He behaved abominably – of that there’s no doubt. He publicly humiliated his wife and he let us all down – badly. Let he who is without sin..….

Now, we’re told, there’s to be a documentary telling all about his evil father, Earl, and how he programmed Tiger and, indeed, had him hypnotized. If that vitiates Tiger’s accomplishments, what about others who have been encouraged indeed “forced” may not be too strong a word, to do what their father couldn’t? Martin Luther King Jr. comes to mind. So does Mickey Mantle whose father once gave him a licking for batting right against a right hander in a Little league game! He was named Mickey in honour of his father’s idol, Mickey Cochrane, the Hall of Famer with the Philadelphia Athletics and Detroit Tigers.

What about royalty brought up to be royalty? Business tycoons who prod their kids into the same business? Labour union people that instill the principles of unionism in their kids? Religious leaders etc etc. This criticism of Earl Woods is no doubt accurate but who amongst us has not been programmed by our upbringing?

It’s indeed time to “LAY OFF TIGER WOODS”!

Let’s remember that this man has won 14 Majors and before this year won one out of three tournaments he played in. Here is a man who mentally as well as physically destroyed his opposition. This guy utterly revolutionized the game of golf and set standards that are still to be matched.

Let’s remember the 2008 US Open, probably the best played Major of all time where he played 91 holes in agony with a broken bone in his leg to beat the courageous Rocco Mediate.

For the love of God, let’s remember the Tiger Woods Foundation into which he has poured huge sums of money and personal effort to help inner city kids NOT to play golf but to get a decent education.

Leave Tiger alone. Let him work through his problem and suffer with his own gremlins and his conscience. Leave Earl Woods out, that part of Tiger’s story has been played out to a fare-thee-well.

Above all, it’s time to stop the piling on and leave Tiger Woods be.

There is no question that his self confidence has been impaired if not shattered and that his steely confidence has, until now, screwed up the heads of his opponents. The cock of the walk is now an ordinary bird, no longer with the flock deferring to him. He’s lost some huge sponsors and, I suspect, the only reason Nike hasn’t shown him the door is because they have too many golf balls and sportswear with his face on them.

The questions are these – has Tiger lost his swing? Has he lost the mental toughness that made opponents creep? Is he in financial trouble?

In the first place the answer is yes. As a former low handicap player and professional instructor I’ve been saying for some time that he’s been what is called “dipping” or letting his head drop at impact. That I could see that and his instructor could not tells me he should go back to Butch Harmon, son of a former Masters Championship, who by all accounts is a superb teacher, and the one who coached him to his marvelous career start.

The second question is more difficult to assess. That he’s lost his ability to spook other golfers, at least for now, is clear. What is also obvious is that if he cannot summon up that massive confidence he had, he may be just another good golfer.

Amazing though it may be, he could be in financial trouble. He’s lost big contracts, as mentioned. He will no longer get $3 million to appear in a local tournament. He’s hardly improving his cash flow on the golf course either.

But there’s more – if he gets a lower cash flow he may have to sell assets and that could be a problem for no matter how expensive your home, your private jet and yacht are, they’re not easy to sell especially in this market.

I hope I’m wrong but you can be sure of this – what he’s gone through (through his inability to keep his pants zipped up) has scarcely helped his golf game and now he knows that unless he can come back to the head of the pack again, more endorsements will go too. Going broke isn’t a pretty sight – I can tell you that from personal experience. Once the first couple of stones start down the mountain, a deluge follows. So it is, in the world of the rich.

I personally think that Tiger will come back to be amongst the best in the world but no longer the unstoppable force he once was.

He has, however, lost 2010 where two majors were played on courses that Tiger knew very well.

He must work towards 2011 and I for one want him to make it because he has made watching golf a great pleasure. His rivals want him back too for it is he who has driven the purses up and only a healthy, physically and mentally tough Tiger Woods can keep them there.

To have won 14 majors before the age of 33 is remarkable and entitles us to say he was the best golfer, by far, of his time and maybe the best of all time.

Golf is a game of inches, as Bobby Jones said, “the six inches between your ears”.  Tiger was taught the mental aspect of golf by his father who said “no one will ever have the mental toughness you will”. Until last November, Tiger’s mental control was unbelievable. Having lost that I doubt if Woods can ever get it again.

In addition to his golfing woes, Tiger will now have financial problems. His enormous empire is sustained by endorsements from places like Nike. They will not be quick to act, but act they will if Tiger doesn’t at least make a decent showing at the PGA championship later this month. If his sponsors leave him, Tiger will have lost his cash flow. I believe that much of the reason for Woods appalling showing in 2010 is worry about money compounded by a huge cash settlement with his wife. You don’t maintain private jets, enormous boats and houses without having huge supplies of money coming in.

