Quintin Jardine's blog

Has your mailbox been going Tiger Woods crazy, like mine? Some of the stories are bizarre, for example the alleged long-term mistress is said to have sold her tale for $250,000, while the alleged one night stand in Australia is said to be getting $1m from Tiger for keeping her mouth shut.

Okay, it’s pretty clear that the world’s most famous athlete has been a bad boy, but . . . Where’s the surprise? Think about this: the PGA golf tour is all about 150 wealthy guys playing away from home, literally, week in, week out. It’s an environment that’s made for infidelity, yet if you watch the TV coverage you’ll find that it’s wrapped in a cloak of God and family values. So Tiger has a penchant for getting his leg over? Is he the only one? If he was a politician rather than a golfer it would be expected of him. But no, the media who have built him up are now trying, viciously, globally,  to pull him down. Why? The colour of his skin couldn’t have anything to do with it, could it?

I wonder if the media would be as vicious if Tiger was white, or if Elin was a  fat black girl instead of a blonde poppet. Nick Faldo has been divorced three times. When an American girlfriend trashed his Porsche, the media treated it as a joke. Greg Norman split from his wife, married Chris Evert, and now they’ve split up. Tom Watson divorced his wife of 25 years, then married the spouse of another pro golfer, also named Watson, coincidentally. As a young tour player Lee Trevino always wore a plaster on his arm while playing. It was to cover a tattoo bearing his ex-wife’s name. These guys are all still icons. None of them found their marital problems  spread gaudily over the world’s tabloids. So why should Tiger Woods?