Back in the spotlight: A serious looking Tiger Woods is the main focus as fans battle to take his picture on the first tee
Ludwig van Beethoven’s liver was greenish-blue in colour, leathery in consistency and half its normal size. The same autopsy revealed his spleen was twice as large as it should be.
Genius is funny like that. Sometimes it likes a drink, sometimes it likes a smoke, sometimes it likes having sex with muffin waitresses in church parking lots. Genius needs to take the edge off. Genius needs to escape. Even after another lacerating public address, there remain many unanswered questions about Tiger Woods. The greatest even he cannot satisfy, because it cuts to the heart of his professional existence.
Suppose Bad Tiger was the key to it all? Suppose the waitresses and party girls were serving a purpose, fulfilling a need every bit as necessary as a good caddie or a swing coach? Suppose the hookers, the strippers, the porn actresses, the girls in the diners, the clubs, the casinos, suppose the whole coterie of casual sexual acquaintances were what helped make Woods the best golfer in the world?
Suppose they were his equivalent of Beethoven’s beloved Hungarian red wine, complementing his genius, soothing its rage, rather than numbing its potency.
There will be the odd servant of temperance who thinks Beethoven underachieved through nine symphonies, seven concertos, 48 sonatas and an opera, just as there will be those who wonder if Woods would have won more than his 14 major titles had his mind, and other major organs, not been elsewhere.
We are about to find out. This, the unlikely second act of an American life, is to be played straight, save the occasional bout of Buddhist contemplation.
Woods says that was what got him through in the beginning, and must hope it can again. ‘I would like to say yes,’ was his response when asked if his recent past behaviour had a negative impact on his golf, but he could not say for certain.
A very detailed article in the magazine Vanity Fair contained an interview with one of his mis tresses, Mindy Lawton. She said Woods called her for a rendezvous
at 5.30am before departing for a significant tournament.
‘He wanted that last piece of booty before he could go,’ she said. ‘To make him shoot better.’
Back in the swing of it again: Woods in action at Augusta ahead of the MastersBuddha versus booty, that is the issue from here, as Woods gropes for inner peace, as opposed to just a piece. Meditation versus fornication; will his new sanctuary do for him as his old one did?
Woods cannot afford to see it this way. He cannot afford to see any of his most base behaviour as having a potentially constructive side-effect.
In the Dennis Potter play, Brimstone and Treacle, a despicable act, a brutal rape, brings a teenage girl out of a coma. Woods cannot consider moral philosophy if his treatment is to work. He needs to see his life in black and white, good versus bad, the way forward against the road to perdition.
He has spent 45 days in rehabilitation having his behaviour broken down in a way he described as brutal. ‘I lied to myself and lied to others,’ he said. ‘Just because I was winning golf tournaments, it doesn’t mean a thing. When you strip all that away and start realising what you have done, the magnitude of it, having to look at myself in a light I never wanted to look at myself, how far astray I got from my core morals and the morals that my mum and dad taught me; that was difficult. When you live a life where you are lying all the time, life is not fun. That’s where I was.
‘What I have done over the past years has been terrible to my family, and the fact I was still winning is irrelevant considering the pain and damage I have caused. I’m going to have to explain all this to my kids because it is my responsibility. I did it.
‘I spent Christmas Day with my family and then went off from there into treatment and I missed my son’s first birthday and that hurts. I will never miss another one. I can’t go back to where I was. That birthday was very hard, it is something I regret and will for the rest of my life.’
Woods has to buy into this, the most psychologically raw aspect of his rehabilitation. He has to strip away his ego, his denial, his sense of entitlement.
He must recognise his harmful patterns and desires. We hear similar confessionals from every celebrity who has transgressed and they can sound robotic, even insincere.
source :dailymail
