Finally, someone has the courage to say what should have been said a decade ago. You can look the other way when a teenager throws a tantrum on a golf course, but not a 30 year-old professional. His outbursts were/are ridiculous.
Closest I come to golfing is skeet shooting which also relies on the consistent calm application of technique. I can’t imagine that tantrums improve your game.
Given his upbringing, I think Tiger to some extent hates golf but can’t walk away either as so much of his identity is based on it.
All wild speculation on my part.
“His outbursts were/are ridiculous.”
Amen to that...
That whole generation of golfers (Watson, Palmer, Nicklaus, Player, etc.) really made the sport what it is today. Tiger and others may have been the ones responsible for golf’s surge in popularity, but without those other men the sport would be a sliver of what it is today.
Tiger broke virtually every record in professional golf starting when he was what - 20? 21? Up until then, his life was nothing but golf. Nothing else. So he’s never had anything else to fall back on for his self-worth, except not only winning, but besting everyone, all the time.
For awhile, about five years actually, he amazed the world, breaking records over and over and over again. But he’s human, and he peaked, and he had to start dealing with that. But the only place he had to deal with it was within the realm of golf, in the public eye. Imagine all of your personal development exposed like that, to the world, under constant pressure to perform as the best in the world, with hundreds of millions in endorsements on the line, every day. Frankly, I’m surprised he hasn’t cracked up before this.
And while I’m also not not surprised about the intensity of the scorn he’s received, it’s still disappointing to see. People make gods out of other people when they see excellence in them, and then when they fall from grace and are revealed to be merely human, deliver a bloody execution they would never think of deserving themselves. The unforgiving rightiousness is pathetic.
‘Roid Rage.