Tiger's Return by Phil Smith

Tiger Woods burst onto the golf scene when he was two years old on The Mike Douglas Show, you know the video, it’s been played about 1,000,000 times while Jim Nantz retells the viewers about Tiger’s incredible childhood. Tiger captured the imaginations of everyone, from young children to 80 year olds; everyone loved Tiger (except Phil Mickelson and Vijay Sigh). This blog or column or whatever you call this isn’t necessarily to sing Tiger’s praises, it’s to throw out a few ideas as to what may happen April 8th-11th. When writing about a touchy subject such as infidelities by professional athletes, it’s important to separate personal life from professional life. By doing this, one can dutifully piece together separate incidents to form a picture of the whole situation.

Scenario 1:

Tiger sinks into a shell and never plays well again. While this may be extremely unlikely, the potential thought of losing his wife should get under any man’s conscience. If Elin means as much to Tiger as he says he does, who’s to blame him for coming out to Augusta and lay an egg? Presumably Tiger hadn’t golfed much during the 45 days he was in therapy and at the very least he wasn’t hitting golf balls for 8-10 hours a day. There could and should be rust in Tiger’s game that he will have to shake off. If Tiger lays one egg, will he start to listen to the inevitable shit storm the media will create around his failure to focus on the biggest stage in golf? Will Tiger be forced to choose between putting 100% into his marriage and put golf on the backburner? Will Tiger need more therapy (whatever type of therapy that is)? All of these questions may surface if Tiger misses the cut or is completely out of contention come Sunday. While this scenario seems extremely unlikely for a man capable of winning the US Open on one leg, the scandal surrounding him and his family may be the only thing to get under Tiger’s skin. This deals with an emotional attachment that Tiger stomped on repeatedly until everything boiled over that fateful November night.

Scenario 2:

Tiger goes in to F you mode. Utterly and completely unstoppable, Tiger blows everyone away at Augusta. Literally untouchable, Tiger demolishes Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 Major Championships and sets a ridiculous number like 28. As a golf fan I’d love to see this happen. Tiger’s dominance is incredible (obviously) and during this time Tiger doesn’t make a single mistake, professional or personal, he does the interviews he needs and wins all the important tournaments. Slowly Tiger regains all or most of his sponsors, although I doubt he’ll get his disgusting Gatorade back, and everything in Tiger’s life ends up in a perfect little bow. The same little bow we thought he had before November 27th, 2009.

Scenario 3:

This is probably the most plausible scenario, or at least the one I think is most likely. Out of sheer spite towards his co-workers, Tiger wins The Masters, not by a convincing margin but he does something he’s never done during his 18 Major Championships. He comes from behind, for argument’s sake I’ll say from 4th place to beat… uhhh, who cares. Jim Nantz and Nick Faldo will have a field day announcing Tiger’s closing round although they’ll tread carefully; odds are that David Feherty will be the first commentator to make an inappropriate joke about Tiger’s infidelities. Surprisingly, Tiger will take Arnie’s advice and let the media take their shots at him, whether or not he answers is another thing but when Tiger’s press conference rolls around, I’d expect him to at least reply with, “it’s a personal matter between Elin and I.” As for the rest of his career, Tiger will continue to “rehab” his personal issues, slowly and I mean verrrrry slowly, he’ll regain some of the bigger sponsors. For some reason Elin will stay with him and they’ll become even more private than before. Tiger will break Jack’s record and wind up with an even 20. He’ll retire earlier than necessary and work on building a stronger foundation had all of this never boiled over. As for the rest of the golf community, well they’re screwed until Tiger retires and Rory McElroy takes over.