A Good Golfer Broiled: Tiger Woods Just Getting Started

Has Whack and Hack been taken?

Scrambling headline writers are getting desperate in the contest to score big in the Tiger Woods pun contest.

Right now, reporters all over the world are duct-taped to chairs, roped to desk legs, super glued to their computers, all in an effort by headline writers world wide to win the golf/Tiger pun-a-thon.

“More Woods. More Woods,” editors scream as they frantically try to churn up the fire, flailing on their reporters to just please find something new.

“Can we get a story that justifies using ‘belly putter’? How about ‘Dew Sweeper’ or ‘Die in the Hole’? C’mon, people, this ain’t no 19th hole, ya know...heh, heh!”

In the Saturday Washington Post, a story by John Feinstein, who, it is noted, has written 25 books, is headlined “A Rough Tiger Can’t Escape.” Get it? A “ROUGH” Tiger.

Ewwww...I bet that one only has been used about 256 times. Nice.

Of course (get it:? “COURSE”), Feinstein, who wrote a book about the PGA, believes the Tiger Woods story ranks as one of the most important of all time.

“This isn't Paris Hilton going to jail or some Hollywood couple breaking up and reconciling every other month,” he writes. “ It isn't even the governor of South Carolina disappearing for several days to be with his mistress.”

Hmmm. The South Carolina governor can order the National Guard into the state to insure domestic tranquility or order evacuation of the state in cases of natural disasters like 1999’s Hurricane Hugo.

According to Feinstein, Woods’ importance trumps that of a man who could order thousands of National Guardsmen to march in, heavily armed, and, perhaps, even question whether one had put one too many sticks in his golf bag.

Turns out, Feinstein even believes children from every corner of the world believed they were Tiger Woods.

“Michael Jordan (Woods's role model in many ways) once did a commercial that urged people to "Be like Mike." The Woods version was an ad in which children around the world looked into a camera and said, "I am Tiger Woods,” Feinstein breathlessly writes.

FORE! Don’t look now, Mr. Feinstein, but I believe those children probably didn’t just stroll up to the nearest camera, in Darfur or Jamaica or Mexico City, to proclaim their new identity as da Tiger man.

There are, like, um, these guys, who according to the television series “Mad Men” frantically suck down Scotch and cigarettes all day (if not ascertaining whether their mistresses got...well, ahem...a bikini wax recently), and then make up slogans and jingles and pretty pictures to convince you to buy a product.

Yeah, I really liked it when the whole world got together to warble about how they would like to buy the world a Coke, but then I figured out if the whole world was slurping Cokes and singing about how they’d like to buy the world a Coke, who was left to buy for?

Mr. Feinstein duffs it when he says the “I am Tiger Woods” commercial message “was simple: Everyone should aspire to grow up to be Tiger Woods.”

If everyone tried to be Tiger Woods, then who would be like Mike? Or buy the world a Coke to keep it company?

Wasn’t the “I Am Tiger Woods” message also about a teeny, tiny check mark into the account books of a certain shoe company?

Of course (double lie, folks, double lie), Feinstein says all those chil’ren ‘round the world who stepped and shouted those candid messages about being Tiger Woods don’t want to be Tiger anymore.

“That’s over now. Oh sure, the kids will still want the athletic talent and the money, but they won’t want the legacy created in the past week by Wood’s admission...” Feinstein writes.

Yer joshing us, right, Mr. Feinstein? For hundreds and hundreds of days before the first tournament Tiger Woods announces he is playing in, ESPN, and hundreds of other of their ilk, will splay it from end to the other. 

Analysts, psycho-analysts, mistresses, wanna-be-mistresses, celebrity attorneys, celebrity mistresses’ attorneys,  marketing gurus, ad men (no cigarettes and Scotch for those boys now days...gotta keep healthy for the trips overseas to ratchet up the workforce), and even just plain ol’ golf announcers will prove terrorist attacks are nuthin’ compared to a man with a stick trying to get a ball in a hole after he was pilloried for doing just about the same thing in his off-duty hours.

Kids posting on Facebook will ask “How do I become Tiger Woods” and whip up You Tube videos posturing as Tiger Woods.

A golf announcer might just resurrect an ol’ bikini wax reference because, after what we’ve just seen in ‘golf analysis’ and journalism, what’s a few split hairs?

Jeepers, Mr. Feinstein, you’ll probably write another bestselling book. May I suggest a working title of "A Good Walk Soiled?"