Tiger Shanks It

Among many other famous athletes of yore, Muhammad Ali supposedly abstained from sex for weeks before a fight so as to maintain his edge. With the revelation that the number of women claiming to have had an affair with Tiger Woods is now up to an even dozen - and virtually none of them credibly refuted - let us once and for all use Tiger's example to put to rest the myth that sex before a big athletic event will sap your strength, will or mojo.

At least if you're a golfer.

Not unexpectedly, the Media and the Public are having a field day with Tiger Woods' issues with fidelity. All the Usual Suspects are wrapping themselves in knots groveling in every lurid detail while simultaneously attempting to explain away Tiger Woods' apparently low moral character, or to rationalize it with the argument that we should admire him solely on the basis of his exploits on the golf course. That said, OffHisMeds can't help but note that Tiger's very marketable public persona - and the source of much of his income outside of his winnings - was built on the premise that he was a good guy.

More about his Marketing prospects later. Now that it's clear that he is not such a good guy, would I be a killjoy to point out that further evidence of his lack of virtue can be found in that, long before he cheated on his wife, Tiger willingly signed on to an arrangement that ensured his life would be a vast and meaningless - albeit gold-plated - exercise in superficiality, devoid of love and arguably an environment not suitable in which to raise children? I am referring of course to his prenuptial agreement.

Let's set aside for the moment that for the past year or more Tiger had placed portions of his anatomy bound by matrimony in or upon the persons of between three and twelve other women not his wife. And if not simultaneously, at least consecutively and alternately. Juggling so much "Strange" along with his marital duties to the neglected wife, his shenanigans resembled nothing so much as an adult version of Leapfrog, except that the Male Frog (Tiger) didn't so much jump over the Female Frogs as he did Jump onto them, struggling to keep their names straight in the process, a challenge that would task even Tiger's legendary capacity to focus his energies in the face of distraction.

It's ironic to think that those distractions would be as varied as the inevitable and tiresome shriek from the Gallery to "GET IN THE HOLE" when he would make a putt during a tournament, to a similar cry from the Mistress Du Jour when he was putting on her Green, to his wife asking in a voice achieving easily the decibel equivalent of a noisy Gallery: "WHAT DID YOU JUST CALL ME"? It might make you feel sorry for the Schlub, until you realize that Tiger's in the entertainment business, and had arranged his affairs anticipating this very situation.

Let's also contemplate for a moment the fact that Elin most certainly knew of his infidelity long before the "accident" made it all public. How can you read the words "revelations of his infidelity have forced Woods to renegotiate his Prenup with his wife", and not think less of both of them? They willingly turned their relationship into just another business deal, sucking all the joy out of marriage with two strokes of the pen, and ceasing to become real people in the process. With the Prenup, his serial infidelities and the very calculated steps taken since then, Woods and his wife Elin betrayed themselves as the shallow, superficial "Personalities" that they are, fit for the pages of Newsweek, Sports lllustrated and Playboy, but not fit to be allowed in your living room. "They gone Hollywood", as the saying goes, their carefully crafted public image of wholesomeness notwithstanding.

This whole sordid event marks Tiger as one of the crappier Husbands in the history of, well, Husbandry. Granted, he's nowhere near as bad as Teddy Kennedy or say, Latrell Sprewell, but he's still pretty damn bad. All on his own, Tiger inflicted a seriously stingy Prenup on his wife, knocked her up and then went out and cheated on her with not one, but several Bimbos, all of whom, it seems, starting saving text messages, voice mail messages, photos, videos and semen-stained articles of clothing - not to mention hiring an agent to negotiate a Reality TV deal - the day after he did the nasty with them. Between stonewalling the cops, his hypocritical claims of privacy, his weaselly denials that turned out to be lies and panicky phone calls to at least one girl friend to help him fool his wife, Tiger has done a pretty good job rounding out the picture of a fairly execrable excuse for a man. We're talking Bill Clinton territory here people.

You'll recall that Slick Willy dodged being tagged as a low-down Cheat and dog for years with the help of the celebrity-loving Media and a decade of truly heroic lies until some pundit asked on the Internet "yes, but would you let him babysit your teenage daughter"? Within days that simple question went viral, and with it Bill Clinton's reputation.

Unless he comes clean, Tiger Woods may be similarly infected, and along with him his endorsement contracts.

Time will tell.