We didn’t have to get used to this.
There’s an undeniable sense of anxiety watching the Tiger you grew up with self-destruct in real time.
Someone who, for countless reasons, feels like they’ve been sewn into your life for as long as you can remember.
That’s how I, and probably many of you, felt this weekend. This wasn’t just another title for Tiger Woods. It wasn’t just another alert on your phone or another story running through the sports feed. It felt heavier than that. Familiar in a way that is frankly uncomfortable to admit.
And I think a lot of people felt it, even if they couldn’t quite put it into words.
If you grew up watching the Tigers (and, let’s be honest, who didn’t?), you don’t just remember the wins; you remember where you were when they happened.
You remember red Sundays. The silence before the last shot on 18. The way your dad or whoever got you into this game would stop mid-conversation just to turn on the TV before a shot. You remember trying to recreate that swing in your backyard, convinced that if you got it right, you could feel a fraction of what he felt standing on a ball. Everything online. No fear.
The tiger did not win alone. He made golf feel bigger than ever. In many ways, he it Was golf for decades.
That is why such moments are not like normal news. They don’t just pass you by. Not something you go through. They drag a little. Sit down for a while. You feel a little heavier.
Because we’ve already been here. We’ve seen this derailment at least once too often. The revelation that turned a boy who felt almost mythological into someone achingly, undeniably human.
Whether we want to admit it or not, there has been a part of us that has leaned a little too close to that. Not out of cruelty, necessarily. More out of curiosity. Maybe even disbelief.
How does someone who built an entire career, a legacy, on being awesome keep getting broken again and again and again?
But here we are facing another wave of headlines that come faster, louder, more critical, less forgiving each time. Even from the website you are on now.
Over the weekend, it seemed like you couldn’t escape them. Every platform, every outlet, every version of the same story, timestamps and mugshots, packaged differently enough to keep you reading. Trust me, I caught myself doing this too. Refreshing. Sending messages in the group chat. By clicking.
However, this is the part I have left. Because at some point you have to ask yourself – what are we really doing here?
MyGolfSpy works a little differently. It always has and proudly so. And when THE the picture started coming into my inbox and my timeline, it didn’t fit.
It just didn’t feel necessary. Have you ever heard the old saying “don’t kick them when they’re down?” You don’t need to see a man at his lowest to know he’s there. You no longer need evidence to feel the weight of what happened.
At a certain point, it stops being information and starts to become something else entirely.
Consumption.
This is what I keep coming back to. When does coverage turn into something … voyeuristic? Something, without a doubt, has been questioned by many journalists and social media chairs.
When does it stop being about reporting the facts and start being about how much of someone’s worst moment we can package up and share for profit or fame?
And perhaps this is the part that has stuck with me more than anything else. Because yes, what happened matters. Such decisions do not exist in a vacuum. They can hurt people. Change your life in an instant. Admittedly, that part is real and should be treated as such, no matter who you are.
But at what point does it do that? in fact becomes about responsibility?
At what point is the golf industry and mainstream media realizing all that is left to sustain the Tiger phenomenon? To stay focused, stay hungry. Even if it means feeding a beast that will never be satisfied.
When someone reaches the level that Tiger did, when he becomes more than an athlete, should we first stop seeing him as a “person”? In theory – no. Empathy doesn’t have to disappear once one’s gifts become visible on the world stage.
The reality? It doesn’t really work that way.
Because someone like Tiger no longer exists simply as a person. It exists as a brand. An entity. As something that has weight, regardless of context. Something that can be used, abused and thrust back into the spotlight even uglier because it still gets a reaction.
Glorified to the nth degree and then torn apart the moment we get the chance.
And this is the part that feels a little sick.
It’s not that the story shouldn’t be told, it’s how it’s told. You’ve heard the expression, “Never meet your heroes.” And I understand. I really do. Because if the last 15 years have taught me anything, it’s that the people we build the highest tend to have the most to fall.
But I don’t think it’s about meeting your heroes anymore. It’s about what happens after you keep looking at them long after the illusion wears off.
Tiger Woods is not the version of him we grew up with. He’s not frozen in 2000, 2008, or even 2019. Neither are we (thankfully, for some of us.)
But at the same time, this is not unique to him. This is your cousin Terry who had the DUI before Christmas dinner in ’03. Or your best friend’s estranged father who you’ve heard about for years but never met.
I’m not telling you this as someone who is an avid Tigers fan. A true defender. There are decisions he made, public ones, that changed the way I looked at the 8-year-old. This part is also real.
After all, he is a man who has lived an extraordinarily large life, some of it defying belief, some of it downright difficult, and much of it very public, all while desperately seeking privacy.
And yet, we continue to look as if he is supposed to exist exactly as we remember him.
Writing this feels weird in a way I didn’t expect.
For most of my life, I’ve been on the other side: reading the headlines, talking about it with friends.
Now, I’m the one pressing it and that changes things. It makes you stop. It makes you question whether every gory detail, every image displayed, every angle explored should be included.
In a world that is all about clicks and scandals, at what point do we look away?
Tiger has given this game more than almost anyone. This does not justify anything. Of course it doesn’t delete errors or headers. They did not rewrite reality. But it makes moments like this feel, well, different.
More personal. More layers.
So I keep coming back to the same question: At what point do we look away? Not out of denial or blind loyalty, but out of basic humanity. At what point do we decide we’ve seen enough to understand what’s going on and maybe we don’t need to watch every painful second unfold?
The hardest question is this: Will we ever do it? Will you ever? Will I ever do?
Because if history has taught us anything, we probably won’t.
In the meantime, we’ll keep reading. Keep clicking, keep typing. Keep trying to reconcile the version of Tiger we grew up with and the version we’re seeing now.
But maybe, that’s the real story here.
