You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
Tiger Woods.
DATELINE: 2015 U.S. Open from University Place, Washington.
Tiger Woods is a comic strip character.
He is a memory of his former self.
Two days of excruciatingly bad golf yield 16 over par and he misses the cut.
In his prime, Tiger missing the cut was a sentence that didn’t get written.
You’d see Bill Clinton doing beer bongs in Congress before you saw Tiger miss the cut.
But now?
Well now, Tiger woods is golf’s version of a circus freak.
“Step right up and see the bearded lady take a double bogey” the circus huckster screams.
Once the greatest athlete on the planet, Woods is now golf’s version of the Hindenburg.
He soars over the golfing universe for much of his life, and then, for some inexplicable reason, he catches on fire and he explodes in a fiery, hideous mess.
He is now a grainy black and white film of a tragedy tumbling to Earth.
“Oh the humanity. Oh the Humanity,” the narrator of his life will cry.
Tiger Woods was the golden child, destined to break all the golfing records.
The earliest videos show him swinging a golf club as a toddler.
He is a college phenom and explodes onto the PGA tour like a Japanese bullet train.
Tiger Woods didn’t just win, he decimated the field. He pummeled the competition. He was golfing’s version of big time wrestling forcing other players into submission.
On Sundays, with a lead, and wearing his signature red shirt, the outcome was simply a formality.
The ratings were off the charts and the applause ferocious.
He was brash, cocky, and he backed it up with shots and temperament never before seen.
He was Arnold Palmer and Bobby Jones and a little Bo Jackson mixed in for good measure.
Tiger Woods changed a sport. He won easily and regularly. When he didn’t win it was news. Woods was destined to dethrone the Golden Bear, Jack Nicklaus, and supplant him on the leader board of greatest ever.
But somewhere along the way to immortality, reality reared its ugly head.
The fist pumping steely eyed putts to win tournaments are now replaced with slow motion shots of him slipping on a hill on his ass.
The first video shown on ESPN this morning was woods banging the ball into the tall stuff.
The second shot shows a wobbly legged Tiger slipping on his butt in slow motion.
The moment is so symbolic of a career that has gone down faster than a Japanese Zero in World War II.
Tiger’s highlights are now low lights.
Tiger Wood’s golf video is the equivalent of grainy surveillance footage showing an unrecognizable shadow flee a convenience store.
What happened to this deity on the links?
For most of his young life he was the face on the Wheaties Box. He was the reason non golfing fans watched golf.
Then on a terrible Thanksgiving weekend, a decade ago, his transgressions became public. We watched as his beautiful wife beaned him with a club to the head and his demons were exposed. He apologized for a callousness we had never known. He was consumed by himself, to the point that there was no more room in his God like body for golf.
Once standing on the mountain top of greatness, the fickle winds of life blew him off his lofty perch, and he has really never been the same since.
Case in point; The 2015 U.S. Open
The bullet points are ugly: Woods plus 31 in last 72 holes played.
30 bogeys or worse during the span.
Thursday he scored an 80.
By Friday he was facing reporters trying to make sense of it all.
“I hit it a little better today, but I didn’t have anything today. I didn’t make any putts the first two days. A golf course like this you get exposed. you gotta be so precise. you have to have everything dialed in. I obviously didn’t have that. I obviously need to get better for the British Open.”
EXPOSED is one way to explain it.
16 over par.
That’s the equivalent of a burger flipper at your local grease pit.
Yikes.
On Sports Center, the commentary is savage like pit bulls tearing flesh from a soup bone.
Michael Wilbon “It’s a stunning fall. A free fall. it continues. From 1997 to 2008. Tiger was dominant. sustained greatness. “
Bob Ryan “There’s no comparable circumstance to this. this is unprecedented.
Will he pass Jack?
Wilbon “That conversation is a waste of time. the question is can he even win again?”
Ryan “there is nothing in his current game to suggest he could win a major at all. How about just winning a tournament. This is an inexplicable drop. How about winning a tournament. Majors? how about winning a tournament. How about play a round without being in the 80’s. How about making a cut?”
WOW
Tiger once moved across a golf course like Jesus walked across water.
His shots were majestic and long and strategic and brave.
The ball off the tee was farther than anyone.
His drive was mechanical, forceful, a trip hammer of kinetic energy, concluding in the obliteration of a golf ball.
His short game was a dove floating on a zephyr dropping delicately on the green, subtly spinning backward to within inches of the cup.
His game was touched by the Gods, enhanced by legend.
He was Paul Bunyan with a club.
Now he is a punch line, a slow motion video of a grass stain on a slope where nobody is suppose to be.
How the mighty have fallen.
The Tiger once roared. Now it purrs.
Can he get his game back?
Greatness has a way of finding its way.
Life’s Crazy™