Every so often a celebrity sex scandal takes over an entire news cycle and turns our perception of a famous figure sideways and upside down quicker than a Michael Phelps bong hit. Few stories in recent memory have been as all-consuming as Tiger Woods’ recently exposed shenanigans, and fewer still have reverberated after the fact in news and lifestyle media coverage.
Like erstwhile mayoral hopeful Adam Giambrone, Woods was caught with his pants down: damning text messages, a slew of lovers progressively revealed, a serious partner (wife, in Tiger’s case) subordinated. One thing the Woods and Giambrone scandals share is both men made things significantly worse for themselves by initially lying about their infidelity and trying to hide from public view. That led to a feeding frenzy befit for tabloids that took over the most respectable of media outlets. Tiger, though, may have had a far better reason for his literal tight lips than the clueless councillor from Davenport. Some reports put Tiger on an overnight flight to Arizona for emergency dental surgery after his wife, Elin, landed a perfect chip shot on his mug on that fateful night in late November.
Tiger has since strongly denied that there has ever been an episode of domestic violence in his relationship, but the evidence—not to mention that his denial was largely the same in substance and style as his initial denial of infidelity—make it tough for a critically thinking person to accept that suggestion at face value.
Now that the Tiger is out of the cage, it’s worth surveying the damage. He has become an easy punch-line, and, by some reports, has offended some with his almost exclusive choice of white lovers. Other golfers on tour haven’t hesitated to criticize his on-course etiquette—cussing and throwing clubs are to Tiger what sunflower seeds and chewing tobacco are to baseball players—and register disagreement with his personal choices.
But the cultural ramifications have been great, too. A whole slew of literature on technology and cheating has popped up. One article explained that texting is the new version of finding the other woman’s perfume on his collar. Tiger’s blown it for all of us.
Executives from Ashley Madison, a self-described affair-arranging company, have been featured in the media talking about their services as if they could be a North American car exec discussing the implications of the Toyota fiasco on their bottom line. Theirs is a service that some adults want, and (unlike Tiger’s lovers) they prioritize your need for discretion.
And what about sex addiction? There have always been practicing sex therapists working on the assumption that sex can be as addictive and destructive as alcohol and tobacco. Now Tiger’s put it in the mainstream. It’s an idea most of us viscerally scoff at, but according to some reports, Elin was so enlightened by what she learned from Tiger’s therapy at a Mississippi clinic that she is seriously looking at keeping him. No doubt there have been a few (but probably not many) wandering lovers around the world whose infidelity is now being looked at in a different light by once-wrathful wronged spouses.
Now Tiger’s children will grow up, much like Chelsea Clinton did, with dad’s infidelity always being the elephant in the room. That’s especially ironic because he has always been one of the most private celebrities in the world relative to his stature.
Oh, and what about that whole professional golf thing? There are probably more than a handful pro golfers on the PGA circuit who are more than slightly bitter that the biggest story so far this season has been Tiger’s personal life. And, for now, the tour has a somewhat mediocre feel to it, with the biggest star at home licking his wounds rather than focusing on winning tournaments.
But that could soon change. Tiger is widely reported to play a low-key tournament in March near the gated community where his Florida mansion is located. That would set him up to play the Masters in April, Elin permitting.
So Tiger and Giambrone, both reckless and irresponsible in their personal conduct, come to a fork in the road together, and that’s where they’ll part. Giambrone will become an obscure footnote in Toronto political history. Tiger, despite having lost more money in sponsorships than the population of some small towns will make combined in their lifetimes, remains a multi-hundred-millionaire who will get paid to play on the nicest golf courses in the world for the rest of his life. And he just might get to keep his supermodel wife, too.
This whole saga makes an escape shot from a bunker on the back nine of Augusta look as simple as a tee shot on a straight par 3 during a practice round, but Tiger, ever the escape artist and miracle worker on the links, looks like he might somehow, unthinkably, land on the green one more time.
