In one of the most famous of sixteen movies the Marx Brothers made, A Day at the Races, Groucho stars as Hugo Z. Hackenbush, a horse veterinarian who impersonates the doctor of a sanatorium in danger of bankruptcy.
Highlights include an insane phone call to Florida, brother Chico selling race tips, Groucho’s nutty medical exams, and brother Harpo completely destroying a piano and turning it into a harp.
As the Woods circus debacle prepares to unfold at Augusta, I cannot help but draw significant parallels.
Here’s Tiger, heading to Augusta to continue a charade as someone he is not in the face of a tumbing business calamity. Tiger, meet Dr. Hackenbush. Dr. Hackenbush, meet Tiger. Even Groucho’s character name — Hackenbush — seems timely and poignant.
Tiger’s BlackBerry sexting, supplemented by crony Byron Bell switchboarding the coordination of other calls fostering extracurricular mayhem, surpasses even Grouch’s legendary, hilarious, nonsensical Florida phone call that drives A Day at the Races into overdrive.
On the financial front, agent Mark Steinberg ignores logic and teams with Nike ad wizards to invent new money-making slants, creatively designed to ignore common sense and repackage nonsense into substance. Too bad Chico Marx is no longer around to admire such clever work. Comedic brass is timeless, and Chico would be the first to stand and applaud nonsensical creativity.
Tiger’s mystery doctor from Canada, whose dusty trail continues to cloud Tigergate, serves perfectly as the nutty exams. And caddy Steve Williams, Team Tiger’s self-appointed junkyard dog, waits to snarl at anything in their path, even kids and puppies.
It’s all too beautiful.
Monday morning’s Mastes practice foursome of Tiger, Fred Couples, probably Mark O’Meara, and an unnamed fourth almost as assuredly as quiet as Harpo, looms on the sports horizon. Tiger likes to play early, at sunrise, because loud people tend to sleep in. Best guess is a flashlight tee shot and a back nine start, followed by a two-hour round in which every putt less than fifty feet is a gimme.
Could reality possibly get better? Only if mistresses line both fairways and call out clubbing suggestions.
Should the girls post at Augusta, Rachel Uchitel, whispered in today’s news to have received upwards of $10 million to forget details and misremember, will undoubtedly be better dressed than Mindy Lawton, the Perkins waittress who managed to score only a chicken wrap from Subway in exchange for services provided. Obviously she needs a better agent. Someone like Steinberg, for example.
How will modern golf slapstick masquereding as an important sports event play out? Heaven only knows. But stroke totals on the old green scoreboard won’t have a thing to do with the real fun of what lies ahead. Waiting in the wings and hidden out of sight, scorned Elin waits, tapping a billy club in hand, marking time until unsuspecting arrogance turns the corner.
The more things change, the more they remain the same. Rest in peace, Groucho. And God bless the secret word: “Fore!”
Steve says
April 1, 2010 at 3:55 pmTed:
Your stuff is always entertaining, whether I agree or not. I ALWAYS read it for the entertainment factor. However, I would like to propose a question; what if Tiger is actually sorry and truly wants to turn his life around? Granted, his acts were despicable. But at what point do you give the guy a break? Of all of the press that I have read I think you pile on the most. Again, very witty and entertaining. Might be time to sit back and see if he puts his money where his mouth is (so to speak).
Ocean Palmer says
April 1, 2010 at 11:05 pmSteve,
I’d love to see the guy atone…but I doubt he’ll ever come close. Behaviorally speaking, Woods is a world class narcissist whose recent interviews underscore his inability (or unwillingness) to own the truth. He remains surrounded by the same circle of enablers; and because of that, what — besides rehearsed sound bites — has changed? Steinberg paid off women; Byron set up the girls and laundered money to finance countless, juggled liaisons. Williams organized the bachelor’s party — complete with hired porn star(s) — and yet no one remembers anything?
OJ was a more credible witness than these jokers, so when Tiger looks in a camera and deadpans, “It was all me; no one else knew,” well, who believes that? Do you? I don’t. Sounds to me like he’s trying to protect his inner circle. Tossing different colored smoke bombs instead of just coming clean is not, to me, a sign that anything about the guy has changed. I hope we see more from him somewhere down the road. But I think Augusta will be a circus sideshow. That event doesn’t deserve this, either. Then again, maybe they do.
More on this sad freefall from icon to punchline, unfortunately, will continue to come to light and none of it will be good. I suspect the IRS is already investigating him for tax fraud and may tag him. The problems I have with all this have little to do with the women; it’s the ethics I cannot reconcile. When a man pays a mistress $10 million in hush money–three times the value of his humiliated wife’s prenup– he’s got far bigger skeletons in the closet, ethics-wise and otherwise, than have come to light. Pretending these things don’t matter is insultingly disingenuous to those of his who bought his brand in good faith. Also count me among those who believe the HGH doctor brought more with him from Canada than Band-Aids. That guy’s dirty, too.
I don’t think Tiger will sort things out and begin true reparations until he hits bottom. He’s not there yet (or anywhere close) and he doesn’t, in my opinion, realize he’s still in free-fall. He’s gotten extraordinarily bad advice for a decade and getting bad advice now. Until those sources change, he won’t change.
In the past I’ve written about the conflicts of the three-headed man. Woods is a classic example, the poster child of what I was writing about: a person whose life is wrapped up in how he wants to be, and is, perceived by others at the expense of not having a clue who he really is. Until Woods gets there, the third head — who he really is — and owns that, he will struggle to tell the truth and be happy.
He’ll also find it next to impossible to recapture any semblance of his formerly universal following. In defense of how he got this way, his view of the world was shaped between the ages of 0-13, his prodigy years. No wonder he looks at life differently the rest of us. Like a lot of child stars, there’s a reality gap that is challenging to bridge.
Personally I doubt he’ll ever get there because I don’t think it matters to him enough. He’s got enough money to buy privacy and that’s the track he’s always taken. If he truly were sincere, I think he would and should surround himself with a new posse of high-road people; wipe the slate and start over. Until he does that, I don’t think he’ll ever be anything more than a really good golfer who insists on playing three-card-monte even though the audience knows the game.
Thanks for your note. I appreciate you taking the time to write. Tiger’s fun to watch play golf. But after golf, then what? Life begins anew, that’s what; and I hope he doesn’t wait too long to figure that out. Genius is its own curse sometimes, but that’s not an excuse for denying accountability. We’ll see what the new week brings. Maybe it’s a bigger step for him than I expect it will be. For his sake, I hope so.
In the meantime, if you know someone who wants to buy a nearly new Nike driver, let me know. Mine’s for sale. I want to switch brands to Taylor Made.
Take care and thanks again. ~ Ted