WHO was projecting that image?

Woods or the media surrounding him?

Who was cutting away from and otherwise ignoring his cursing on the golf course - FOR YEARS?

You STILL don't get it - even your "best" examples are NOTHING MORE THAN A MEDIA-CREATED STORY.

Gee, and golf carts are allowed in practice rounds.

They're NOT in the actual PGA event. Didn't know THAT, did you?

Keep digging. It just shows you enjoy the destruction of public persons.

Not sure I'd want to put that on such a display, though.

And you KNOW the history of golf well enough to spout that?

Uhhh, right. Sure you do.
And that says it all, doesn't it? You're pulling for failure because you think it's "gonna be sweet".

You want him to fail based on what someone trying to sell ads tells you.

https://dictionary.reference.com/browse/credulous
And what? Five years ago, you probably thought Tiger Woods was one of the "many real good guys on the PGA tour", didn't you?

Why?

Because that's what you were TOLD.

But NOW, because you've been TOLD something different, you celebrate his failures.

When in reality he's almost certainly pretty much the same person he's always been. Except maybe now at his worst he's one of the twenty or thirty best golfers in the world instead of maybe the best in history.

But the STORY the media is telling about him has changed.

Amazing? Isn't it? Now that Woods isn't a meal ticket for the media, he's a target.

And you bought the fish story. Hook, line, and sinker.
Is that what you aspire to?

And you had the temerity to say I should be embarrassed?!?!?!

Yep - right now, at best the feds will have Hincapie, Hamilton, and Landis testify against Armstrong.

Maybe.

Because their testimony may not even be relevant in a trial - because it doesn't connect Armstrong with defrauding the government - especially if by their testimony all the witnesses "against" Armstrong are just demonstrating that "everyone dopes".

IMO to convict Armstrong of fraud, the feds have to PROVE:

1. Armstrong took PEDs. That's going to be tough given all he drug tests he passed.
2. Armstrong can be PROVEN to know that taking PEDs was prohibited by HIS contract - with NO wiggle room (and note we don't even get here if we can't get past #1)
3. Team management was pro-active and thorough in their attempts to police PED use among team members, and tried to uphold any PED use clause in their contract (assuming there's an airtight one there in the first place...)
4. There's NO correspondence from anyone in the USPS saying, "We don't care what he takes as long as he wins" or anything even close to that.

Now throw in the credibility problems that every witness against Armstrong has ("What? The feds threatened you with jail time if you didn't testify against Armstrong? Is that why your story now contradicts everything you've said publicly for over a decade?" "Mr. Landis, how much money are you asking for under US law with THIS version of your story?") compared to what team management will say on the stand, and I can't see a clean way to prove Armstrong guilty of fraud.

Because the more riders who testify that they used PEDs with Armstrong, the more culpable the team itself becomes.

And AFAIK the team sits squarely between Armstrong and the feds.

If the feds get a lot of team mates to testify that they used PEDs with Armstrong, what are they going to say on the stand? If they admit they knew everyone was using PEDs (and it's already been proven that Armstrong used PEDs - again, not likely), they become complicit in the fraud. If they say they didn't know and the feds have managed to build a strong case that Armstrong used PEDs, the team management looks utterly incompetent.

And if someone somewhere is sitting on an email from a USPS executive that says, "Just win, baby!" that's a get-out-of-jail free card. Can you imagine what happens to the fed's fraud case if a USPS exec gets on the stand and says, "Yeah, we knew Armstrong might be doping - but we figured every pro cyclist does that anyway."

And we won't know about THAT kind of evidence - if it exists - until probably any trial happens.

Anyone care to bet against something like that popping up?

I knew Tiger Woods was a prick all the way back to his Stanford days. I know a lot about him including his father and mother. His hate for the press and the public can be explained. He was discriminated against when he was coming up as a prodigy and turning the lilly white golf establishment on its ear. I grew up playing competitive golf and no doubt you didn't His self destruction can be explained although I won't waste it on you. To use a metaphor, he is a trained fighting dog and a stain on the sport of golf. The good news is his lack of moral compass and what he has dragged golf through has been his undoing. He will not achieve his most coveted goal at the expense of all others, to become the greatest golfer in history. For that I am grateful.

