Steve Williams Pitchin' A Fit

Well, there won't be any more awkward high-fives. Not really sure why this is such a huge story. Yea, yea I know...they've been together for over 12 years and Tiger won 13 of his 14 majors with Stevie on the bag. But come on! It's a G damn caddie for crying out loud. Everyone is acting like Steve Williams made Tiger Woods. Nah. It's the other way around, folks. If any other player fires their caddie - which happens all the time on tour - it gets a little blurb in the paper.

Stevie isn't reacting so well to the whole thing, and is teetering on the edge of throwing darts at Tiger on his way out the door. From a statement on Williams' website (he has a website???)

Following the completion of the AT&T National I am no longer caddying for Tiger after he informed me that he needed to make a change. After 13 years of loyal service needless to say this came as a shock.

Not exactly how you want to handle that change if you're Steve Williams. It looks pathetic. How long before this guy goes all "JetBlue" on us and just does a drunken interview ripping on Tiger. I get that he was probably shocked, but he maybe should have seen it coming when he began caddying for Adam Scott during Tiger's absence.

I know I saw it coming. If you're the caddy for the best golfer in the world, you don't ask him if you can work for someone else while he's hurt. I think Tiger saw that as a sign of Steve not being entirely on his side. Couple that with some off-handed comments made in the last 2 years about Tiger letting down his family and what not, and you've got a recipe for getting your ass fired.

Ultimately, this shouldn't change to much, though I am fascinated to see who Tiger gets on his bag next.

Also, you gotta wonder if Steve Williams is gonna get a book deal or something. I doubt it but you never know. He denies being in the know of Tiger's extramarital affairs, but who knows if that is really the case. Even without that stuff I'm sure he could write a shitty expose that a lot of people would read.

Rache Uchitel Lost Her $10 Million

Tiger Woods paid Rachel Uchitel $10 million in hush money moments before she was going to hold a news conference telling the world about her affair. The settlement had a confidentiality agreement that kept Rachel from ever talking about Tiger again. Any violation of the agreement and Rachel would be forced to give back the money.

Hey, guess what happened? A few months ago, Tiger’s lawyer, Jay Lavely, called professional celebrity ambulance chaser Gloria Allred, who brokered the deal, claiming Rachel had violated the agreement by speaking with TMZ and going on Celebrity Rehab for love addiction though she never specifically mentioned Tiger.

Rachel didn’t believe she violated the agreement but Gloria convinced her that if they went to court, she would lose and that she should return whatever she had left of the money.

That’s what happened but as time passed, Rachel started believing Gloria had screwed her over by making a deal with Tiger’s lawyer. Gloria was to allegedly convince Rachel to give back the money and in return, Gloria would be paid all her attorney’s fees. Had Rachel gone to arbitration and lost, Gloria would not have been paid anything.

Rachel has since hired a malpractice lawyer to get Gloria to pay back whatever was left of the $10 million she gave back or get sued. Gloria told TMZ,

“Our law firm no longer represents Ms. Uchitel and we have no comment on this story at this time. However, we are confident that we have always acted appropriately and in her best interests.”

I don’t feel an ounce of sympathy for anyone here. I’m glad that fame whore lost her $10 million and I’m especially glad Gloria Allred might be sued. That ambulance chaser is annoying. Every time someone threatens to release a sex tape or go public with an affair, I swear Gloria’s ears start burning and she wakes up from deep sleep and starts salivating.

In related news, Rachel Uchitel banged Elin Nordegren’s current boyfriend while she was banging Tiger Woods. Also from TMZ,

We told you yesterday … Tiger Woods ex-wife is dating marketing exec Jamie Dingman, whose dad is a billionaire tycoon. But before Elin, sources tell TMZ Jamie and Rachel were an item — and there was a little bit of an overlap with Jamie and Tiger, but Jamie bowed out to the golfer.

In fact, when Rachael got serious with Tiger, Jamie joked with her, “That ok. I’ll date his wife, Elin.”

It would be funny if Jamie Dingman told Elin about this while they were having sex and he went, “Haha, small world, right?” before he finished on her.

Open Championship Review

The Open Championship, held last week at Royal St. George's in Sandwich, England was the third of the 4 Majors on the PGA Tour. However, the only thing major about the tournament was that it was a major disappointment.

