A Short Comment About Tiger Woods Winning A Tournament For The First Time In 2.5 Years

I know this is the be-all and end-all for the World Wide Lemur, in that it might make people care about golf again, but...

Um.... not to put too fine a point on this, but...

He's just another guy now.

He doesn't change the game with his length, his race, his seeming invicibility, his red shirt making all of the anonymous pudgy white guys paler than usual. Now, he's older than many of them, not dramatically fitter, doesn't hit it further, doesn't always hit the pressure putts, and, most importantly...

The casual golf fan that used to watch to see if he'd win has stopped watching, since he became, well, a loathsome figure and tabloid talk show level adulterer, along with a clearly bad husband and father. (And yes, if you cheat on your wife with as many people as Woods did, I don't care what else you might do for your kids. You're a bad father. Moving on.)

The tens of millions of people who used to watch golf, the little kids who went to munis and driving ranges, the people who bought questionable Nike gear because it made them more like this guy?

They aren't coming back.

Even if he does win another major, even if he does become the world's best again (neither a very sure bet at his age and obviously questionable focus)...

Because, well, the public doesn't really care what ESPN thinks. Just as if the Heat win the NBA title this year, that won't mean that we're all going to go back to feeling good about LeBron James, just as if the Eagles somehow win a Super Bowl with Mike Vick, that's not going to take the legions of haters away. Or how, five rings later, the world still doesn't look at Kobe Bryant with a fairly high amount of jaundice for skating through the Colorado penal system.

Your reputation is clean once. It doesn't get completely clean ever again.

And as for making everyone care about golf again? That toothpaste is long gone from the tube. But do enjoy watching the media try to stuff it back in...