Call me Kreskin, but I think that the part of Tiger Woods's unprecedented — and heavily lawyered, to say nothing of slooooowwwwlly delivered — statement today on the subject of how he's made a complete dog's breakfast out of a very great life that's going to have the most legs is going to be the Buddhist stuff. Up until now, the religious faith that he drew from his mother, Kultida, has had a place in the Standard IMG-Approved Tiger Woods Biography as little more than another part of his training regimen. It was said to be the source of his inhuman calm at the hottest moments of a golf tournament, and as a device through which he could attain what appeared to be an almost maniacal focus on his next shot, which was generally some sort of carnival two-iron that nobody in the history of man, including Siddhartha his own self, could even conceive, let alone execute, anyway. It was as though Samadhi was something you could pick up at the pro shop, behind the tees and the Countess Mara ties.
So when he talked about it this morning as an actual religion, in the middle of his carefully orchestrated dumbshow in Florida, it brought me up a little short. I expected the various apologies to the various children — his own, the ones he helps with his foundation, the thirty-something ones who work for him, the fifty-year-old ones who watch him on TV, and the ones that make up a substantial portion of the golfing media elite. (On ESPN in the immediate aftermath, Rick Reilly looked like he'd fallen off his horse outside Damascus.) I expected the swipes at the tabloid press and, truth be told, any adult who pursues a two-year-old child down the street, snapping pictures, just because her father had a taste for mongering the hos all over America, needs to find a grown-up job, like masturbating for profit. I expected the now-rote recitation of the Catechism of Rehab. All of which were necessary and obvious steps to save what's left of his tattered "brand," because, publicly, that's all that he can do, now and forever. The problem, of course, is that saving your "brand" is a soulless enterprise. The "brand" is not you, which Tiger Woods learned a little late.
But talking about Buddhism — and, through it, bringing his mother back squarely into the loop of his life, right there in the front row — was unexpected. (Although, given the fact that, a while back, Brit Hume went on Fox News and opined that the only way Tiger could get his life back on track was to jettison his mother's weird religion and get with the kind of Christianity that sells out megachurches and elects morons to Congress. Getting lectured on religion by a guy who spent the 1990s sniffing Bill Clinton's bedsheets would get my back up, too.) Indeed, Kultida Woods has been a largely invisible presence since her son exploded as an athletic celebrity after winning the 1997 Masters. Look no further than this now iconic clip of Tiger embracing his father, Earl, after sinking the final putt.
Mom is there, for a moment, and then sort of drifts away. In fact, one of the first layers of protection that formed around Tiger at the time was the myth that Earl and Kultida were still together, when it was obvious that they were living separate lives and — what the hell? Good for them. It was Earl who was thereafter the dominant figure in his son's life. However, what was clear, always, was that it was his mother who was so much of what made her son human, so much of what brought him peace, and so much of that part of him that was so clearly lost over the past fifteen years. There will be merciless fun made over the next couple of weeks, mostly by those scholars of comparative religion who host radio programs and yell at each other on the television. I choose to believe otherwise. Namaste, boys. Time, which is like a river, will tell.
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