Sure we had the sentimental winner in Darren Clarke - another Major winner from Northern Ireland - who lost his wife to cancer a number of years ago, and has been a good golfer for a while now but never hoisted a Major championship trophy. Clarke battled through stretches of bad weather all week to come out on top.

His was a nice storyline, but to me it wasn't the biggest story of the week. Two big stories emerged as the week wore on. The first is that golf has become increasingly boring as Tiger's absence from the tour continues. His lack of presence was the elephant in the room all week. Golf just doesn't feel the same. No matter how much the people behind the curtain at the PGA Tour try to get me pumped up about guys like Bubba Watson, Dustin Johnson, Rickie Fowler, Hunter Mahan and the like, I just can't do it. At some point these guys have to do something for me to get excited about. Truth be told, Fowler had a nice week and finished in the top 5. But Johnson had another choke job in the final holes of a major as he dumped his 2nd shot out of bounds on 14. I don't even know where the others finished - which isn't a good sign.

Mickelson made a late charge but then reverted back to his usual Open Championship style and after getting to -6 and sharing the lead, finished the rest of his round +4 to end at -2 and T3. Even a Mickelson win, though, would not have saved this tournament for me. It would have been a better outcome for American golf, obviously. But it still wouldn't drive ratings. There's still only one guy that can do that.

The other story line from this week was what a whiny bitch Rory McIlroy turned into on Sunday. He struggled all week in the bad weather, and his shot selection was very questionable. Coming off his big win at the U.S. Open, everyone - himself included - expected more. But it was his remarks after the tournament that were disheartening for Rory fans.

"I'm not a fan of golf tournaments where the outcome is predicted so much by the weather. It's not my sort of golf."

"...there's no point in changing your game for one week a year."

"My game is suited basically for every golf course and most conditions but I don't enjoy playing in these conditions, really. I'd rather play when it's 80 degrees and sunny and there's not much wind."

Wow. You can't have your cake and eat it too, Rors. Those comments just come off as petty and spoiled and quite frankly remind me of something Sergio Garcia would have said in his younger years. He was pampered and protected and look where that got him. McIlroy is too good to have that kind of attitude. Does it suck that some guys get stuck in the bad weather and other guys get some calm conditions? Yes. But can you dig down deep and compete? Yes. And how about how those comments sort of throw his fellow countryman and winner Darren Clarke under the bus? He competed in the bad weather and won. So what are you saying? He just "lucked out"?

McIlroy, who already passed on a number of big tournaments in the U.S. - including TPC Sawgrass - isn't doing himself any favors with the U.S. fans. If this guy is supposed to fill Tiger's shoes I think we're all in trouble. If there's one thing Americans don't appreciate it is a whiny European. McIlroy is in need of an attitude adjustment - and I for one am hoping that Tiger returns to give it to him. Something tells me he's sitting at home rehabbing and just licking his chops at getting a shot at this kid.

Story That Should Be Getting More Attention

"A Canadian sports doctor (Dr. Anthony Galea) whose high-profile clients have included Tiger Woods and Alex Rodriguez pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday to bringing into the United States unapproved drugs, including human growth hormone, that were used to treat professional athletes (Boston Herald)."

I find it very odd that this story is getting no media attention. We ripped apary A-Rod for his steroid use, and yet Tiger Woods gets to walk away from this without really any notice. We were all wondering all those years how Tiger could drive so far, and be so good, could this be the answer? Could this be the reason he is having all these injuries now? I am starting to think so.

This Just Might Be The Worst Marketing Idea Ever

Ok. Ok. .... Ok. For a while I have been considering writing an ode to what I consider the greatest sports-related commercial of all time, and others that I think are in the discussion, and while I have decided that I will bring them up, albeit later in this post, I came across, at work last night, a commercial that all of you will be bombarded with this coming weekend.

See, some of you might have heard that there's this golf tournament this weekend. I'm pretty unfamiliar, but apparently there's a lot of money and some green jackets involved. In any event, not only is there a golf tournament this weekend, but this Tiger Woods fellow is making his return to the tour after taking several months off to patch up family issues that resulted with his own personal infidelities. Now, I've touched on these topics and how I think some of -- or really all -- of the issues Tiger has to deal with are best left to him and his wife.