This doesn’t mean that Tiger will never again be a big factor in golf. He’s too good a player for that. He just isn’t going to dominate again. Other players while on the one hand getting rid of such a dominant player is good news, realize that the big purses they play for is because of huge television audiences watching golf because Woods is playing.

I do think that Tiger has lost that mental edge and that this will not come back.

And I’m sorry – like so many golf fans I loved to watch Tiger when he had his “game face” on.

I hope he can come back – at 34 he has lots of time.

I just don’t think he can.

I don’t have to tell you that you made an idiot of yourself and made Élin look like a sucker to the entire world. But there are ways to pay damages, as you’re finding out, and you have to live with yourself from here to the end.

Having said that – you’re not the only man or woman to have sex outside the marriage including me. I can say that because I was twice sued for divorce based on my own meandering. That doesn’t make what you did less reprehensible especially when most of us straying mates did not do this as major league world personalities.

Tiger – the media is feasting off you and you’re quite right to tell them that you are moving on.

I’m more worried about your golf game. In addition to your great golf swing, you have been, from the hugely important mental side of the game, the toughest in history. When I saw you in the Masters carelessly reach over the hole and miss scraping a six inch putt, I saw that you are not yourself by a long shot. We all remember the Tiger who was never out of it and now see a badly distracted man.

I saw signs of this before your domestic troubles. A great friend in New Zealand are both huge fans of yours. Before the 2009 British Open I called my pal and said Tiger isn’t going to win because he didn’t get the Scotland early enough to have at least half a dozen practice rounds”. As a low handicapper, I had played Royal Turnberry many times and knew what a test that course is, especially when it’s windy which is most of the time. Similarly I note that you’re not going to St Andrews in time to do some heavy familiarization before this year’s Open. Bad decision. I know you’ve won their twice but it still requires the Tiger preparation of old.

Unless you can get mentally tough again you’ll not be the big threat you’ve always been.

Tiger, you’re only 33 – Ben Hogan didn’t win his first Major until he was 32 and won 6 more after that. My advice to you is to rehire your swing coach – perhaps even go back to Butch Harmon whose Dad, incidentally, won the 1948 Masters. You must have help as every good golfer does.

Then you must do something for which you are famous – put yourself in the present.

I’m one of your legion of dedicated fans and I want you back in the picture so I can watch golf on TV again.

His image was based on lies. Illustration: Adbusters

I was your biggest fan. Now I say to your wife Elin, ‘Sue the bastard!’

He was one of the best ballplayers of all time. He played in the 1919 World Series for the Chicago White Sox and had 12 hits and a .375 batting average — in both cases leading both teams. The 12 hits was a World Series record. He hit the series’ only home run (this was the day of the “dead ball”), committed no errors and even threw out a runner at the plate.

Still, when a number of White Sox players were indicted for “throwing” the series to the Cincinnati Reds in what became known as the “Black Sox Scandal,” Joe Jackson was one of them. Even though he was acquitted by the jury, the new commissioner for baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, banned him for life.

“Shoeless” Joe Jackson became the subject for local writer Bill Kinsella’s book Shoeless Joe, the first book ever serialized by Sports Illustrated which morphed into the wonderful movie Field of Dreams.

When Jackson was arraigned in a Chicago courthouse, the story says that when he came out, a young fan came up to him with tears in his eyes and said, “Say it ain’t so, Joe.” Joe evidently acknowledged to his young hero worshipper that it was so, though in later years Jackson denied the entire incident.

I, an aging hero worshipper, say it now. “Say it ain’t so, Tiger.”

In my youth, which is to say until I reached 50, my unqualified heroes were the Montreal Canadiens. I despised the Toronto Maple Leafs, and on those rare occasions when they beat the Habs, I became doubtful of the Almighty since surely a just God would never allow this to happen. I happened to be in Toronto for the last game of the 1967 series between the Maple Leafs and the Habs, which the former won.

I was inconsolable. All the way home on the subway I felt sure people were staring at me in a combination of contempt and pity. Big Jean, Pocket Rocket, Dickie and Doug ‘arvee (as the Montreal announcer called him), how could this have happened? Don’t you understand the consequences?

Fallen Rocket

My personal hero was the “Rocket” of course, and when he hit a linesman and was suspended for the 1955 series, won by Detroit in seven, which would not have happened if Richard had been there, the injustice was beyond my comprehension — just as it was to the thousands who rioted on March 17. Dammit, it was Hal Laycoe’s fault as the Boston player who had incurred the Rocket’s ire. And when the Rocket said he thought the linesman, Cliff Armstrong, was in fact Laycoe, why not believe him?

