Tiger Woods Does the Impossible

Posted on February 22, 2010 | 6 Comments

Tiger Woods achieved what many thought would be impossible last Friday. In his extended mea culpa about the sorry state of his life before he hot-footed it off to Mississippi for sex addiction rehab, he did what few have done before.  In the middle of a scandal that had involved a whole bunch of lurid details, enough really to make you turn the TV off in front of the kids (and my kids are in their 20’s and 30’s), Tiger achieved a breakthrough in televised would-be tell-alls:  he was beyond boring.

I make my living coaching people on how to give good speeches and look great on TV, how to make sure that people will remember what they say and won’t even think about touching the remote.  Everything I tell people to do, Tiger did the opposite.  Tiger gripped the podium as if his life depended on it. (No sauntering around with a hand-held mike to connect with the audience.)  He was attired in a blue shirt and dark jacket, the better to blend  into the funereal looking backdrop behind him. Not a snappy looking logo in sight. Except when he was dumping on the press for following his kids to school, he delivered the speech with virtually no animation, no varied cadences, and all the enthusiasm and poise of a junior high school student giving a final report to a Political Science class. Except for a few cutaways, the camera seemed to be lulled into total inaction by his words:  no pushes, no pulls, no pans, no nothing. Lockdown on Tiger.

As for the content of his speech, most of his breakthrough insights were published by Hallmark years ago.  Such as, “It’s not what you achieve in life that matters, it’s what you overcome.” By the time he got to his love of Buddhism and what he’s learned in therapy, he reminded me of the guy next to you on a long flight: if you put on headphones, fall asleep, or start to read the airline magazine, will he take the hint and put a lid on the long-winded personal revelations?

None of this could have happened by accident.  I assume that Tiger had the best crisis communications advice that money could buy.  And they delivered for him.  Boredom was the best possible reaction he could have hoped for in his audience. I doubt if I am alone in my response: Let the guy play golf all he wants. I don’t care if I never learn the total number of girlfriends,  whether Elin will stay or go, or how a guy with enough super-human coordination to sink a putt from a gazillion miles away could run an Escalade into a tree. As long as I don’t have to listen to anymore speeches like that, let Tiger tee-up. Everything’s forgiven.