What if you woke up tomorrow as Tiger Woods?

It’s Monday morning. Not just any Monday morning mind you. It’s the Monday morning after Tiger Woods’ Friday morning “Statement.” Are you tired of all of the air time he’s been getting? I’m starting to see a number of tweets and “what’s on your mind?” posts indicating that a lot of folks are. I even saw one where Tiger was blamed for taking the focus away from the Olympics and that coverage. Not to defend Tiger, at least not yet, if at all, but maybe the blame for that should be laid at the feet of the media? After all, they’re the ones directing the cameras and the word processors.

Did you happen to watch it live? Some 680,000 or so watched it on Ustream or YouTube according to one article I read shortly after Tiger finished. I wonder how many Excel spreadsheets and Word documents that broadcast was hiding behind? I don’t believe those numbers include the PGA Tour site, The Golf Channel and ESPN, all of which were supposed to broadcast it over the net as well. What do you think? Are we safe saying a million or more watched it online? How about offline?

I was one of those offline people. I watched it on ESPN. It was definitely not what I expected. I tweeted after just a few minutes into the statement that I thought Tiger was going to double eagle this thing if he kept going in the direction he seemed to be headed. A few other people picked that up and retweeted it, adding that they thought him to at least be sincere. We’ll get to the people who thought it was scripted and bullshit in just a minute. Going into the “statement” I was fully prepared to be one of those. He was going to have to go some to convince me.

I had tweeted, right after the announcement broke on the net, that I questioned the timing of the whole thing. Here the PGA Tour was in the middle of the Accenture Match Play and along comes Tiger Woods getting ready to steal a little thunder. After all, Accenture was the first one to drop his endorsement deal weren’t they? As vindictive as Tiger has been portrayed in the past (ask Fuzzy Zeller or Fluff Cowen), this just seemed a bit too coincidental. The next day a number of stories broke asking the same questions, the most noticeable probably being the one with the quote from Ernie Els taking Tiger to task over the timing. By the end of the day though, Tiger’s agent and the Tour has both issued statements saying that once we heard Tiger talk we’d understand the timing of the event. Tiger’s agent even went so far as to give the CMO of Accenture a call alerting them to what was going to transpire. Accenture issued a statement saying all was swell as far as they were concerned.

Once the details of just how Tiger’s statement was going to be handled emerged, I tweeted once more about how he was clearly being mis-handled and mis-guided by those closest to him. Like most, I thought that Tiger was, well, being Tiger and trying to exert total control over the situation and event. He and his camp have been, after all, control freaks over just about everything else in the past. Why should this be any different? I came across a piece this morning that the very fine golf writer, Michael Bamberger, wrote for Sports Illustrated and Golf.com, in advance of the “statement”, asking the same sort of questions. I think it safe to say that we were all expecting a typical, controlling Tiger Woods, who would come out, do the apology and mea culpa thing, and then tell us when to expect him to be back working his magic on the fairways.

We didn’t get that Tiger though, did we? We got a sincere and genuine, often on the verge of tears, Tiger. A Tiger who led me to tweet what I did. This wasn’t some canned spin doctor statement. This was an athletic god fallen from grace, tripped up by the trappings of fame and fortune, and life, just as the rest of us average Joe’s get tripped up as we go about trying to live this thing called life. He was clearly humbled. Life amongst us Joe’s has a way of doing that sort of thing to the godlike I suppose.

I watched a little bit of the “analysis” of the “statement” on ESPN. I was tempted to write about this then. The first analysis was rendered by a woman who has written a book called “The Art of the Apology.” I don’t recall her name but I’m sure you can Google the book title and find out more about her should you choose. She gave him an A-. I guess it was a sort of test for Tiger. She certainly thought him genuine and sincere as well. Her only reservation about giving him an A+ was the way he called the media to task. Maybe he never read the Twain-ism about picking a fight with a guy who buys ink by the barrel?

Next up for ESPN on the analysis front was Stephen A. Smith. No A- from him. No siree. He took the whole damn barrel of ink and dumped it on Tiger. Contrived, made-up, insincere. I’m certain he would have called bullshit had he been able to. I’m not sure what Smith had been watching but I am sure it wasn’t the same thing I had just seen. How could we be that diametrically opposed? The whole crux of his argument seemed to hinge on the fact that one didn’t go from 10 women or 12 or 19 or however many, to zero. Just doesn’t happen according to Smith. Which, of course, begs the question, how exactly does he know this? We’ll leave that alone for now though.

Throughout the weekend I was surprised with just how many people felt as Smith did about this being a contrived Tiger. Maybe I shouldn’t have been. Look at the past few presidential elections. We seem to be split down the middle about as evenly as you can be on important issues. And Tiger, or at least his infidelities, seem to be pretty important. Why else the continued interest, the incessant coverage? Forget Haiti. Forget the troops in Afghanistan risking life and limb at the moment, forget the people who are unemployed, without health care, even homeless. We want to know who Tiger’s been porking and all of the pertinent details. And, to hear most of the media and a number of image consultants and PR types, it’s Tiger’s duty to hand those details over. Now. How dare he exclude them and deprive them their pound of flesh?

