ESPN.com writer Rick Reilly published an article today entitled "Woods needs to clean up his act" in which he precedes to explain why Tiger Woods needs to stop with his outbursts of disgust and rage on the course because it sets a bad example for the kids. I found this article interesting and here are a few observations.
First, Reilly brings up a lot of good points regarding Tiger often slamming clubs and cussing whenever he hits a bad shot, but at the same time I feel that Reilly tries hard to throw in several sentences here and there about the good that Tiger does in hopes of still landing the coveted Tiger one-on-one interview for his next video essay. Reilly is in an odd place because he works for ESPN and puts together cheesy, albeit entertaining essay's and blogs for their various shows thus he needs access to players, coaches, caddies, owners etc. In order to do that he has to play nice and put together fun, soft stories that won't offend people. So when he steps out and completely rips arguably the most famous athlete of our generation, he is wadding into waters that he rarely travels into. Reilly isn't T.J. Simers or Mark May or any of these sports "journalists" that make a living on tearing apart and highlighting the negatives of athletes as opposed to the good things going on. So this article comes across as a bit of an angry diatribe that has boiled up inside Reilly for awhile. What is going to be interesting is at next years U.S. Open when Tiger shows the competitive emotion and win at all cost attitude he often puts on display and Reilly suddenly decides to spin it around to make another entertaining essay promoting himself...this business has a fine line of getting a story and being two-faced and Reilly might end up tip-toeing that line in the near future.
The second problem I see with the Tiger anger issue is this...Tiger has injected golf with a passion and a vigor that the sport was missing for the better part of 2 decades (if not longer). Part of that interest is undoubtedly stirred by the passionate fist-pumps, dramatic yells and pure competitive spirit of Tiger. We loved the "seek, kill and destroy" attitude that we saw in the 2008 U.S. Open when Tiger hunted down Rocco. And when Woods ran wild on the entire field of golfers in 2000 winning 9 tournaments and 3 Majors, we all couldn't take our eyes of the fierce drive of this young golfer. So to only care about a sport because of how passionate and successful one man is and then to write about how tired we are of his over the top and sometimes angry emotion is unfair.
If we want to watch golf because we are in awe of Tiger's passion and drive for victory then great, but we can't pick and choose what aspects of a champion we want Tiger to have. Ask Kobe, ask Michael Phelps, ask Lance Armstrong...these athletes are just as passionate about winning and perfection as Tiger is and they too would slam their club down if given the chance.
Go ahead and check out Reilly's article and let me know what you think.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?id=4347419
1 comment:
No offense to Mr. Reilly, but I don't even think kids watch golf, its all of the old men in the world lol. I think Tiger is the last person to be ripped on for his outbursts. Reilly should be targeting the athletes in the sports kids do watch where these idolized athletes are throwing F-bombs, getting ejected from games and having off the field issues constantly. I don't think once has Tiger been in the news for off the field issues such as cheating on his wife(kobe), caught doing drugs(Manny), or having sex with transvestites(Ronaldo, thats for the soccer fans). I think Tiger is the last person that should be criticized because even if his passion and competitiveness could be out of line sometimes it doesn't compare to some of the athletes idolized in other prominent sports.
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