Dear Tiger:

Soooo…I suppose I should say “welcome back” but to be honest I’m not that happy to see you.

What happened man?  When you said you were going to take some time off, I thought you were going to spend a year on a kibbutz, or work with the poor, or simply roam the world getting in adventures like Jules Winfield in Pulp Fiction.  Now THAT would be atonement.

tiger, please tell me marcellus wallace does not look like a bitch to you.

Instead, you hid out for a measly four months at a Mississippi clinic and now you’re supposedly “cured” of your “addiction”.  Ari Fleischer (former White House pitchman for a certain ill-advised war in the Middle East) is coaching you on how to “Ac-cen-tu-ate the Positive” and “E-lim-in-ate the Negative.”  You’re playing the Masters and giving interviews with a certain look in your eye that makes me think you’ve returned to kill John Connor, the future leader of the human resistance. The Division II hoochies you nailed who missed out on their big payday last time are getting another chance to tell their stories to someone other than their roommate (who’s probably sick of hearing them go on about it).   Suffice to say, I’m disappointed.

However, I think I’m more upset with myself than with you.  It hurts to realize that you never read my last letter, but perhaps that’s a good thing.  You see, I got a few things wrong, such as this:

Unlike a lot of celebrities these days, your fame depends primarily on your ability to play golf, and less on people’s willingness to pay attention to you.     You owe them nothing.  You owe me nothing.  The only people to whom you owe anything are your wife and kids.

I mean, how naïve am I? When you said you were sorry for letting down the ones who depend on you, I thought you were talking principally about Elin.   I realize now you were talking more about the entire world of golf – the PGA, the broadcasters, the sponsors, the fans, and lets not forget all those other “pros” – that pantheon of shit golfers who can barely qualify for the tour.  Before your prodigious talent revolutionized the game and got everybody paid those assholes would have to take the bus to tourneys, and I’m sure a few of them thought about giving up golf to work for their brother-in-law’s septic business.  Thanks to your return they can continue to roll up to courses in a Lexus and put their kids through private school.   THOSE guys are your real family, and they are thrilled that you’re back.

Then there’s this gaffe:

Not that you need any more cashish, but foregoing millions in sponsorships and walking away from glory and adoration just to step back and refocus your priorities on being a better man, a better husband and father? that’s brave. That’s way braver than some dubious apology formulated by a crack squad of PR people and then soft-balled on some Tiger-friendly non-judgapalooza like Larry King. It’s brave because your wife has far less reason to forgive you than we do, and the chances you’ll succeed in earning her forgiveness and regaining her trust are pretty low.  Yet her forgiveness is what you need the most.

What was I thinking? I still believe you need Elin’s forgiveness but it’s obviously not as important as I thought.  What IS important is to play again, because while Americans kinda sorta dislike men who betray their spouses (but not really) they FUCKING! HATE! quitters.   There’s only so much self-reflection we’ll tolerate. Ultimately the only proof of your contrition is 13 strokes up on the leader board, or maybe 13 strokes behind – 13 strokes of anything that doesn’t involve a plump-ish cocktail waitress in the Pharoah’s Suite at the Luxor.   Playing is the only thing that matters, for them and for you.  I guess I’m the only one who didn’t get that memo.

I am trying to look at the upside.  As Jonathan Mahler pointed out in his excellent article for the New York Times Magazine “the same scandal that has battered professional golf…will now drive new levels of interest in it.”  CBS, the network that will air the Masters, is expecting as many people to watch it as the Super Bowl.   Moreover you have a brand new bad-boy image for sponsors to exploit (adios, Gillette Razors…hello, Axe Body Spray!).   But four months does not give you a whole lot of time to change your stripes, Tiger. I had hoped you would take that same focus and discipline that you apply to winning and apply it to actually changing for the better, but I guess those are mutually exclusive goals.

In the future, if you do end up keeping your 1 Wood in your bag  I suspect it will have more to with the damage of indiscriminate sex on your ability to win than on your relationships or your soul.  I suppose learning to only fuck 9’s (or hotter) with a gift for discretion is a pretty valuable lesson but at the risk of sounding like a prudish moralist (because Lord knows I’ve stepped out on a special lady friend once or twice in my life)  I was hoping for more.  I was hoping for a fellow traveler, a man whose desire to improve was similar to mine. To quote Dylan,  it ain’t you, babe.

That’s why I have no choice but to revoke your title as 2010 Better Man of the Year and pass it to the first runner-up.    If you see Jesse James at the Masters next week, have him call me.

Chris