Tiga, Tiga Woods Ya'll

Tiger Woods has won 14 majors.
Tiger Woods has been PGA Player of the Year 10 times.
Tiger Woods has won 97 tournaments as a professional.
Tiger Woods has engrossed over 1 BILLION dollars throughout his career.
Tiger Woods has cheated on his wife and family.
I am not surprised.

Allow me to begin by saying that I am a very big Tiger Woods fan. Or was. Or am? I've watched him play since he burst onto the scene to win the '97 Masters. Three years later, in 2000, he performed what is still the most dominating athletic performance I have EVER seen, winning the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach by 15 strokes. Throughout the course of his career he has met ridiculously high expectations put on him by the fans, the media, and himself. Even when the bar is raised to unreasonable heights, he always manages to jump over it, and does so with professionalism and style not seen anywhere else.

Until now.

I feel lost. I feel like I just found out Santa Claus is a pedophile.

The weird thing is, I am not surprised. Not one bit. We see this sort of thing out of professional athletes constantly, and if you take half a second to think about the make up of the top level athlete it is pretty easy to see how this sort of thing happens. I'm no psychologist, but these guys are killers. Muhammad Ali was extremely infamous for his "carefree" attitude to his "wives." Kobe Bryant has admitted to cheating on his wife in Colorado. Wilt Chamberlain claims to have slept with over 10,000 women (I'll save ya the time, it's 1 a day for over 27 years). These types of people do not understand the word "satisfaction." Most people will win a championship or a major, be extremely happy, and try hard to win another. These guys approach every shot they take and every game they play as hungry as they did the first time around. That is why we love watching them play. They are a different type of person.

So if one title is not enough, one major not enough, why are we to expect one woman would be enough? Don't get me wrong, I am in no way condoning adultery. I am saying is that Tiger Woods is who he is. It is his uncontrollable urge to have it all on the golf course that makes us love him, and it is his uncontrollable urge to have it all off the golf course that now makes us despise him.

With more women coming out of the woodwork on a daily basis, you have to wonder how deep the rabbit hole really goes. Throw in the fact that the Florida trooper who arrived on the scene is now asking for the blood samples from that evening due to a suspicion of alcohol being involved and it is only getting darker for Tiger.

Fortunately for him, tomorrow is another day. This will probably get worse before it gets better, but eventually it will blow over. This month its Tiger's affairs, next month it will be Mike Greenberg's sex change operation.

I, for one, will most likely continue to root for Tiger. His actions are detestable, and the fact that he is a role model for so many young men is a tragedy. That being said, he is the best in the world at what he does and I get excited watching him play. I suspect this years Masters to be a lot like last years NBA finals where I found myself marveling at how great Kobe really is.

But if a couple years down the road we happen to hear that Tiger "is long off the tee, enjoys the thick stuff, has a great stroke, can bend it both ways, and always gets up and down" (see I knew I would get them all in somehow) well... don't expect me to be surprised.


Brian "one-in-a-hole, er, hole-in-one" Reinhart