Opinion Private lives
Groupies are the scourge of sportsmens wives. They hang around outside locker rooms for hours and ooze availability.
Groupies are the scourge of sportsmens wives. They hang around outside locker rooms for hours and ooze availability. In a remarkably candid profile written for GQ in 1997,Charles Pierce revealed that even Tiger Woods took notice of the women who would swoon behind the ropes when he walked by. Pierce noted one woman in particular who was watching Woods was dressed in a frilly lace top and wearing a pair of tiger-striped stretch pants that fit as though they were decals. Sartorial horrors aside,its not difficult to imagine how hard it would be to keep your cool when married to a man constantly pawed,fawned over,and treated as a god. (Even Michelle Obama was reported saying she wanted to tell her husbands most physically ardent fans to back off and get a life.)
Why do we even pretend that sports-people are models of propriety? They are physically gifted,driven,and disciplined. Thats what you need to excel at sport. Not moral strength,courage,decency,or fidelity. Yet we continue to project an irrational desire for the physically perfect to be spiritually strong.
Youd think,from the response to Woodss plea,that the right to privacy no longer exists for anyone who dares to excel. Woods said in his statement that he regrets those transgressions with all of my heart. He went on to insist there is an important and deep principle at stake,which is the right to some simple,human measure of privacy. Privacy was a virtue,he wrote,that must be protected in matters that are intimate and within ones own family. Personal sins should not require press releases and problems within a family shouldnt have to mean public confessions.
He is right. Privacy is a forgotten and important virtue. However,there are two caveats. First,you jeopardise your right to privacy somewhat when you muck around with women like the delightfully named cocktail waitress Jaimee Grubbs who will tell tales of skinny calves and romantic cuddles,and leak voice mails and text messages in a blink. You cant expect to maintain privacy if you share intimate moments with people who have no interest in privacy themselves.
The second is that sometimes respecting privacy can sound very much like ignoring and enabling. Steven Ortiz,an expert on marriages in sport,says sportsmen often expect to get away with infidelity because of a spoiled athletes syndrome, where the talented are set apart,told they are special,and never held accountable.
At times reporters have protected them too. Even Pierce did not fully disclose what he knew or believed when he wrote his 1997 profile of Woods. Last week,he wrote that one of the worst-kept secrets on the PGA tour was that Tiger was something of a hound. Everybody knew. It wasnt reported because it was none of our business,right? Now,because he is married,and because he hit a hydrant and a tree,it apparently is.
You should not have to earn a right to privacy. But there are many ways to make people think you have given it away.
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