There is one fundamental difference between Tiger and Lance. Tiger cheated on his wife and kids. Lance likely cheated on his sport. Additionally, each also betrayed the trust of perhaps millions of youngsters in love with golf and/or cycling.

Why anyone feels the need to defend their respective transgressions is beyond my comprehension.

If Lance is convicted of anything it will likely be for either making false statements to a Federal investigator or giving false testimony under oath. So far he and his legal team are doing an excellent job of preventing such scenarios. If the Feds ever force Lance into a situation where he has to deny such activities to a Fed then he is probably going down.

Tiger committed what are to many moral offenses. Lance likely committed offenses that are violations of domestic and international law. Dirtbag or not, Tiger retains the right to possess all of his titles and trophies. Sadly, whether or not Lance is ever convicted of any wrongdoing, the same might not ultimately be said of his moral right to retain all of his titles and trophies.

I disagree.

I think the whole friggin sport of pro cycling cheated on everybody from the participants to the media to the fans.

Many good points. Tiger lied to not only his wife and family but to all the wh0res he juggled including the one he paid a million bucks to not speak publicly and lied about who he was to the public to become rich through marketing. His whole existence is a lie. But quite right he didn't cheat in counting his score. He may have cheated taking steroids however if you believe as I do. Many don't know that athletes take steroids for different reasons. Or that he was a Vic head getting hooked to mask pain when he crashed his SUV unraveling his whole phony life. One is injury recovery. It was predicted ten years ago that Tiger's skeleton couldn't hold up to the 130mph clubhead speed he could generate which is proving to be true. Tiger was a much better golfer skinny than he is as a linebacker. Tiger has an old body in golf terms with a lot of 'reps' to use his reference.
As to Lance, the more anybody knows about cycling, the more most accept that to compete they dope. Seems like everybody does as some level but perhaps not. I wonder this and would like to hear from those that may know as I know more about golf than cycling. What top cyclist in the last 15 years is believed to never have doped? Lemond possibly?...who was under tremendous scrutiny when trying to win the TdF as I recall. He told stories of having to protect his urine samples at all costs worrying about the French tainting them.

Making it an even playing field if not a dirty secret.

uh

Now that's brevity.

Then theres that whole Tiger lasik thing.

Eh... who Tiger chooses to bang or not to bang is none of any of your business and shouldnt have anything to do with his golfing.

I am amazed how adults seem to end up behaving like teenage girls when it comes to sporting heroes and completely lose all perspective.

They are sportspeople who are good at their particular sports, not deities walking among men. The ability to swing a stick, lay a mean bodycheck or turn pedals really fast does not make anyone a "hero" by any means.

If you are feeling let-down b/c your hero - be it Tiger, Bonds, Lance, Vick or whoever - turned out to be a less than stellar person, it is your own fault for acting like a 14-year old at a Skid Row concert, putting that person on a pedestal and worshiping them.

I agree with you. But a moralist might say that these celebrities are regarded a heroes, and their behaviours are emulated or become "acceptable" among their fan base.

As an inidication of this, I said in Foo when Tiger's woes emerged, that men in bars across the world were cheering because that's what they would if they could, and women in bars across the world were wondering how they could get a bit of Tiger's action (or a bit of some other wealthy celebrity if Tiger was all booked up).

Having said that, Tiger's misdemeanours are beyond doubt, on self admission. Condemn away.

But I cannot understand how a thread can go so long and condemn a man here when there is no hard proof beyond reasonable doubt tabled in a court of law. The presumption of innocence until proven guilty seems to have evaporated.

Sure... I know that happens, I just dont think that should be the case. For a so-called evolved and educated society, we sure tend to behave very childishly about some thing.

We arent a court of law. If we can put people on a pedestal based on our preconceptions ("he swings a stick really well, he's a great man"), then we can choose to knock them off the pedestal equally easily.

The thing is, Lance's fall is undeserved b/c he (or any other sports person) shouldnt have been put on that high a pedestal to begin with.

