Tiger Woods is... James Bond

OK, bear with me here. I was thinking the other day about this Tiger Woods scandal (at least it's a scandal in the media; it's a catastrophe for him personally), and while realizing my first two comments on it were way off, I thought to myself, "You know, Tiger Woods is the sporting world's equivalent of James Bond."

Does that seem far-fetched? Tiger Woods, the world's greatest golfer, similar to the fictional British secret agent/assassin, 007, James Bond?

Well, in order to follow me on this, let's first ponder Bond, both his personal as envisioned by Ian Fleming, and his on-screen persona in the movies (Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton, Brosnan, and most recently, Daniel Craig). In the books, which I actually read several of, Bond is not completely the cool-under-fire, droll double-entendre snapping, techno gizmo wizard, ladies man that he is in the movies. He has aspect of those functions that the movies exploit, but he's also more human. He can be hurt. He worries, frets, gets nervous, even gets panicky. He makes mistakes. Basically (and this is where it gets important), he's constantly under stress because of what he does; maintaining a secret identity -- he's an agent, after all -- and killing people. Necessarily, according to his government, but he still has to kill people. Sometimes in cold blood, sometimes not. Sometimes face-to-face, where he knows the person he is assassinating.

In the movies, of course, Bond is larger-than-life -- but there have still been hints as to why. The basic Bond functions under pressure, and has two ways to relieve that pressure -- drinking (the famous vodka martini) and sex. Lots of sex, with a variety of women. He can't have a normal relationship. He uses women, leaves them, or sometimes, unhappily in his line of work, they get killed too. (I think that happens more often in the movies than in the books). To put it simply, Bond compensates for the extraordinary stress of his unique lifestyle with vices. Temporary escapes from his life-on-the-edge, kill-or-be-killed, danger around every corner, life, in which very few people can be totally trusted.

Ultimately Bond is one of a select few -- the "double 0s", as the satiny Miranda Frost put it -- and one of their requirements is that they have to make the shot. Their own life, the lives of their countrymen, the lives of millions of people (in the movies, anyway) depend on their ability to make the shot when it has to be made. Without remorse. And not miss. As Bond said in "The World is Not Enough": "I never miss..." after gunning down point-blank his former lover, Elektra King (played, I have to mention, by the extraordinary Sophie Marceau).

And now there's Woods. Is it possible for normal people to comprehend the pressure that this man has been under since boyhood, groomed to be the absolute best golfer that the world has ever seen? The pressure his father put on him; the pressure to get better at every aspect of the vexingly difficult game; the pressure of not just being the best, but a symbol, a black golfer winning a white man's elite, exclusive game; the pressure of not just winning tournaments, but chasing history, winning the majors, with the goal of winning more than Jack Nicklaus and proving to history that he is the best golfer ever to have played.

Look at the shots Woods made under enormous pressure, and marvel. Look at the shot he's missed, and be amazed that he could recover his poise, concentration, and ability to come back and win.

But it's not just that. Golf is a personal sport; you see your opponents, talk to them, sometimes they are even good friends of yours (or at least colleagues). Team sports don't have this same level of one-on-one, mano-a-mano competition; few other sports, which include boxing, tennis (and other racquet sports), billiards, bowling (?) require you to face your opponent, match them shot for shot, like a sporting duel. Occasionally at the highest levels of competition it truly becomes a shoot-out, a playoff, where one shot can leave your opponent reeling. If you watch as your opponent takes a lead, you have to march to the next tee, and in a game where literal millimeters of adjustment and tiny increments of speed can mean the difference between a perfect shot and one mired in the weeds or the trees, you have to make the shot. Though wounded, fire back. Survive, and hope your opponent falters. And if you yourself have that opportunity to finish off your opponent (or opponents), you have to make that shot with incredible skill and determination. And sometimes that means murdering the hopes of fellow players to just one time achieve sporting immortality, to win a Major. Sometimes you even destroy the dreams of your friends, like Woods did to Chris DiMarco.

That's got be difficult to handle, emotionally and psychologically. Add to that the stress of slump or injury; or even just the inexplicable slight changes that can frustrate anyone's ability to figure out why 8-10 foot putts will go in one day, and miss the next. And for Woods, add to that the stress of being a corporate billboard, a family man with lovely children and a fittingly gorgeous wife, and probably an entourage in which there was no one willing to tell him the risks of his behavior, and willing for their own reasons to provide him with cover and escape when necessary, facilitating his ability to live this strange double life that has now been revealed.

And now we do in fact know he was leading a secret life -- perhaps knowing that drinking or drugs could ruin his fine edge of control, womanizing appears to have been his other escape, his way of finding temporary relief from the stress that only he knows. Am I condoning this behavior? Not at all. I'm trying to understand it. His opportunities were obvious, as any high-level sportsman can attest, it isn't hard to find a willing woman when you're on the road. And if your lovely wife is at home and unavailable, and you're young, attractive, and wealthy beyond anyone's even normal dreams, the need for companionship and release, for pleasure, for the same thing that has scandalized politics, show business, and sports, becomes very acute. And since it's so easy to satisfy that need -- and since the thrill of the hunt fades once the prey has been acquired, then there also may develop that additional need for that more of that same kind of thrill -- escalating -- becoming more dangerous, the sex stranger, rowdier, and riskier -- expanding the spectrum of what is ultimately addictive.

In "Goldeneye", Natalya Simonova (Isabella Scorupco) asks Bond how he can be so cold, knowing that he has to kill someone, a former friend. Bond replies "It's what keeps me alive." Natalya replies, "No, it's what keeps you alone." Then they have a passionate, almost violent kiss -- and then Bond makes love to her. He proves he's not alone, and he proves he's still alive. And in the arms of his partner, for those short moments, he doesn't think about his next mission. (And as we know, Bond uses different women to achieve that temporary escape for every mission.)

So Woods, like Bond, lives a life that is unimaginable to us normal mortals. But Tiger Woods is not a fictional character. He had to (has to) live with who he was. He had to find some kind of way to wind down and ... relax. And probably in times of doubt and slump, he had to reaffirm that he was indeed a sporting god, an icon and a legend, by proving once again to himself that he could be a man with a woman, and get just about any woman he wanted. And for moments of passion and pleasure, forget about golf and be just human, like anyone else but unlike anyone else.

So he's fallen off the high wire. He's exposed, shamed, no longer with a fabricated persona. Many times, when Tiger missed a fairly easy shot, or had a relatively bad round, commentators would say, "Well, he's human, after all."

In this exposure of his personal life, his transgressions, his sexual adventures, now the truth of that is truly known. He's human like the rest of us, but also unique, in a situation that hardly anyone could compare to. The question now is: can he restore himself to some semblance of a normal life, sufficient to allow for the necessary steely self-control that will allow him to pursue his goal? That's the question for the sporting community. The question we should really be asking right now is -- can Tiger Woods actually find some way to be normal enough to rebuild a shattered life? He has to do that first, before he ever swings a golf club in competition again. James Bond is fictional; his life ends when the credits roll or when the last pages is turned. Tiger has to keep on living in a world that has tilted unimaginably for him.

At the end of many Bond movies, there's a short line: "James Bond... will return".

Will Tiger?