Pssst, Tiges. I know you’re busy with the Masters starting tonight and all, but I’ve got this ripper idea I want you to hear. You might’ve thought car park sex with cocktail waitresses was mind-blowing, but forget it. This is the real deal.
Anyway, here’s the idea. Be yourself. That’s it. I could go on all day, but that’s the guts of it. Be the guy you really are. Or the guy you were, before the advisers and minders hooked their manicured claws into you.
Fact is Tiger, since you burst onto the world stage winning your first Masters in 1997, your golf has been dynamic as your off-course persona has been as dull. We fans have always kinda felt that if we were going to have a good time at an American billionaire’s BBQ, we’d try Warren Buffet’s house before we rocked up with a six-pack to the Woods mansion.
The irony is, your tightly-controlled image is precisely what hastened your downfall, right Tiges? Fake you, greater urge to screw. Pretty sure Freud himself would’ve put it that way.
That staged confession at Rancho El Fako a couple of months ago? Disastrous. Counterfeit crap. It was Bland Tiger to protect Brand Tiger, and no one with a brain bought a word of it
But now you’re back playing golf instead of playing the field, you’ve got a chance to put Brand Tiger to bed forever. Umm, so to speak.
Already, we’ve seen signs you might be lightening up. The ashen face was absent in your presser this week. Your grey practice shirt had a stripe of colour in it. Pretty sure I even caught a smile. Good. More of that.
What everyone wants – and what I bet even Elin wants – is for you to draw on the reserves of charisma you subjugated for so long to please those bastard management consultants who sponsored you.
And the thing is, you do have charisma. That uncanny ability you have to make clutch putts when it really counts? I reckon it’s part of the same skill set that gives you a wicked sense of comic timing.
Before I go, let me remind you of the great one-liner you delivered at the winner’s press conference at the Australian Masters last November. Because Tiges, I’ve been in a squillion of those pressers, and your line was the best.
A scene setter: you hit an amazing shot on the 16th. Just a beautifully judged shot from about 180m that lipped out of the hole. The shot effectively sealed your win, and meant you had victories on all populated continents.
So anyway, a journo asked about that shot, in words that were half fawning, half cheeky. “Was it as good for you as it was for us?” he asked.
I know, I know. The sheer irony of the sexual metaphor. But the point is, there’d been an orgy of love directed your way in Melbourne that week (from fans, at least), and your answer cleverly acknowledged that.
“Well,” you responded, with a pause for effect. “Let’s just say that if the ball had gone in the hole I might have had to light up a smoke afterwards”.
The room was in raptures. What an answer! What a guy! What a champion!
Tiges, no one’s suggesting you get too risqué at stuffy Augusta National this week. But if you at least act like yourself, that’d be a much bigger triumph than winning a dumb old golf tournament, don’t you think?
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