Your two comments are interrelated, of course.

Countries, for a long time, have regarded sportspeople as being a ticket to national pride. This has engendered a fervour that in turn has put incredible pressure on sportspeople to succeed on the international stage. The more they succeed, the higher the pedestal. Heaven knows that here in Australia, the Federal Government has pumped millions into programs to indentify talent and train athletes for success internationally.

While it was amateurs originally, at the top of the pedestal tower has been money, and bucketloads of it. And when there is money, there are vested interests that want success at any cost.

It can be argued that the two individuals under the microscope here -- Woods and Armstrong -- weren't representing their country, they are or were representing themselves in pursuit of money and prestige.

Well, yes, but on the world stage, they are Americans and every time they won, they were adored by Americans, American corporations and non-Americans. And America ruled.

The same happens with Contador in Spain. Probably Cavendish in the UK.

The trouble with America (and I am looking at this from an outsider's point of view) is that in the past decade or a bit longer, it has been let down by the people who have been charged with leadership, whether in sport, politics, finance or entertainment. The falls from grace have been spectacular and have hurt a lot of people not just in America, but around the globe.

It's that power corrupts thing... that absolute power corrupts absolutely. So the cynicism is such that whenever there is a whiff of controversy, the American public has been conditioned to condemn and convict first, irrespective of that principle of innocent until proven guilty.

It's a sad situation, and unfortunately for America, the rest of the world is starting to adopt the same attitude towards America's behaviour on the world political, financial and sporting stages.

If Armstrong is charged and convicted, it will be seern as yet another American failure to play by the rules... with Armstrong just being the face of the failure.

Just how he has treated everyone in his life except for his caddy who has protected all his dealings. The guy has made over a billion dollars on marketing himself as a person of integrity when the opposite is true. That's why all of his sponsors have pulled out...that and Woods has now looked in the mirror and seen himself for what he is. Golf is a mental sport. Yes his physical gifts allowed him to dominate with his ability to hit 350 yard drives and 280 yard 2-irons but putting is mental and he has lost the ability to will the ball into the hole. He's a broken man...both mentally and physically and why he likely will never win another major and in particular 5 more majors or the equivalent of Mickleson's lifetime record to elipse Jack's unbelievable record. The more he loses, the more it will reinforce what he has become.

Touching upon Tiger's breakdown, it is much like Michael Jackson's story really. About discrimination and father's that drove their kids relentlessly...kid's who were only about the talent they presented and only rewarded when they excelled and neither had a childhood without consequences based upon performance. Kids with extraordinary talent overcoming being discriminated against and the discrimination their parents felt and how they drove their kids to compensate for being black by being better than the rest. Also in the case of Tiger he was an only child. The project of his father who was also a talented and well spoken man...a Green Beret as tough minded as they come. Both Tiger and Michael are or were miserable in spite of unfathomable wealth forever seeking perfectionism to satisfy their parents which is never sustainable and driven by scripted lives resulting in self loathing. Some know that Michael's father was a monster and Michael did everything in his life to be different from his father...the polar opposite, from morphing his appearance to adapting a child like persona based upon never having a childhood and driven to perform much like Tiger was.
Tiger is hosed because he needs the press for marketing and yet they expose him for who he is. Most close to him could see how phony and controlled he was with the press and it has gotten much worse. One writer said it well. Tiger has always had a script as dictated by his parents. His dad is dead and he has gone off the rails and has no script for recovery because he was all about his image which is now irreparable. This is too much for anybody to deal with really, even Tiger Woods with his iron clad will and really why he went off the rails and why many talented prodigies do.

As to lies upon lies and in the spirit of speaking about doping and Tiger and Lance together and why Tiger's name came up, below see a couple of pics comparing early Tiger to current Tiger. Most into cycling and fitness understand body types. Tiger coming up was the quinessential nerd, a quick twitch ectomorph who inspite of being unusually skinny could drive a golf ball well over 300 yards. Now look at him. Again with respect to body types, most know there is only one way to transform an ectomorph into a mesomorph...chemistry. An ectomorph can lift weights until the cows come home and still end up a well toned skinny or even average size guy. There is NO doubt in my mind or the mind of others that have closely watched Tiger from the time he was a young prodigy that he is on the juice. NO question. So it isn't just lies, it is about cheating and breaking the law. I honestly don't care what the guy does nor to the point of the earlier poster am I surprised about the guy just like all the other sports icons that are found out for what they are.

