If you came within 30 meters of a television screen in the last five days, you’re probably well aware that professional golf’s most storied competition, The Master’s, was played out on the hallowed fairways of Augusta National Golf Course this weekend. The annual tournament attracts the top talent in international golf, who compete for a sizeable purse and the honor of wearing a garish green sports coat that, were you actually to don it, would have guests handing you the valet keys in pretty much any other country club in North America. Still, in a sport that’s as ruthlessly marketed at professional golf – with its Waste Management Phoenix Open and ZurichClassic of New Orleans (??), the goofy jacket and hard nosed traditionalism of the Master’s still retains a kind of antebellum (or at least anteforum) gentility that’s refreshing. It’s a kind of disciplined focus on protocol that appeals to corporate types who get hard over the prospect of expensive cigars smoked in the wood paneled privacy of exclusive clubs. (No cell phones, please!)
The recurrent Master’s leitmotifs of Jim Crowe racism and mysogyny do little to dull the appeal of the event — hell, they burnish it. 13 years after Tiger Woods became the youngest person to winthe Master’s and the first african american man to win it, and seven years after the issue of gender discrimination at the club caused headlines, not much has changed at Augusta, while the rest of us have just moved on. These days, we’ve got bigger fish to fry.
Of course, our country’s centuries-long obsession with race took a back seat this year to our other main obsession: sex. This was, perhaps, unavoidable, with mega-star Tiger Woods using the tournament to make his comeback from a all too brief respite from the game. It was a tumultuous five months in which the greatest golfer of his generation was revealed to be one of the great womanizers of his generation, too. Treated for a “sex addiction” in the world renowned medical hub of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Woods made numerous, heart-felt apologies to his fans and his family only to see the content of some raunchy text message exchanges with a mistress aired in public.
The question coming into the tournament was whether Tiger could put the controversy behind him and “own the grass” (to *ahem* coin a phrase) of Augusta. True to form, Woods played with the kind of robotic consistency that’s won him four Master’s and fourteen majors titles. Still, Going into Sunday Woods trailed some able competitors with considerably more wholesome stories. Notably, Phil Mickelson, a two time Master’s winner, husband and father who’s wife, Amy is battling breast cancer. Mickelson put together a masterful round on Saturday, catapulting himself into contention with an eagle-eagle-birdie combination, then played strong on Sunday, while Woods was went +3 over the fist five holes.
While Mickelson was touchingly saluting his wife from the winner’s circle — “It’s been an emotional year and I’m very proud of my wife and the struggle she has been through,” he told CBS– Woods was rueing the anti-climax to his choking, slapping and f***king world tour. “”I only enter events to win, I didn’t get it done,” he was quoted as saying, before announcing that he’d be taking still more time off before rejoining the tour. You half expected him to don some Ray Bans and an declare “I’ll be back” in his best Austrian accent.
But does anyone really care? The mainstream sports media, of course, smeared some Vaseline over the moral lense and declared that, win or not, Tiger’s ability to play his way into the top five at the tournament was nothing short of a miracle and a sign that Tiger had put his personal travails behind him and was indisputably “back.” As if a man that could march to the victor’s circle in 14 majors while carrying on simultaneous affairs with his secretary, strippers, porn stars and a dozen or more other women was likely to be sidetracked by bad press or, god forbid, a conscience. If nothing else, the past few months have exposed for all of us how thin was the man’s veneer of focus, discipline and control. No monument to our human potential, the Ambien-guzzling, womanizing Tiger of the last few months seems more a throwback to our reptilian past – a creature designed to do little more than sleep, eat, golf and make little Tigers. Forget about having the man represent a sports drink. I’m not sure I want him representing my species!
If Tiger was the right figure for bubble America — hyped up, super human and – yes- deceptively rotten, then maybe Mickelson is a superstar for our times: humble, hard working, and reliable (if sometimes boring) in his greatness. Here’s wishing him many more!
