Golf is not dead.
Tiger Woods is not dead.
His days as a married man might be dwindling. Wives don't usually take the ring off to pump gas with photographers lurking, especially when the wife is former model Elin Nordegren.
His days as the Accenture front man are history, and his hours as the Tag Heuer night watchman might be numbered, but Tiger is not dead.
He looks dead as a role model, unless Hollywood peddles another philandering country-club role or Man About Venus magazine needs another model. The chances that Tiger will join anyone's Skins Game seem about as farfetched as the Swedish Open adopting February dates.
Winter comes early -- on all continents -- for the world's sweetest swinger. He's 33, married with two little children. He's the first athlete to ring the $1 billion bell. He isn't the family man he presented to the global media -- in a Buick, of all rides -- and he isn't what nearly everyone thought.
The penalty for false witness of this magnitude only begins with stroke plus distance. Hypocrisy drags the dimpled lies all the way to the bottom of the pond, inflating the price for resuscitation. There's not much oxygen down there, just a bunch of bottom-feeders and slimy vegetation.
He's getting hammered, and not merely in monologues. According to a Gallup poll, Woods is now viewed unfavorably by 61 percent of American women who didn't date him and 53 percent of men. Read into that whatever you will, including locker-room commutations. Tiger's favorable rating has dropped from 88 percent nine years ago to 33 percent. The 55-percent decline ties George W. Bush's Gallup record for sinking ships -- and that's without Dick Cheney on the bag.
OK, so Tiger's a stinker. He acknowledges that much on his Web page. He asks for privacy. A moratorium seems reasonable, but fresh details keep getting in the way.
Elin bought a fancy home on Faglaro Island near Stockholm, accessible only by boat or a really long tee ball. People.com reports that she hired a celebrity divorce lawyer and plans to file in California, which divides property 50-50.
Strange women -- did you see those cheap dye jobs? -- keep popping up with their lurid versions. The Canadian doctor who supposedly spun Tiger's blood at fast speeds and re-injected it to accelerate healing has been charged with selling an unapproved drug and conspiring to export drugs into the U.S. Is doping an issue? People keep talking.
Some of the talkers sound foolish, especially sportswriters who insist on telling Tiger to bare all, fall on a sharpened 9-iron, purge the poison, earn forgiveness. Gag me with a mashie niblick. In most states, there are laws against practicing psychotherapy without a license.
Phil Knight, the supportive Nike boss, insists that one day customers will look back at these indiscretions as "a minor blip." Will someone please hand Chairman Phil a mulligan?
Tiger, the AP athlete of the decade, might emerge as the greatest golfer ever and the biggest fallen idol. PGA Tour purses jumped from $70 million his rookie year to $278 million last year, and he's the reason. After Tiger won the 2008 U.S. Open on a broken leg and took leave, TV ratings dropped 50 percent.
He returned, along with the audience. Although damaged beyond image repair and horribly exposed, he will return again and contend for major titles, compartmentalizing everything.
His absence will hurt the business of golf, but the game of golf has been around more than five centuries. King James II implored Parliament to ban golf in 1457. He failed.
Any cocktail waitress with a lawyer and a story will also fail. The game is larger than Tiger and his harem.
lrawlings@wsjournal.com.
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