Tiger Woods: "Winning Takes Care of Everything"

           

          Arguably the largest sex scandal in professional sports happened in 2009 involving the greatest golfer to ever live, Tiger Woods. Woods was a heroic sports icon to everyone before 2009 and was one of the few class act role models in professional sports. Tiger Woods was so appealing to fans not only for his win count, but for the way he won. Woods was a man amongst boys who is the greatest golfer to ever live. The magical moments we have gotten from Tiger Woods are countless. To watch him as a young adult put on that red Nike shirt for the Sunday round, you knew it was never over until the final put. From the time he was just a young boy, Woods was in the spotlight, and handled it oddly ‘perfectly.’ That was until one afternoon in 2009, when news stations began to report Tiger Woods was omitted into the hospital for getting beaten up with his own driver.

Tiger got punished and beaten pretty badly. Evidence came out and we began to connect the dots until it eventually came out that Tiger Woods had cheated on his wife. For those of you who don’t know, Elin Nordegren, who is now Tigers ex-wife, is a beautiful model. Tiger Woods slept with a plethora of women and although he publically apologized and promised to change, he didn’t but instead stayed selfish. Nike recently released a Tiger Woods ad stating, “Winning Takes Care of Everything” and its obvious Tiger cleared this statement before it was published. This just shows how Tiger’s sincere apologies and promises to change was all a bunch of BS. Nike is also at fault for this, but they don’t care because they will benefit from this ad.

            People in our society either love or hate this ad, and the same goes for Tiger Woods. He went from being one of the most famous, well-liked professional athletes of all time into a liar, cheater and embarrassment. Just about every female in the world hates Tiger Woods for what he did, but there are still many men out there who root for Tiger just as faithfully as they did before the 2009 incident. It seems that men realize that the sex scandal doesn’t affect their lives in any way, so they’ll look past that and simply judge Tiger Woods based on his golf game. I regretfully admit that I am a big Tiger Woods fan, always have been and always will be. My reason to back this up is simple. Even before all of this unraveled and reached the media, I was a huge Tiger fan and the sex scandal hasn’t changed my opinion in any way. The reason being is because prior to 2009 I like Tiger Woods as a golfer and only a golfer. I didn’t like Tiger because he was a well-kept together man of class. Not once did I ever root for Tiger to hit a big time putt just because he’s a loyal husband. I was a fan of Tiger the golfer, and nothing more. The only time I ever watched him was when he was playing in tournaments from Thursday to Sunday. There was never a time when I sat in front of the television and watched Tiger starring in a reality TV series.

            I’m not saying what Tiger Woods did in 2009 was right but I’m personally saying I am a fan of him as a golfer and I don’t care what he does outside the course, unless it personally affects me. In terms of the ad that Nike put out, I don’t believe it is all that wrong. Because this happened four years ago and like everyone else should, Tiger moved on. Without the family life, Tiger’s main and only focus now is golf. The ad is simply for all the haters, not the haters who say that he’s a cheater, but the ones that said he couldn’t bounce back from that scandal. Woods receives just as much if not more criticism than any athlete in the world. People want to see him fail, they want him to suffer in misery and the only way Tiger can shut them up is by winning.    

Every single golfer as well as athletes in the world play their respective sports, to win. They’re miserable when they lose and ecstatic when they win. The competitive nature of our society is remarkable and exciting. The same goes for Tiger Woods, he wants to win every time he steps on the course and like we’ve all experienced, when we win all of our other problems don’t seem as bad anymore.