My Sunday Feeling

Phil Mickelson won the Masters last Sunday beating perennial bridesmaid Lee Westwood by two stokes. A surly Tiger Woods finished tied for 4th. Which is plenty impressive seeing as how Tiger has a lot on his mind nowadays.



Or did. The story this week was to the effect that Elin has had it and the divorce is all but a foregone conclusion. Sources have said that the final straw was that creepy Nike ad where a stoic Tiger shot in black and white listens to the disembodied voice of his late father Earl supposedly giving him counsel from beyond the grave.



You know, they paid somebody a lot of money to come up with something that stupid. As near as I could tell, the ad was calculated to make the viewer connect up with a chastened, more human Woods. Well, it didn't work. The spot was almost universally panned. For one thing, Tiger ain't exactly Sir Ralph Richardson. The other thing is that the snippet of Earl talking was taken from an interview in which he was talking about this wife! The spot was a complete contrivance.



I heard an interview with former PGA great Curtis Strange who said that he thought the pressure of it all-the scandal, his foundering marriage, his lack of recent playing time during which downtime he obviously did not take acting lessons-on American golf's biggest stage simply got to him by Sunday.



Maybe so. Maybe no. Which brings us to Lefty.



You want to talk pressure? Both his wife Amy and his Mother have breast cancer. Amy was so weak last Sunday that she didn't leave her bed to go to the course until it looked like Phil had sealed the deal on the final holes.



You know, there are lot of people that don't like Mickelson. He is widely considered by his peers to be an arrogant phony. Indeed, it is for this reason that he was once derisively referred to by the acronym FIGJAM. Which stands for Fuck I'm Good Just Ask Me.



But Lefty, who had a lot on his mind as well, could be seen after his rounds in Augusta signing autographs and chatting with fans. And he reverted back to Phil the Thrill making back to back Eagles on Sunday which I have never heard of. In interviews during the tournament he spoke frequently of the courage of the women in his life.



I'm thinking that golf needs Lefty right now a lot more than it needs a Tiger Woods. Both men entered the Masters facing adversity. The one whose adversity was completely of his own making viewed it as a marketing opportunity and made a self-reverential commercial.



The other one talked about his wife and how her sickness had changed his life. And he won the Masters with Amy in her sickbed.



So don't talk to me about all the pressure Tiger Woods has been under. Nobody deserves to have a loved one diagnosed with cancer.



Tiger's earned every bit of his trouble.