Tiger?

The issue here is not race but culture. Deep culture.

The thing that was most impressive about Tiger Woods was his ability to come back from a bad lie. It's an essential skill in golf because no one can hit good clean shots all the time. On any given day, you will find yourself having to struggle back after hitting a bad shot. And to see Tiger play in his glory days, was to be humbled at how good he was at that. He was better than anyone else I ever saw play the game.

So the obvious question is why can't he do the same in real life? Why is it that, having screwed up on a massive scale, he can't come back?

I got thinking about that after watching this fascinating diavlog between Robert Wright and Jonah Goldberg:



The two men have clearly found something to agree upon here and that is interesting because they are two men who usually have no trouble finding things to disagree about. What they are in agreement about is virtue. Wright lets that show early in the discussion by using the word "hubris". That Greek word tells us that the concern here is something so deep in Western culture that it tends to underpin what we say and do even if we, like Robert Wright, like to think we are capable of putting a critical distance on that culture.

What I think the two men miss, however, is that Tiger Woods' ongoing struggle comes about because he also shares this cultural heritage. Now you might think, "Of course he does", but it isn't so obvious that a black man would given modern racial politics. The very fact that Woods excelled at the game of golf is important here. It is a game that comes with built in cultural assumptions. Golf requires prudence in a way that basketball or hockey, for example, do not.

A lot of white people, whether we like to admit or not, were thrilled to see Woods succeed because we saw his success at golf as proof that the some of things that keep black men down are cultural not racial. We saw Woods succeed and thought, given the same cultural values that young white men are given, young black men too can succeed at golf. And that is important because we see golf as a marker for success in life in general. We can admire someone who becomes a huge success at at basketball or hockey but we see that as success in just one thing. No one thinks that being good at these games requires the same sorts of virtues that success in life does. Golf is a one of a very small number of sports that do.

And that is why Woods ongoing failure is so moving. As Robert Wright correctly notes above, the public is more than ready for his redemption. The problem is that Woods himself is not. He can't just forgive himself and play brilliantly again. The man is torn right down the middle. He betrayed not just his family, friends and fans, he betrayed everything he stood for. His case is more like Jospeh Conrad's hero Lord Jim than it is like other public failures such as Michael Vick, Eliot Sptizer and Anthony Weiner. Those men were all frauds and hypocrites who were caught out being frauds and hypocrites. Woods was found betraying their very values that make him the man he is and has wanted to be his entire life.

Pray for him.