So does this mean we can stop now?
Stop trying to deprogram the monster we helped create. Quit hurling matches at the mansion we rushed to build.
Leave Tiger Woods alone, already.
Here’s a cease and desist order, an injunction against all further analysis of Tiger’s swing, grip, calendar, travel plans, love life or anything else we might have second-guessed over the past three years.
And let’s supplement these restrictions with a moratorium on the word “slump” and a banishment of all murmuring that the world’s greatest golfer “raised the bar” for his competition and made Rich Beem and Ben Curtis worthy to carry his sand wedge.
Listen, Tiger is the stinkin’ bar, OK?
The Beatles had the right to go solo, marry people we didn’t like and explore every entry in the book of Obscure Eastern Mystic Religions. Michael Jordan didn’t need our permission to spend 18 months playing minor league baseball and Texas Hold ‘Em.
‘Twas Tiger Woods’ privilege, likewise, to do whatever he wanted, however he wanted, with whomever he wanted, or not, and we, meaning the media and the consuming public, should have sat still and shut our collective trap.
He is the best there is, becoming the best there’s ever been, and the best there will be for a long, long time.
By winning the Masters with a 15-foot birdie putt on the first sudden-death playoff hole Sunday, Woods sent thousands of jealous duffers disguised as sports columnists scurrying to their laptops to hunt-and-peck 800-word retractions. Only they weren’t written as such.
Our brethren in the broadcast media are equally shameless.
I’m thunderstruck by the high volume of wordsmiths tripping over one another these last two nights to “remind” us they saw it coming. They told us so.
Forget that we couldn’t coast two yards down the cart path of life without having some alarmist dredge up that double-digit streak of major championships played without a Tiger triumph.
Never mind that everyone cringed when he changed caddies, hollered when he switched coaches, gasped when he started spending more time with supermodels than personal trainers.
Suddenly it’s even money that Woods will win the Grand Slam in 2005. At this rate, George W. Bush will be the sitting president when Tiger bags 10 more of the Big Four and puts Jack Nicklaus’ untouchable record of 18 in his rear-view mirror.
The about face is that bad, that embarrassing.
Happily, for me, there’s nothing to retract. During Tiger’s first decade of dominion, I’ve only aired two or three opinions about his game, all glowing ones.
There’s no sense in wasting words, really. Some athletes defy description, and Tiger heads that short list. What he’s done for golf deserves to stand alone without analysis from me or any other pundit whose low round last year was 103.
No human being is above reproach, but some accomplishments are.
Tiger Woods owes you and me nothing. He could stow his gazillions in the baggage compartment of a Lear jet, play only on exotic, foreign soil, rely solely on his talent without setting one spike on a practice range, finish 24th every week and guffaw all the way to a Swiss bank.
Not that I expect that to happen. I expect Tiger Woods to keep playing transcendent golf, keep leaving course superintendents scratching their head, keep winning majors and retire as the greatest and most important sports figure of my lifetime.
I’d still expect it even if Chris DiMarco were the one making the late-night talk show rounds this week as the latest Tiger tamer.
And I’d be the lone voice of reason in a fickle army of front-runners.
When the post-game love fest was over Sunday, I’m sure Tiger Woods slept marvelously. But I wonder how the people who cover his exploits for a living did the same.
Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. His e-mail is koakes@sunjournal.com.
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