July 20, 2010--Tiger & Equus
Unknown South African golfer Louis Oosthuizen won the British Open on Sunday. Tiger Woods tied for 23rd place, 13 strokes behind.
What’s going on here? Woods has won three of these and Oosthuizen before Sunday never won anything, even as a journeyman on the European tour.
We know what’s going on: Tiger is still struggling with his game after being outed as a serial adulterer. Even if his scores on the golf links since returning to the game a few months ago are not what we had grown used to from Tiger, his scores off the course have been noteworthy. How many cocktail waitresses and porn stars have thus far come forward escorted to the microphone and TV cameras by Gloria Allred? 25? 30? Which would be a great score for a front nine.
I am coming to suspect that what we are seeing now is not a temporary aberration. We may be witnessing the New Tiger. The Tiger is who is just a middle-of-the pack PGAer because he has had to give up his sexual escapades. Being the Bad Tiger in private may have been what he needed to provide the fuel for the Good Tiger who we saw winning major after major and making TV commercial after commercial.
This made me think of Peter Shaffer’s 1973 play Equus. Based on a true story, it centers on an adolescent, Alan Strang, 17, who winds up in a psychiatric hospital after having gouged out the eyes of six horses. A gruesome crime the result of a torturous aberration. The psychiatrist, Martin Dysart, sets out to “cure” him, to “adjust’ him to a normal life; but as he sees progress in his patient, he begins to wonder if being adjusted is in the best interest of young Alan because, as he works with him, he sees how Alan’s violent actions are at the heart of his passion for life and his ability to connect worshipfully with the supernatural.
He doubts the value of treating him since he will simply return to a normal, dull life that lacks passion. Dysart feels that Alan Strang's crime was of course extreme but suggests that just such extremity is what was needed for Alan to break free from the chains of his otherwise mundane existence.
Perhaps Tiger Woods’ “treatment,” his seeming adjustment to a more normal way of living has dampened the spark, the raging fire, the inner anger, and maybe the creative self-loathing that might have been driving him both on and off the golf course. And perhaps within him these conflicting forces are connected, as with Alan Strang.
Psychobabble? Perhaps. But in the meantime Tiger hasn’t won anything since his participation in a so-called “recovery” program.
He was a tiger, after all (not his given name—his father anointed him with it) and now he seems more like a domestic cat. Perhaps he will be, or even is “happier,” but the experience of acknowledging his problems and seeking the means to overcome them may also have neutered him.
What’s going on here? Woods has won three of these and Oosthuizen before Sunday never won anything, even as a journeyman on the European tour.
We know what’s going on: Tiger is still struggling with his game after being outed as a serial adulterer. Even if his scores on the golf links since returning to the game a few months ago are not what we had grown used to from Tiger, his scores off the course have been noteworthy. How many cocktail waitresses and porn stars have thus far come forward escorted to the microphone and TV cameras by Gloria Allred? 25? 30? Which would be a great score for a front nine.
I am coming to suspect that what we are seeing now is not a temporary aberration. We may be witnessing the New Tiger. The Tiger is who is just a middle-of-the pack PGAer because he has had to give up his sexual escapades. Being the Bad Tiger in private may have been what he needed to provide the fuel for the Good Tiger who we saw winning major after major and making TV commercial after commercial.
This made me think of Peter Shaffer’s 1973 play Equus. Based on a true story, it centers on an adolescent, Alan Strang, 17, who winds up in a psychiatric hospital after having gouged out the eyes of six horses. A gruesome crime the result of a torturous aberration. The psychiatrist, Martin Dysart, sets out to “cure” him, to “adjust’ him to a normal life; but as he sees progress in his patient, he begins to wonder if being adjusted is in the best interest of young Alan because, as he works with him, he sees how Alan’s violent actions are at the heart of his passion for life and his ability to connect worshipfully with the supernatural.
He doubts the value of treating him since he will simply return to a normal, dull life that lacks passion. Dysart feels that Alan Strang's crime was of course extreme but suggests that just such extremity is what was needed for Alan to break free from the chains of his otherwise mundane existence.
Perhaps Tiger Woods’ “treatment,” his seeming adjustment to a more normal way of living has dampened the spark, the raging fire, the inner anger, and maybe the creative self-loathing that might have been driving him both on and off the golf course. And perhaps within him these conflicting forces are connected, as with Alan Strang.
Psychobabble? Perhaps. But in the meantime Tiger hasn’t won anything since his participation in a so-called “recovery” program.
He was a tiger, after all (not his given name—his father anointed him with it) and now he seems more like a domestic cat. Perhaps he will be, or even is “happier,” but the experience of acknowledging his problems and seeking the means to overcome them may also have neutered him.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
4:31 AM
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