After all, these are his problems, and they are personal problems and they're nobody's business but his and Elin's. However, while I still believe the job of working out his marriage is not something the public needs to be involved in, despite Tiger's obviously manufactured and uninspired public campaign to help his image, the irrational passionate part of my brain wants to smack Tiger in the face after witnessing this.



This, and I don't think I'm speaking too irrationally here, might be the dumbest commercial in history.

We can argue all day and night over what Tiger owes the public. Some idiots think he owes us the world, while others realize that it is not for us to judge and Tiger, shockingly, is probably not the first professional athlete to be wildly unfaithful to his wife. But I think we can all agree on this.

Cheating on your wife is wrong.

Yup. There. Done. We've established the base fact at play here. It is wrong for you to cheat on your spouse. I think that's pretty clear. And Tiger did just that. Now he didn't do it to all of us, which is why he owes all of us nothing. However, it's either asking an awful lot of us, or it tells us that Nike thinks we're all stupid, to introduce an ad over the weekend of the Masters that asks us to cheer for Tiger out of hopes that we will see a tragic hero rise like a Phoenix.

Um, no. Sorry. I'm not jumping on this bandwagon. I understand that Nike has spent billions marketing this man, and I'm sure they're plenty richer for it, but asking us all to immediately love him again because his late father is a more emotionally conscious person than he is an outlandish request. It's bad enough that milllions, myself included, will tune in this weekend just to watch Tiger struggle to make the cut in Augusta after six months off.

This commercial is Nike asking us to forgive Tiger for his transgressions, and while America is a generally forgiving nation, and I suspect years from now this incident will be a footnote for Woods, who incidentally was awarded Golfer of the Year by the Golf Writers Association of America this week, asking us to forgive for no real reason is ridiculous. As I've said before, Woods doesn't really require our forgiveness, but that doesn't mean the public should go back to respecting him because the swoosh tells us he's a changed man.

Whether or not Tiger owes us anything, or whether or not he's changed, however, simply isn't the point here. This was a completely unnecessary advertisement that simply can only make Tiger look vapid and hubristic for appearing in it and make Nike look foolish for making it. And besides, how could Tiger possibly take himself seriously as he stared into that camera.

Your guess is as good as mine.

If this ranks as the dumbest sports commercial of all time, however, from a company that usually produces great ones, I have spent an inordinately large amount of time lately sifting through the great ones. I do think there is an interesting connection, though, in that all of the great commercials that come to mind involve Michael Jordan -- and if Tiger Woods was Nike and Gatorade's It Man of the 2000s, MJ was most certainly the superstar of the 1990s.

Interestingly though, if Woods' goal is to have the popular influence on golf that Jordan did on the NBA, and there certainly is something to be said for how the two each transcended their sport in similar fashion, there is a lesson to be learned. And that lesson is that Jordan shows personality in his popular advertising. Now, Jordan was no saint, and he has plenty of varied skeletons in his closet, but while Tiger only smiles and screams in pictures and after winning tournaments, Jordan showed a playful side in public, such as in his famous Big Mac-driven game of H-O-R-S-E with Larry Bird.

Because MJ showed off his fun side with ads like that -- or his dramatically unfortunate turn in Space Jam -- it gave him currency to display his competitiveness without reproach and perhaps bought him capital when the public became confronted with his mistakes. It's reasons like that why when this commercial came out in 2002 featuring an older Jordan facing himself in one-on-one, we were less turned off by his overt competitiveness than we were in awe of the man we've loved both as a young player and an aging superstar.

And what was the ultimate example of why we loved MJ? It's three simple words: "Be Like Mike". You may have guessed from that, as well as the embedded video below, that the 1992 Gatorade commercial with Jordan that simply tells us to "Be Like Mike" is, in my opinion, the greatest sports commercial of all time. The song is great, the slogan is so catchy that we still say it 18 years later even if we don't remember what it advertised, and the ad shows us both the champion and the fun-loving star.



