Impossible to judge

When it comes to judging people by their actions, it’s not always black and white.

Getty Images

A Tauranga reader writes to berate me – and call for my photo byline on a platter – for doing a column on Tiger Woods.

“Regardless of his golf ability,” he writes, “he’s a despicable person as was shown when all his infidelities were disclosed. In future write only about good people.”

There are various ways of responding to this, the most obvious being that if it wasn’t for the media coverage of Woods’s “bimbo eruptions” – the term coined to describe the multiple scandals that threatened to derail two-term US president Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign – we’d probably still think he was a devoted family man.

Or I could point out that it’s hardly my fault Woods can’t stay out of the headlines: recently he sacked his long-serving Kiwi caddie, Steve Williams; Williams responded with a live-from-the-18th-green harangue in which he seemed to be demanding joint custody of Woods’s 14 majors; he missed the cut at the US PGA championship, pushing the decline-and-fall narrative into overdrive.

Or I could simply trot out US baseball manager Leo “The Lip” Durocher’s maxim that nice guys finish last. Woods’s career trajectory seems to bear this out: since entering therapy to wean him off his addiction to low-rent rendezvous, he hasn’t won a thing.

aimRenderAd(300, 250, '300X250','ContentRect','/POS=POS2'); if(!$.browser.msie){ ContentRect_frame = $("#ContentRect")[0]; ContentRect_frame.src = ContentRect_frame.src; }

Actually, Durocher wasn’t talking about morality, but was advocating compartmentalisation: being a normal guy off the field and a borderline psycho on it. Another of his quotable quotes elaborates: “Buy a steak for a player on another club after the game, but don’t even speak to him on the field. Get out there and beat them to death.” Notwithstanding the mantra that “good people make good All Blacks”, Graham Henry would agree with Durocher’s sentiments, if not his choice of words. Rugby coaches value players with a mongrel streak.

Wellington loose forward Victor Vito is a current example of a lavishly ­talented player who will have to develop a mean streak if he wants to make the All Blacks grade. He should be encouraged by the fact that incumbent blindside flanker Jerome Kaino was in the same position several years ago and is now one of the biggest bruisers in the game. Kaino’s predecessor, Jerry Collins, on the other hand, was just born that way.

The real difficulty with being instructed to write only about good people is how am I meant to know who’s good and who’s rotten to the core? After all, if Woods’s former wife hadn’t intercepted an incriminating text message, he might still be regarded as the ultra-disciplined goody two-shoes who shortly before the scandal broke told New Zealand  broadcaster Murray Deaker that his family always came first. And it wasn’t until years after Jack Kennedy’s assassination and the creation of the Camelot in America myth centred on the dashing, idealistic president with his style-icon wife and designer-perfect children that it emerged JFK had a secret sex life every bit as sordid as Woods’s.

English soccer great Sir Stanley Matthews played almost 700 league games without once being booked, and was described by Pelé as “the man who taught us the way football should be played”. Yet documents recently released by the British National Archives revealed that in 1945 Matthews was arrested for black-market trafficking in newly liberated Belgium.

The question of what really resides in an individual’s heart is probably too complicated for the sports pages, even if those who fill them were qualified to sit in judgment. Many UK and US golf writers regard Williams as a boor and a bully, a view that clearly coloured some of the recent reporting. Among the character references offered as rebuttal is that Williams donated $1 million to the Starship ­Children’s Hospital.

If Williams’s philanthropy is the true mark of the man, why shouldn’t the same apply to Woods? This despicable fellow has raised and distributed tens of millions of dollars to youth charities, built a $30 million educational facility in Anaheim, California, and “reached” – an admittedly vague term – 10 million young Americans via his charitable foundations.