I chuckle at Woods' knee and his inability to play...Ben Hogan, who IMO is the greatest golfer in history, one year after a nearly fatal accident being hit head on by a Greyhound Bus, won the US Open at Merion. It took him hours to get ready to play a round due to all the therapy and wrapping bandages he put on his legs (which were nearly destroyed in the wreck) so he could walk his rounds. It is an amazing story.

hmmm...

Campag4life, thanks for taking the time to provide a detailed and considered reply - lot of stuff there I didnt know!

Cheers!

Hogan's life and story is quite remarkable...really the father of the modern golf swing having penned perhaps the greatest golf book of all time and my personal favorite and the model I used coming up when learning the game. But who could play with that weak of a grip?
Hogan came up very hard and had a very stern demeanor. Word is his father commited suicide in his home which forever shaped young Hogan. If you have a chance to seek video of Hogan, its out there. I love the action of this swing including a pronounced lag/delayed hit that he got with a cupped left wrist which was the result of him fighting a hook from the early days including his restricted hip turn and famous stance. His swing seemed to perfectly repeat. My teacher was a disciple of Hogan and used his 5 lessons to teach me.
Although Nichlaus has perhaps the greatest golf record, many believe like you that Hogan was the best of all time. He was perhaps the most accurate ball striker but don't believe he could putt as well as Nichlaus or Woods...of course they putted on smoother greens.
Bobby Jones was a golfing prodigy and genius and Byron Nelson is in the mix as well including the late and great maestro Severiano Ballesteros who left us much too young.

Thanks. That is my perspective and others may disagree but what I have observed.
Cheers.

Please don't misinterpret my message or broaden it to a pure morality issue. Lots of golfers, football & basketball players, astronauts and presidents have jumped on almost everything in sight. What seperates Tiger was his moral arrogance. He looked down his nose at mere humans and spoke ad nauseum about his perfect life, especially his perfect morally upright family life. It wasn't so much the fact he cheated with a ton of especially sleazy skanks, it was that he misrepresented what he really was to millions of youngsters world wide. It was the hypocrisy, not the immorality, that brought Tiger down for so many.

You also said that Tiger's unregulated banging shouldn't have anything to do with his golfing. His playing performance since the pitching wedge/SUV events have shown that quite the opposite is true.

Tiger fell so far that the rest of the PGA Tour players lost their fear of him and are no longer intimidated by the formerly perfect golfer in Sunday red. Besides the millions in lost advertising revenue he lost his ability to intimidate by merely showing up. All that having been said, it may well be that Tiger's biggest problem is his loss of self respect.

As far as Hogan, he was a super arrogant prick that nobody could stand during his playing years. Tiger was arrogant, but never to the level of Hogan. Hogan was an unquestioned golfing legend, but Jones, Nicklaus, and Palmer are golfing icons for a reason. Tiger was approaching that status but that is now likely lost, even if he does break Jack's majors record.

Ah ok. I stopped following golf after Happy Gilmour retired, so I didnt know about all of this.

I'll reiterate something I believe deeply - the only sportspeople worth admiring are hockey players. Tough SOBs and for the most part, a good dose of humility and no pretensions about trying to be heros.

V.

Are you sure?

Hmmm. I got testicular cancer @ age 21 - right side - swelled up before Christmas 82 to 3x its normal size, misdiagnosed as orchitis, correctly diagnosed a month later and removed surgically (no chemo for me, yay) and I'll tell ya, it was the all the Diet Rite coke and PBJs that I ate at night as a teen that must've done me in.

Its far more likely that HPV or some other virus is responsible for cancers or for triggering them by changing genetic material.