These are the aspects of Jordan that made him a hero. From start to finish, "Be Like Mike" paints Jordan so positively in mutliple facets that we don't just love him. We want to love him. The juxtaposition of Jordan with the children, who are playing for the love of the game, gives us the implication that Jordan is, himself, a child at heart. And if that doesn't drive the point home enough, there are cuts to Jordan laughing hysterically with his buddies. The commercial was so good that it inspired a sequel with personalities ranging from Chris Berman to Mia Hamm to Bugs Bunny and, peculiarly, John Popper from Blues Traveler.

Manufactured? Sure. But that doesn't matter. "Be Like Mike" is 60 seconds of brilliance that made us get a song stuck in our head, want to be children and fall in love with Michael Jordan. And to think, all he had to do was laugh in front of us. Perhaps if Tiger had taken some notes, he wouldn't have had to make any commercials asking for our forgiveness.

Oh My God Rick Reilly Shut Up

I wanted to avoid talking about this Tiger Woods press conference. Really, I did. I am so unbelievably tired of this story -- if for no other reason than it is absolutely none of our business -- and yet, well, here I am. Not so much because I feel the need to criticize Tiger, though I am now convinced that he is the worst public speaker alive, but moreso because I need to explain something very clearly to ESPN commentator and former Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly.

Rick. Buddy. Tiger did not cheat on you. He cheated on his wife. Despite how badly you might want to be her, you, Rick Reilly, are not his wife. He does not owe you an apology.

Get it? Got it? Awesome.

Now, I know you may feel like Tiger owes you something since you have all the answers for his troubles even if your colleagues don't necessarily think you do, but he doesn't actually owe you anything. Really, he doesn't. He doesn't owe you anything and he doesn't owe me or any other sports fan anything. At all.

In fact, unless you happen to be a Swedish woman named Elin Nordegren, or are one of Tiger's close relatives, he doesn't owe you any sort of apology at all. Not sure why, Rick? Ok. Let me break it down for you.

For the last 15 years Tiger has been playing golf at such an exceptional level that at one point you even called him a "God". He has provided you with hours of incredible entertainment -- and after all that is really what sports are in the end -- and you, in particular, have managed to get attention and money off of it by writing about him the entire time. Tiger has given you fodder from his teenage years when he was not yet the juggernaut he became and continued to do so throughout his early time on the tour and later as he crafted his remarkable career.

You gave us schmaltzy stories about how wonderful and exciting he is, gave us the not so difficult prediction that he was going to be amazing, told us how quirky and fun he was and on more than one occasion delivered your own account of his sentimental attachment to his father.

Yeah, Rick, you've gotten quite a bit of mileage out of Tiger, and as such, I offer you this advice, which is surely as unwanted as the advice you keep giving him, and that is shut up. The fact is this is purely a personal matter between one man and the wife he has betrayed, and you have almost made a career out of praising Tiger. You have no place to act holier than thou, and, if anything, you might owe Tiger for giving you something to write about. In some ways, Tiger Woods made you, and he is the reason you got to be popular enough to write about leukemia-ridden paraplegics who were trying to play ping pong every week.

Frankly, I think I may owe Tiger for the years of entertainment he has given all of us. He's not the first public figure we've admired and he's not the first one who has strayed. Any of us who feel like we have been personally slighted, need to get over ourselves, and you Mr. Reilly lead that pack.

Now, I will admit, Rick, somehow you have managed not to say the dumbest thing anyone has mentioned on the matter, but that doesn't mean you are any more right to take an expert point of view on what was probably the dullest, least remarkable press conference I have ever seen in my life. By the time Tiger was done apologizing this morning I just wanted those five minutes of my life back, or at the very least, had hoped something more interesting would be announced.

I was really hoping to spend today talking about two remarkable Olympic hockey games last night, with Canada getting by Switzerland in a shootout and Slovakia doing the same later in the evening against Russia. Or at the very least, I was going to wax poetic on the amusing and surprising fun that comes from following the twitterverse during Yevgeny Plyushchenko's long program in men's figure skating last night. But now, after watching Tiger say that his apology to his wife will take months and be defined through his actions -- and he's absolutely right -- all I can think about is how tired I am of hearing you ramble, Rick.

Don't get me wrong. Is Tiger Woods a hypocrite? Absolutely. But Rick, even if you've never cheated on your wife, it looks like you may very well have been cut from the same cloth.