Golf is what you would call a gentleman’s pursuit. The players have never really reached the levels of celebrity of premiership footballers and you would not expect to see pictures of them falling out of nightclubs. Their clean-cut image has allowed them to maintain a certain persona unlike any other in professional sport.
This was true until the early hours of November 27.
When the news broke of Tiger Woods’ car crash nobody could have expected the repercussions of it not only for him, but for his sport as well. Tiger’s image has been especially important to him since becoming the youngest ever winner of The Master in 1997.
This carefully crafted appearance combined with talent, resulted in him becoming the best paid man in sport with major sponsorship deals from Nike and Gillette. A man who on the face of it really did have everything, including a Swedish model for a wife.
Now after these revelations about his private life he may end up with nothing. Gillette have already said they are scaling back his involvement with the brand and his hiatus from golf may dent his chances of reaching Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 major victories which the 33-year-old trails by just four.
Tiger’s status does belong to one of those who outgrew his sport. Like Ali or the Williams’ sisters Tiger had unintentionally become a statesman for the coloured community. However is it the tackiness of his departure that is likely to be the lasting legacy?He’s tried in the last two weeks to shield himself and his family from the looming catastrophe. In the days following the crash he pleaded for personal space with his family and even his “confession” was candid apologising for his ‘personal sins’ in a statement not lacking in poetic flair.
An injunction in the UK has also tried to halt his character erosion in Europe, although many have pointed out we are perfectly capable of logging-on to CNN who are not covered by the injunction.
Golfers have been especially quick to jump to the sporting defence of a modern legend. Peter Allis, Steve Stricker and rising star Anthony Kim all praised him as an ambassador of the sport and even more realise how damaging a permanent departure could be both in terms of the sport and financially.
But is it possible for this disgraced legend to tee-off again?
Premiership footballers Ashley Cole and David Beckham have made successful returns after similar disgraces, but the golfing fraternity are likely to be less forgiving. Footballers can have affairs with cocktail waitresses without really raising an eyebrow. In golf clubhouses across the world it is more likely to be rumour mongering behind the persons back.
You cannot deny his effect on a sport seen by many as stuffy and old fashioned and it would be impossible to calculate how many young people have taken up the sport because of Tiger’s influence. His caddy, Steve Williams, has said ‘everyone makes mistakes’, a sentiment many onlookers sympathise with and has been used by many over the years, including President Bill Clinton, to explain away infidelities.
The major change is likely to be the face of the sport. Tiger has not appeared in public since the accident demonstrating he is capable of living away from the limelight. But a return to golf cannot be shrouded in secrecy and a quick high profile return cannot be conducive to saving his marriage or his reputation.
Colin Rowe
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Those of you who look keen-eyed over the jobs section in newspapers must have noticed the journalism vacancies advertised by The Guardian over the past month.
With advertising, circulation and staff all being subject to cuts, it’s surprising to see a 12 month freelance position up for grabs. The Guardian is recruiting “beatbloggers” in Cardiff, Leeds and Edinburgh to document happenings in the community, as part of the Guardian Local campaign. While jobs in the media are slim pickings at the moment (does anyone still work in newspapers, or are we just reading archive manuscripts?) it’s reflective of the way the media will evolve in the future.
Citizen journalism, it seems, is the way forward.The ascent of blogging, social networking and rapid upload means that anyone can be a journalist, anywhere.While this raises issues about the quality of journalism being sustained, the fact remains that the media has been democratised like never before. With local newspapers in rapid decline, there is a fear that local authorities will be allowed to become corrupt. However, this hyper-local style of citizen reporting could help keep checks and balances on public institutions, as well as giving opportunity to people who traditionally saw the media as a closed and elitist world.
Getting a job in the media, and in particular as a journalist, has never been more difficult, but at this rate, the balance has somewhat been shifted in the advantage of the individual, not the organisation. The New York Times and Newsweek have announced massive cuts, and are panicking as to what to do next. We’re talking huge companies here, who are scrabbling around desperately to find ways to sustain their outdated business models.
Meanwhile an army of online bloggers provide easily accessible opinion and art available online for free. Granted, the development of the blog as a popular media platform has meant that a lot of self indulgent, narcissistic material gets produced. But at the same time, global networks are being set up between users, content is freely exchanged, criticised and promoted. At last month’s Journalism Leaders conference in Preston, Frederic Filloux, author of Monday Note blog, stated that the future lay in the mobile phone, and once technology was significantly improved, we would truly be able to produce and have access to news 24 hours a day.
I always think that there will be room for good quality analysis and comment in newspapers. I’ve yet to see anything that’s available exclusively online, bar The Huffington Post, that can consistently outclass broadsheet newspapers. But maybe I’m missing the point. Instead, online journalism needs to find it’s own niche. There’s no going back from this, the internet has opened up a whole range of opportunities to the media and to the individual. Where we go from here is unclear, but what is clear is that media corporations will have to gain greater understanding of the way the web works and how people want their news.
Joseph Stashko-Adamaszek
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