Dom Joly: Tiger's birdies make golf so rock'n'roll
Stories hidden by the glare of Pringle jumpers have now come out about golf groupies
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I'm just loving how the whole Tigergate affair is giving golf a rebranding. Most people tend to see the game as something that keeps retired businessmen out of the house until they pass on to the great boardroom in the sky. The ludicrous golf garb that people wear is the equivalent of dull people wearing "crazy" socks or ties. It's just not that convincing.
I think that, if you were a kid thinking about getting into sports, golf would have been very low down on the glamour list. Football gets most of the press and people like Kevin Pietersen have made cricket sexy while Andy Murray has made tennis slightly more interesting – if you're Scottish. Golf never got a look-in really, apart from Tiger Woods, who was so dominant that it stopped getting very interesting. Then, Tigergate – "Tiger is a Cheetah" etc. Suddenly we're getting stories about golf groupies and the rock'n'roll lifestyles that had previously been hidden from view behind the glare of Pringle jumpers. Tiger Woods' cuckolded wife is stunning. How did she first catch the "eye of the Tiger"?
She was the au pair for another professional golfer – an au pair? What wife in her right mind would ever hire someone like that as an au pair? I think your marriage would have to be tremendously secure to survive someone that stunning wandering around your house. My wife once employed a Polish au pair who seemed eminently qualified online but had been looking for a job for over two months with no luck. When she hired her, all the other mums suddenly told her that nobody had employed the girl because she was way too pretty. Hearing this news I got very excited. Sadly, her arrival quickly quashed my enthusiasm as she turned out to be not only the dullest creature on earth but a kind of petulant female version of Kevin the teenager. She didn't last long.
The other aspect of Tigergate that has been such a godsend to the press covering the affairs is the comedy value of golfing terminology. The obvious ones like Tiger's "birdies" were everywhere in seconds but there were plenty more. The next round was along the lines of Tiger's getting wood, holes in one, being the bogeyman etc. Now things are getting really obscure, with people talking about a "wedge" in their marriage and how Elin was looking "chipper". I'm waiting for somebody to come up with a way of using Mashie Niblick. Personally, I'd often read about how Tiger had a magnificent swing but had not realised, up until now, that this was a reference to his lifestyle.
Up until Tigergate, the most raucous that golf ever got was Meatloaf and Alice Cooper fighting for the hair straighteners in the locker room on a celeb golf day. Now golf is the new rock'n'roll, things are going to change. We're going to get "Topless Golf" on the Babestation channel, "Golfers' Wives" on Five and a bad lookalike in a porn film called something like "Tiger's favourite holes". I fear that golfing widows will also now be a little more suspicious of the "men only" rule at the local golf club.
I imagine that, on closer inspection, they will find the rule is actually "no wives" and that the clubhouses of suburbia are actually hothouses of passion and sexual intrigue. I'm pretty sure there will be an upsurge in women joining clubs. Some will be wives keeping an eye on their previously unsuspected husbands. Others will be single women eager to tap into this new reservoir of available men.
Tiger will soon have to come out of his self-imposed hermitage and face the world. His PR people are most likely planning the thing now. I'm pretty sure that we'll see him on Oprah weeping his heart out and blaming his "sex addiction" on his constant proximity to balls. He will claim to be undergoing treatment and will then release a brand of condoms called "Woodies". These will become so successful that Tiger will go on to develop some branded balls known as "Gonads". Having been dropped by all his current sponsors, he'll take up with new commercial partners that include Spearmint Rhino, Hooters and Vaseline. I'm off now – there's a hookers and harlots night at the golf club – got to limber up.
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