Wednesday, November 15, 2000
Tiger Woods' touch around green
looks familiar
By Rick Morrissey
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — Whenever Tiger Woods takes
off his golf cap, which isn't very often, he reveals a side of
himself—actually, a top of himself—we don't see much.
Heredity has begun its work and Woods' hairline
is racing for a rendezvous with the back of his neck. To paraphrase
Neil Young, he's 24 and there should be so much more.
My suggestion would be for Tiger to get
it over with, shave his head and leave enough hair in the back
for the Nike swoosh. That would be worth, what, another $50 million?
I'll leave that to the company handling his financial affairs,
IMG, which is an acronym for We Get 5 Percent, What a Great Country!
Woods removed another lid last week, revealing
an unpleasantness that all the marketing and swooshing in the
world couldn't hide. The magnanimous, self-effacing young man
whom Woods has offered for public consumption has given way to
someone who can't seem to get enough money.
Woods and IMG are irate the PGA Tour is
using Woods' image on advertising that conflicts with his own
endorsements. Mercedes-Benz, for example, has run ads that showcased
the golfers who had qualified for its winners-only tournament.
Because Woods wins as often as most people shampoo, he appeared
regularly in the ads.
Woods has a $30 million deal with Buick.
“These are the type of things that
drive us absolutely crazy,” said his agent at IMG, Mark Steinberg.
In other words, the PGA is making money
off Woods, who believes the best type of money is the kind that
finds its way into his pockets.
Oh, the injustice.
Let us, for the purposes of thoroughness,
detail a portion of Woods' worth to fully understand his pain.
In the last 41/2 years, he has earned $20 million in winnings.
Golf World magazine estimates he will make $54 million a year
in endorsements once his five-year, $100 million contract with
Nike kicks in next year.
The slicksters at IMG are trying to say
this isn't about filthy lucre.
“It's more about equity and fairness,”
Steinberg said.
That sound you are hearing is hands slapping
against foreheads. What were we thinking? In essence, Tiger is
a social activist, a man fighting for the rights of the people.
He is Gandhi swinging a titanium driver, Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr. standing over a 5-foot putt.
What a wonderful opportunity to bring up
Woods' association with a corporation that has a hard time differentiating
between right and wrong. Nike, which pays Woods so handsomely,
has been accused time and again of using factories with poor working
conditions in Vietnam. There have been reports of physical and
sexual abuse at Nike plants.
Company workers in Vietnam reportedly make
an average of 20 cents an hour. Don't spend it all in one place.
Like his good buddy, Michael Jordan, Woods
seems to get laryngitis every time he's asked about $100 shoes
that are made in sweatshops for $3. He is much better on broader
topics.
“A role model is someone who embraces
the responsibility of influencing others positively,” Woods
writes on his Web site.
I'm trying to figure out what kind of role
model is more concerned with the “equity and fairness”
of car ads than he is with the plight of people who can't make
a buck (unless they have five hours to do it).
Woods is hinting he'll walk out and start
his own tour. Maybe he's thinking of it as a peace march. But
it's clear he is losing touch with reality, which is what happens
to people who have too much. Remember a few years ago when locked-out
NBA stars put on a game to aid the downtrodden among them who
were making the league's minimum salary? They were asking fans
to buy tickets to help players making $200,000 a year.
When rock stars begin writing protest songs
about the IRS, you know they've begun losing touch, and when Tiger
Woods begins thinking that life in the PGA is like living in a
gulag, then he has lost touch too.
Maybe he should start that tour of his.
He'll realize soon enough that just as he has been wonderful for
the PGA, so it has been pretty good for him.
For now, he has been exposed. What was underneath
the layers of corporate slick is another whiny athlete who can't
get enough of the one thing he has more than enough of: money.
Bald might be beautiful, but greed isn't.
(c) 2000, Chicago Tribune.
Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://www.chicago.tribune.com/
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
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