Tiger blind in the woods

On the second day of Lent, I listened to golfer Tiger Woods apologise to all the world about his recent moral misdemeanours. Two days later, on the first Sunday of Lent, I listened to my parish priest reading out a letter on morality from the bishops of Southern Africa.

I came to the immediate conclusion that our bishops could probably have taught Tiger Woods a lot about credible communication.

In their message, titled “Seeds of Hope”, the bishops talked about the crosses we all have to bear. What impressed me was that the bishops did not write their letter in “bishop-speak” which usually includes a lot of Latin words that no one understands and also a lot of complicated English words that sound like Latin words that nobody understands.

Rather, our bishops spoke in the simple language of the people. They spoke about the crosses they had to bear and the crosses we ordinary people have to bear in these modern times. They spoke as fellow Catholics and not from a position of being a cut above the rest of us. It was wonderful, warm, credible and encouraging.

They spoke of St Simon of Cyrene who carried the cross of Christ and suggested that Lent is indeed a good time for us all to look around for those who have mighty crosses to bear and see if we can perhaps take a little weight off their shoulders.

My goodness, wouldn’t it be wonderful if the bishops’ suggestion could extend beyond Lent and beyond religion!

It’s a wonderful ethos by which the world could live. It would bring an end to wars, divorces, slavery, human trafficking, crime, one-upmanship in politics and a host of other examples of man’s inhumanity to man which, when you think about it, all stems from people wanting to add crosses to others rather than to take some away.

It was indeed a wonderful communication from our bishops—which was something that was missing from the Tiger Woods litany of apology.

Tiger could learn how to communicate from Southern Africa's bishops. (CNS photo from Reuters)

Don’t get me wrong. I think it was extremely courageous of Mr Woods to get up in front of a TV audience of billions and beat himself up with a string of mea culpas so long that even some of our most penitent saints would have considered it somewhat over the top.

In spite of his determination to concentrate his efforts on turning a new leaf, particularly with regard to healing the rift between himself and his wife, and putting every effort into protecting his family unit, the way he did it was naïve.

First of all, while he kept talking about what a bad person he was, at no stage did he suggest that he had an illness. Secondly, if he were also intent on saving his marriage, should he not have waited until his wife agreed to at least be present?

And the very fact that he held a press conference but excluded all but a few pool reporters and one pool TV camera, and then refused to take any questions, suggests that Mr Woods has little understanding of the media world whatsoever.

What he seems not to understand is that in his position it is impossible to separate your public and private lives.

He has been paid millions of dollars by sponsors to persuade the public to buy a whole string of products. His television commercials invade the private lives and living-rooms of viewers the world over. He cannot in return expect the public not to want to have some quid pro quo.

I believe that by accepting money from the public, which is effectively what sponsorship is all about, you have to accept that part of you is owned by that same public. In the same way that politicians are responsible to the voting public and not the other way round.

I sincerely hope that Mr Woods will get back to the golfing form that made him one of the best the game has ever seen. He is a golfer whom I have admired not only because of his determination and positive, attacking attitude on the course, but also because of what I perceived as his humility. He was, I thought, a wonderful role model to our children. Now he is not a role-model even to the public relations community.

I believe that right from the start, Mr Woods has been ill-advised in terms of what he should say and when. He should have called this press conference within a few days of this saga erupting. One cannot blame the media for being suspicious of his motives regarding the timing of this press conference and the fact that he allowed no questions. All that he did was to suggest that he still has something big to hide.

Frankly, I think that whoever is doing his PR strategy and speech-writing is doing a singularly bad job. Tiger Woods’ people would do well to have a chat with our bishops.