At long last, Tiger Woods, with his mother sitting front row, broke his silence Friday morning with a prepared 14-minute speech in which he apologized for his infidelity and selfishness.
My question, is this necessary?
Tiger Woods does not deserve this from the public. He is a golfer, not a marriage counselor. Who does he owe an apology to other than his family? He may feel compelled to address the public from a PR standpoint, but he shouldn’t be expected to.
What Tiger Woods, or any celebrity for that matter, does in his personal life is his own business. I do not condone cheating on your wife with strippers and escorts, and what he did to his family is everything I strive to avoid when I reach that point in my life. But if a child looks up to him it should be the responsibility of a parent to instill balance between the athlete and reality. I am a huge Barry Bonds fan. The alleged steroid use upsets me because I admired what he did on the baseball field so much. But when it came out that he was cheating on his wife…that’s none of my business. It was that perfect swing that put me in awe, not his family life.
Charles Barkley said it best in his 1993 Nike commercial in which he proclaimed I am not a role model. At the time people were upset that he made that claim; professed that he must be ignorant to the fact that millions of kids out there looked up to him. But what Barkley meant was that there are people out there far more important in molding lives than athletes.
I do hope Tiger Woods can find peace of mind, get his personal life on track, and eventually make it back onto the golf course. Golf is truly a better sport when he is competing and I feel honored that such a magnificent athlete was a part of my generation.
Will this forever change his image? Of course. Is he sincere in his apology? We may never know. Is it any of my business? No.
