One of my all time corker quotes on golf is by comedian Robin Williams, who said "golf is the only sport where a white man can dress up like a black pimp and no one cares".
How prophetic was the dead poet when he came up with that beauty? Not even
Mrs Doubtfire could have coined it better now that we know what a black pimp dressed up like a squeaky clean white man really looks like.
Talk about drive for show and putt for the "ho", turns out this tiger had his claws into more hussies than Hugh Hefner.
And if talk show host Murray Deaker has the last clean cut interview with Tiger Woods that sends his squeaky clean image out of bounds, then maybe I have the last photo?
A few years back my mate Toby emailed me in New York where I was about to fulfil a bucket list dream of being in the David Letterman show audience. (How ironic given Letterman's' recent love tryst).
Toby, a talented doco maker, was flying to Scotland from Auckland to film Michael Campbell playing in the British Open for a documentary he was making. And he had free tickets.
Given golf was my game of choice as a young fulla, I rerouted my return flight home and headed to London where we hooked up and trained it up to St Andrews, Scotland.
What I remember most about watching the masters was the glares and stares I got from the huge galleries following their golfing rock stars. Well earned given I was wearing jandals around the freezing fairways of Muirfield.
What I didn't remember until I looked through old photos recently was my mate snapping a photo of me watching another famous golfer that day - Tiger Woods. And in the context of what the sultan of swing has been up to of late (as has the late night show host Letterman), I couldn't help wondering what the photo would have captured if only my mate waited a few more seconds to click the camera.
Very soon after Tiger walked across to his caddy Steve Williams, who was having a yarn with Michael Campbell's caddy, and inadvertently placed his putter in the wrong bag.
Now what would that photo have been worth to the paparazzi feeding frenzy who are following the Nike icon who hasn't just done it - but done it heaps.
The caption could have read: "Tiger caught putting his putter in the wrong bag".
Anyways, they both played poorly that day with Cambo not even making the cut.
But let's not put all our practice balls in the one bucket. Sports spectators can be equally lured by off-course lovers. As was the case on an All Blacks tour to South Africa I was part of back in the day. The old adage "what happens on tour, stays on tour" is about as believable as a white man posing as a black pimp.
Of the 40 or so other sports crazed footy fans I travelled with, 80 per cent of the bus was filled with unfaithful hubbies who either paid for or played with local ladies. It was my first and last organised sports tour so I cannot say if it was par for the course, or just a bad bunch of boys behaving badly.
Was it a one-hit-wonder or was it more serious philandering like the cheating Tiger? For my two bobs' worth of playing to your handicap, the art of golf and the art of adultery have much more in common than playing it straight down the fidelity fairway.
Fortunately for me none of the South African sheilas took Farmers cards so my fence jumping was limited to gawking and talking.
And Tiger isn't out of the woods yet. The hits just keep coming like a David Tua fist on a Shane Cameron jaw.
I can't help seeing a similarity to the upbringing of Michael Jackson and Tiger Woods. They both had excessive dominating dads who could see their sons as silver linings in their own clouds of desperation. Just like Michael, Tiger was far from normal. He never gave a personal interview in 10 years and he believed money could buy silence. But sadly for their fans and families they were completely out of touch with the real world.
And we all brought the role model image hooker, line and sinker. So that brings me back to the perfect picture.
Just like the perfect drive it's all about timing and if my mate Toby had waited another 10 seconds he would have caught Tiger putting his putter in the wrong bag - way back before Robin Williams and the rest of the world found out.
tommykapai@gmail.com
One of my all time corker quotes on golf is by comedian Robin Williams, who said "golf is the only sport where a white man can dress up like a black pimp and no one cares".
How prophetic was the dead poet when he came up with that beauty? Not even
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