As many of my regular readers know, I've been all over Tiger Woods lately concerning his very public campaign against "illegal drivers." To say the least, I'm concerned that Woods' statements are driven at least in part due to his reported $100 million endorsement deal with Nike, and that most reporters covering the issue are simply taking Woods' statements at face value.
For all I know, Woods might be exactly right. What concerns me is that few seem willing to examine his claims with the sort of scrutiny they deserve. This morning, the New York Daily News' Mike Lupica finally picked up on what I'd been talking about:
But what Tiger is doing right now often sounds way too much like a witch hunt, led by the best golfer and a huge company with its own agenda, one that has everything to do with the good of Nike and nothing at all to do with the good of golf. Tiger's got a driver he took out of his bag once in one of his U.S. Open rounds. That's supposed to be everybody else's fault.Jack Nicklaus was a much more gracious loser than this. Wood is too great a player to sound like this big a baby, and this much of a phony.
One reader of mine who I feel the need to pay attention to when it comes to the issues in the game of Golf, Peggy, begs to differ:
I think he (Woods), like many many fans of golf, is very concerned about the negative impact technology is having on the game (my goodness, there is now even talk of taking Pebble Beach out of the US Open rotation because it is so "short"). Tiger declines to opine on controversial subjects that he deems out of his area of expertise (i.e., on the S.C. confederate flag of issue). I think we can all agree that golf is his area of expertise, and he must feel very strongly about his position to be willing to get the media in an uproar about it. As Notah Begay recently observed: "You hit one or one-and-a-half clubs less to a par 3 than the guy you're playing with. Then on the next par 4 he drives it 10 yards past you. Something's not right."
I take Peggy's point, but I can't help but keep hearing alarm bells every time Woods opens his mouth -- alarm bells that keep warning me that even a personage of Woods' stature in golf shouldn't be taken on the value of his word alone. Even in Peggy's note above, I can't help but notice that Woods' claims are backed up by Begay, an old friend and one of his former teammates at Stanford.
Remember, it was Ronald Reagan who said: "Trust, but verify." I think Woods' claims deserve no less strenuous a test.