One of my low points was the 1972 Russia-Canada Series when the winning goal was scored by a Maple Leaf, Paul Henderson. Wasn’t it Yvan Cournoyer who scored the tying goal and set up Henderson for the winner with a pass my grandmother could have popped in, even though she was dead at the time?

I became a Tiger fan early and solidly. I had never seen anyone quite like this — a man who radically changed the ancient game beyond recognition. He won a Masters by 12 strokes and a U.S. Open by 15. He stared down his opponents and his dad Earl was right when he said, “Tiger, you’ll never play against anyone as mentally tough as you.”

I grieved with Tiger when he lost his dad. I was mesmerized by the 2008 U.S. Open when he won after 91 holes with a broken bone in his leg against a journeyman who thrilled everyone with his grit and guts. While I was sad he didn’t win a major in 2009, I felt personally responsible for his great year as I cheered on every shot of it.

It’s not about mere adultery

I’m not concerned with the morals of the issue which has brought him to his knees and may cripple his career. I would not want my meanderings when I was 33 brought out nor do I need reminding that I’ve been twice divorced. All of you out there who have never committed adultery or never wished the opportunity are better, so please leave the room! Ah, I see there’s still standing room only.

No, this is no time for hypocrisy. This is a time to wonder why we all put Tiger on the biggest pedestal of all time. Why would we think that he was any better a person than the rest of us?

Years ago I played golf with two former battery mates on the Boston Red Sox — Frank Sullivan and Sammy White. They told stories of how when the train came in to the city of their game (teams traveled by train then) there would be a flock of young ladies from which the great hitter Ted Williams would take his pick. They say that Maurice Richard was as good a stick man off ice as on, and that Arnold Palmer was a good “swordsman.” But there was a big difference in the goings-on of a few decades ago and those of today — if only because there wasn’t a “sex alert” media ready to pounce, in living colour, on a wayward athlete.

Back then, reporters who found out about extra-curricular activity rather admired the adulterer. If a sinner were caught, his wife did not become a worldwide, never-ending victim. Of course it hurt — badly — but it wasn’t global humiliation.

Tiger has played the role of the perfect athlete, the perfect golfer, the perfect mate and the perfect dad. His commercial contracts played off that image. And the image was huge — larger than anything before by far. And the pay-off for Woods was immense.

Why Tiger must now pay

My point is not that carefully committed adultery somehow deserves to be criticized less than careless adultery. But there comes a point when the careless philandering is so flagrant that one is tempted to conclude that Woods wanted his wife to find out. How else can one explain the text messages and the giving out of his phone number?

Had he convinced himself that normal rules of conduct don’t apply? Did he become, in his mind, shielded from consequences because he really had become a sort of god above all others and above all rules?

We’re not talking about a little nookie on the side here. These aren’t casual flips in the hay. These are long relationships — and they amount to one of the most impressive traplines of all time. Woods, with casual abandon, placed his wife and children into the position of being shamed before the entire world.

He’s no longer my hero. I may have been able to retain some of my affection if he had, from the beginning, been honest with not only his wife Elin, but all his fans too. Fame devolves responsibility on heroes that others don’t have.

Golfers will know what I mean when I say I hope he develops the shanks and the yips on short putts and embarrasses himself in the only way, evidently, he can be embarrassed.

Elin, as we say in my old profession — the second oldest, that is — sue the bastard!

Knocked senseless

I’m going to end on another sports note. Last week’s London Guardian had a sports story talking about the comeback of boxing, especially amongst kids.

I was a boxing fan until June 20, 1960, when I watched Floyd Patterson knock out Ingemar Johansson with a left hook to the chin. Johansson hit the canvas with a thud, out cold. With blood trickling from his mouth, his glazed eyes staring up at the ring lights, and his left foot twitching, the Swede was counted out, and lay unconscious on the canvas for five more minutes. He was still dazed and unsteady 15 minutes after the knockout and had to be helped out of the ring.

It dawned on me that the object of this “sport” was to concuss your opponent — in other words, to damage his brain. When a hockey player or a football player gets concussed twice, he is urged by his doctor to retire. Boxers keep on boxing and become, as the old term put it, “punch drunk.” Or like Muhammad Ali, by an amazing coincidence, a victim of Parkinson’s disease.

As a society, we have banned pit fights amongst dogs and cockfights because they are cruel to animals, yet we encourage young people to damage the brains of other young people as part of the “manly art of self defence.”

What a sad, hypocrisy-reeking “civilization” we’ve become — myself, I’m embarrassed to say, very much included.