TC is the most common form of cancer for white males (and I'm a white male) 18-35, and I was just damn unlucky, in the sense of getting it - lucky in that I've been cancer free for 28 years. And I still have my spare part and two very cute kids, so I consider myself ever luckier.

Let's assume he DID get substantial pharm assistance, winning the TDF 7x after nearly effin' dying is still a remarkable accomplishment. I spent enough time in the Urology cancer ward, seeing other patients quarantined up with masks and listening to them puke while I recovered from the initial surgery and the follow-up retroperitineal lymphectomy (done in the 80s, but not anymore, as they found out it wasn't increasing survival rates and they in some cases were accidentally cutting the bundles of nerves that control the male happy moment ) to know that making it through chemo (TC, even if its spread, depending on the type of tumor - I had the second most common kind of tumor, but after the most common, which is treatable with radiation, everything else only responds to chemo (and if you have the lovely combo tumor then you get BOTH) is highly curable with decent five year survival rates (I was told with a surgical cure like mine that if I was two years cancer free I was considered pretty much home free) - all parens aside, chemo is biatch, if you can survive feeling like you have a really bad case of flu and fatigue that ebbs and flows for months on end, you are going to have a tolerance for pain and discomfort that makes sitting on a bike feel like a piece of cake...

Anyway, doping is prevalent in nearly all professional sports in many, many forms. Hell, taking supplements can be considered a form of doping if you draw the definition narrowly enough, so I guess my daily multivitamin/fish oil/St. John's Wort, I'm juiced to the gills and I can ride 15 mph ALL DAY people. Turtles are very, very afraid.

Personally, let's let 'em go ahead and advertise the companies that make the dope on their jerseys. Why not? Cycling teams are always having a hard time finding sponsors. Heck, most of Hollywood is doping with HGH and other questionable substances to "look good". Stallone got busted with HGH in Oz and openly admitted that there was no way @ 60 that he could pull off the body to be an action star without it. I'm also guessing that there are a lot of hot 40-50 something actresses that are using HGH figuratively as a body wash so they can continue to be in front of the camera.

But we don't see federal investigators hassling Hollywood figures over drug use that enhances body appearance, do we?

Lance would be left alone had he ridden for a team that didn't take federal money - unless the accountants can somehow prove that the money Postal received was actually not federal in origin - i.e., appropriated by Congress - but money paid to the Postal Service for private shipping services... who knows, I'm not a lawyer, but again, if there had been a viable privately sponsored option for Lance to ride with, I doubt if we'd have all of this whispering (er actually SHOUTING).

Its a compelling story regardless, and as was either pointed out here or in the Washington Post in a recent Robinson column, OK, you take away Lance's titles, then... what do you do with Eddie's? Where they've got pictures of all the speed-induced spittle that was common on the faces of TDF riders in the 60s and 70s when everyone was popping speed to get faster? For that matter, juicing was probably a lot more common in sports like baseball during even Ruth's era, its simply that the press didn't report the private lives of figures like is done today (Ruth was a big time partier, drunk, and lover of food and women, for example) out of respect for the figures' privacy. Hmmm... privacy, what an intriguing concept... but if you had privacy, people like the Kardashians and Paris Hilton wouldn't have "careers"... haha

EDIT: Actually, I do not blame media freaks like the K's, the Lindsays, Paris, there's gotta be some talentless out of control male hacks to put in this line as well, for taking advantage of the whole gossip culture. Its always been there, but with the internet and instant communication and everyone armed with a camera phone its compounded 1000x worse... but we are also participating in picking at the scab by reading, listening, and debating this crap

I have a lot of respect for martial artist and boxers. One of the cleanest losses I've suffered in a sparring match has been a KO from a friend who was a boxer. And I am still in awe of guys like Wally Jay, who even in his late 70s, could toss me around like I was made of straw, or the Gracie brothers. But this is just respect for someone who is very good at what he does.

When you see hockey players sitting on the bench getting stitched up without missing a shift, or guys like JR playing with a broken jaw, etc. - these guys arent just drawing a paycheck, they are playing and putting their livelihoods at risk b/c they love the sport. That's some seriously epic stuff out there and warrants a completely different level of respect from me.