in February, and since then he’s handled things correctly by staying out of the public eye.

In fact, it doesn’t matter if he ever plays professional golf again. By his own admission, for the first time in years, Tiger Woods is trying to fix something other than his golf swing.

And although it frustrates the media and the sanctimonious among us, that’s all anyone has the right to ask.

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