I saw a tweet in the stream last night from Kent Huffman, a real marketing pro, CMO at BearCom Wireless, and published author, that asked if the Tiger Woods brand was beyond repair along with a link to this post from the New York Times Media and Advertising section. In it, Sally Hogshead, a brand consultant and author, who had a seat at the satellite media center for Woods’ statement and who has worked at big time agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky said this,

“Mr. Woods’s decision to try ‘defending his wife, protecting his children and paying respect to his mother’ should help ‘quell the outrage’ over his behavior, especially among women.

Also on the plus side of the ledger was the fact that he ‘let his guard down’ with his remarks ‘to show us his humanity.’

On the negative side, was ‘the way in which he manipulated the press conference’ by taking no questions from the press.

Also, the Woods brand ‘was founded upon prestige, mystique, and an aura of elusive untouchability,’ but now ‘we all suddenly know more about his bottom-feeding behavior than we ever cared to.”

I retweeted Kent’s tweet and added that she was clearly the expert but that I disagreed with some of what she said and I thought that Tiger’s “story” might turn out to be bigger, and very different, than it once was.

Will you join me in this exercise and wake up tomorrow morning as Tiger Woods? Suspend your notions of what you think of Tiger, of what he did and didn’t do, of what you do and don’t think of him, and pretend to be him for a few minutes, to see life through his eyes. One of the professors I had, who taught me a great deal about people, stories and narrative, defined “imagination” as the ability to put yourself in another’s shoes and to see life as they do. There are many different types and kinds of imagination, I know, but I have always liked that one best. So, join me for a moment in “Being Tiger” and maybe you can see what I mean about how his “story” might just grow to be bigger than ever. How he could do more than just repair his brand. I would be willing to bet that his “brand” is the last thing on his mind at the moment.

Most of us know enough of his history I suspect so let’s pick things up sometime after he’s been married. Remember now, we’re Tiger. We’ve got a beautiful wife, a child on the way, and a gazillion dollars in the bank. Not a bad life story to be leading so far ‘eh? And let’s say that after the birth of that first child our beautiful wife, who used to dote on us, now gives most, if not all, of that attention to the baby. We weren’t given any sort of roadmap here as to what to expect once that child arrived so we’ll have to sort of make our way as best we can. One night we’re out in Vegas with some of the guys, fellow gazillion dollar athletes and celebrities. We’re having a good time, we’ve been feeling a little neglected on the home front, and before you know it, we’re in bed with someone other than our wife. Remember now, even if you’d never do this sort of thing, you’re Tiger and you’ve suspended your notions.

You wake the next morning feeling a little guilty. Maybe a lot guilty but boy, that sure was fun, and she sure made you feel like you were the best thing she’d ever had as well as the best athlete on the planet. Fast forward the story a few years and all of a sudden you’re not only just doing this all of the time, you’re entitled to be doing it. You are “Tiger Woods! Da’ Man.” You’ve fathered another child with your wife. You might even have conceived a few more given your recent entitlement. It’s your story now that you’re Tiger. Spice it up however you like.

As part of your life as Tiger Woods, you also have two highly thought of charitable endeavors that you’re associated with, your own Foundation and The First Tee initiative. You’re admired by your fans, sponsors and supporters, not just for your golf game, but for the time you spend and give so generously to these charities. Things really couldn’t be much better for you in this life could they? All of this adulation, attention and entitlement. Why, it could go to a guy’s head if he let it.

And you let it. You lose sight of those core values mom and pops taught you back when. Again, fill in all of the story details that you like here. And then one Thanksgiving, it all comes crashing to a halt and you start to come tumbling down.

Okay, that tumbling down part isn’t nearly as much fun as the gazillion dollar and entitlement part, so you can stop being Tiger Woods now if you want. Step out of his story and back into yours. But don’t forget about his and what it felt like. What would you do now? Would you continue porking everyone in site? I think a lot of us expected that to be the case. Or, would you evaluate what was really important to you? Would you look at your life as it was now unfolding, maybe unraveling would be a better way to describe it, talk to some people who you trusted and decide to do something about it? I think that you just might and I think that Tiger did.

I think he decided to reconnect with those core values and in doing so I think that he realized his wife and kids were the most important elements in his life. More important even than his golf game which is what led all of us to follow his pied piping to begin with. In his statement, Tiger made it clear that golf is in the distant future not in the near term at the Tavistock Cup or Arnie’s place at Bay Hill as everyone was speculating. A Tiger that was going to continue his entitlement would have played those events. The Tiger who is finding his way and building a bigger story wouldn’t.

His father always said that he thought Tiger was going to be bigger than just golf and athletics. He actually likened his impact to a few religious figures of the past. I don’t want to step on any of those toes, it being the sensitive area that it is, but I do think that his dad might have had an inkling or premonition. Maybe he even suspected something like this. A meteoric rise to hero status, then a fall from grace and the subsequent search for the way back home. All of the classic elements of the “hero” story are in place. And what about his association with Nike? In Greek Mythology, Nike is the winged goddess of victory. Will she help him find his way?

And for those of you who think that he owes you an explanation, who can’t or won’t find a way to accept his apology, who doubt his sincerity, I’d like to point you to this post from Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, WHAT DOES TIGER WOOD’S APOLOGY REQUIRE OF YOU?

He didn’t ask for us forgiveness, he asked us to believe. I think that he was telling us, and himself, that there’s one heckuva’ story on the horizon. What will it be and what will it tell? To answer that, maybe you should jump back in his shoes again. What would you have it tell?