I FIND MYSELF CARING ABOUT -= WHAT???

He is standing over a putt of about 6 feet. The commentator speaks: “He needs this birdie putt to help get his confidence back.” Everyone is a psychological authority. Everyone has an opinion. My favourite golf writer opines that his problem is not with his swing. It’s in his head. The golf world is “all Tiger all the time.” And I, not a huge gold fan, find myself caring. Why?

I often wish that I had some decent grounding in the workings of the mind. I can only be an armchair psychologist at best. Perhaps I have had a lot of experience listening to people talk and trying to understand why they say what they do. I did it for a living for many years. But Tiger has me buffaloed. He’s the greatest golfer of all time, although some would still argue that that label belongs to Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, or Jack Nicklaus. But no one brought more charisma to the game. No one in the past was able to raise the ratings for golf on TV to the heights that Tiger has. And no one has ever fallen so far.

The commentator who said:”He has to sink that putt to regain some of his confidence” is dead wrong. Tiger’s demise is not about confidence because all he would need to fix that is to tweak his swing and make it the deadly weapon it once was.

Whether we were golf fans or not, we marveled at his virtuosity. I remember him as a five year old appearing, with his doting (did he dote too much?) father on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. Many of us remember his as an amateur playing out of Stanford University. My most vivid memory was his monumental win at his first Master’s as a pro. He simply ran away from the rest of the field. I could look it up I suppose to be certain of the number. I think he won it by something prodigious, like 12 strokes. The golf world became Tiger’s and the fight was on to see who would come in second. He was beyond human. I was not fond of his theatrics, either when he sank a big putt and pumped his arm, or when he missed something he alone should always sink and cursed, not always under his breath. He was, as the poets say, the cynosure of all eyes.

His “confidence” left him the day he was publicly shamed. His hubris could not survive the fall. He needed adoration and adulation. He gets it now, but more out of sympathy for his fall from lofty heights. He has become something that does not suit his personality: an underdog.

I watched him today. Under par but still about ten strokes off the lead. I know what’s missing. It’s the headlong pursuit of excellence and the spoils of war that go with that excellence. I watched him and realized that there is, to borrow from Gertrude Stein, “No there there.” He has no focus because all his focus was derived from being idolized. His success bred material success. It bred a magnetic attraction to and from women, many of them unattainable except to the elite. His wife was a picture of the front page of “Elle: magazine. She was a trophy. He needed trophies. His choices sexually were indiscriminate and promiscuous. But the fact was that whatever wanted he could get made him larger than life. So his swing prospered along with his swinging life style.

I think that if Tiger is ever to become the unconquerable hero of golf again, He will have to forget all the nonsense about humility and sexual temperance. He has to go back to taking what he has coming to him. He has to go back to deserving cheers and sexual prowess. Never mind all that rubbish about treatment for “sexual addiction.” He is and will always be a narcissist. That is where his talent rises. That is where his need for constant self-gratification originates. Once he understands that he can’t be what people think he should be, and rediscovers the child of fortune that he deserves to be – he’ll get his confidence back He’ll be what every 20 handicap hacker would like to be. Get back to being an idol, - in his own mind.

In a world where so many people enjoy heroes falling off pedestals, there is little hope that Tiger can truly be himself again. He has been told he has to be ashamed. It doesn’t fit.