Tiger Woods in a statement on his website has said, ” I have decided to take an indefinite break from professional golf.” …”a hiatus…” This rumor has been circulating far a while, but I just saw it at Tiger’s website.

John Daly, American golfer, musician and sometimes bad-boy, said, “It’s tough and it’s going to be tough on him but if I was him and Elin, I would go to Oprah, get on a show, get this thing aired out, tell the truth. And then it doesn’t matter what the media says any more because it’s all out in the open and it would be a big sigh of relief for both of them.”

Daly should know. His list of transgressions includes drinking on the golf course during PGA Tournaments. Daly became well-known with his victory in the 1991 “zero to hero” PGA Championship. it seemed that a new golf hero was born that day. But drunkenness, gambling and wife troubles make Daly sort of an expert in getting past the trouble and getting fans on his side. This excerpt is from Wikipedia.com  ”On June 8, 2007, Daly and his fourth wife Sherrie got into a fight at a restaurant in Memphis, Tennessee, site of that week’s tour stop, the Stanford St. Jude Championship. Daly claims that later that night his wife attacked him with a steak knife. He showed up for his 2nd round on Friday afternoon with cuts and scrapes across his face.”

I think Daly has nailed it. Woods is now late in confessing to the world. Who knows? Maybe Tiger wanted to wait and see how much would come out. If that was his thinking he should have realized that when you are bleeding, it is good to stop the bleeding before it is too late.

And it is not too late, yet, for Tiger. People want to help him redeem himself, they want to forgive him. Oh, there is a whole army of righteous people who love to see the Tiger brought down. In principle, they are not wrong. Tiger is not a role model. But in practice these folks would just as soon stone Tiger or maybe just break his hands (like in the movie “The hustler”) so he could never play golf again. Golf is not Tiger’s problem. But golf puts Tiger on a stage.

Some of these are well meaning folks who hate sin and worry about the souls in the world. There is certainly a lot of sin in this story, but rather than wanting to “save” Tiger some just want to shoot him or make money by using his name on their websites or puff up themselves by comparing their spirituality to Tiger’s.

But I do not recall Tiger passing himself off as a Holy Man. By his silence he has saved himself from hypocrisy. But he did allow us to believe he was who we thought he was.

 More on Tiger tomorrow.