That's what I am calling the PGA Championship final round shirt. You can go ahead and use that one folks.
Finally, somebody has come out and just said it: "Tiger's done." Drew Magary, writing for New York Magazine, lays out many compelling reasons.
The most compelling however, is this:
Perhaps Woods would have been able to withstand this horrible year if there were an actual person behind all the ads. But there isn't. Athletes like Woods and LeBron James were raised to cultivate a brand identity, and when you're raised that way, your brand identity becomes your actual identity. There's no separating the two. Woods spent his entire life cultivating his image, and when that image was destroyed, he was destroyed. There was no actual person to fall back on. No separation of church and state.
When Tiger Woods had the image of being an indestructible force of nature, he was precisely that. He needed that reputation. It fed him. And now that it's gone, he has nowhere else to draw strength from. Tiger Woods built his perfection upon the illusion of it. And that's why, as far as major championships are concerned, Tiger Woods's career is now over.
REACT: Bullseye. The existential "who am I" and "why am I here" is core to any performer being excellent. Let's say you see a world class concert pianist perform at Carnegie Hall. You might not think he has much of an ego. You would be wrong. That guy believes he was born to play the piano on a stage like that, and it is what he lives for.
Same for Tiger. Only now, all of the logic and reasoning behind the "who" and "why" of Tiger Woods is tangled like fishing line in deep weeds. Maybe Tiger can un-sort it. Maybe he can find a "real person" to fall back on.
If I had to bet, I'd hedge against it.
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