Tiger Woods: Caught In a Bad Romance
99.94 percent of the time, I write about sports. Therefore, 99.94 percent of the time, I have no reason to write about Tiger Woods. But Woods’s current fiasco has transcended sports. Once an uninteresting, but well-respected golfer, Woods has become America’s most polarizing figure. How exactly did this happen?
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(I love the ***** move. Not to throw myself under the bus, but ***** is a quick way to bridge two paragraphs without having to think of a sentence or paragraph to link the two paragraphs. Now on to my completely unrelated second paragraph…)
If I built a list of celebrities whose lives were of relevance to me, Woods would not “make the cut”. In fact, my microscopic level of interest in him has negated my ability to become invested in this story.
I resent the fact that Mike Francesa and US Weekly have spent more time on him and less time on MLB trade talk, and Miley Cyrus respectively, over the past two weeks. If I had things my way, the Tiger story would have ended an hour after it broke.
But sadly, despite my egocentrism, the media does not care about my interests. Woods is the talk of the town whether I like it or not, and there are two common reactions:
A) “Oh man, look how cool Tiger is”- The trendy, sophomoric, male response
B) “Oh man, look what a jerk Tiger is”- The trendy, oblivious, female response
Both sides miss the point.
Tiger Woods is not cool. Tiger Woods is not a jerk. Tiger Woods is simply the embodiment of why love and money don’t mix.
Most people empathize with Elin Woods because of personal experience. Human beings relate to the world through their sense of self because we have little else to compare to. Our sample size consists of the 9000 or so (give or take, depending how north or south of 25 you are) days that we have lived, only a slight percentage of which we have distinct memories.
And nearly everyone has been wronged by a significant other in the past, giving us a seemingly natural inclination to side with the innocent spouse over the billionaire philanderer.
But can any of us really compare to Elin Woods?
It is difficult for me to believe that the doors allowing Elin’s love for Tiger to develop would have opened had Tiger been Kevin Woods, construction worker from Iowa. As a result, their love is manufactured and I cannot feel any sorrier for her than I did for Larry and Cheryl David, a similarly manufactured couple, when the Curb Your Enthusiasm writers decided it was time for them to split.
Is it fair for me to pass this judgment? Maybe not. But the success rate that “regular chicks” have in finding love in celebrities—when was the last time you heard of a celebrity being dumped by a nobody?—is inordinately high, high enough to raise a red flag for me to err on the side of caution and assume that money played an immense role in their relationship.
How many of us have been asked to “give love a chance” with a multi-million dollar backdrop? I suppose the success rate for love of this nature is much higher.
So if Mrs. Woods was simply playing the game, the end (or in this case “ins”) should justify the means. Her husband’s infidelity should be excused—it simply comes with the territory. It would be foolish to apply the same norms and values to Woods’s marriage that we apply to our own.
Yes, it is sad that she was publicly embarrassed and I’d understand if she felt that it was best to leave Tiger. But if she makes this choice, she is reneging on the same "vows"—in celebrity terms, exchange of money for normalcy at home—that got her the lovely house and the beautiful cars that she will continue to occupy. It’s incredulous that the laws of this country will allow her to walk away from this agreement with anything more than a hi-five and a hug, let alone $300 million dollars. Her lifestyle was predicated on being Mrs. Woods; if she is no longer Mrs. Woods, she no longer deserves that lifestyle.
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I have never watched Woods golf in the past, nor do I care to in the future. If he succumbs to his wife’s “Leave golf or I leave you” ultimatum, my life would be unaffected. In fact, it’d be slightly improved if ESPN eliminated their golf coverage and found room for an extra Web Gem or two. That being said, it is unfortunate what has happened to him over the past few weeks. No man deserves this treatment.
There are lessons for ordinary folks to learn from Woods’s demise; the irony is that ordinary folks are those least likely to need them.
What is the duplicate article?
Why is this article offensive?
Where is this article plagiarized from?
Why is this article poorly edited?


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