By itself, it’s harmless. It’s what it makes you do that gets you in trouble.
By itself, it might fall among what my daddy called “Sunday school sins.”
I first heard him use the term when, in youthful righteousness, I called his cigarette smoking a sin.
“Ah, kid, it’s a Sunday school sin,” he said.
He hated anybody bringing up his smoking. It was his life, his choice, and no discussion. Dad traveled a lot in his work, and for similar reasons we all knew little about his life on the road.
Tiger Woods clearly figured his life, on his own time, was his own business. Hubris.
The thing about hubris is, it doesn’t become hubris until it comes to light. Up to that point, it’s just fun, just doing what you do regardless of consequences, because you can.
Woods doesn’t have that luxury anymore, and he acknowledged as much in his “news conference” last Friday morning.
Hubris, by dictionary definition, is, “Wanton insolence or arrogance resulting from excessive pride or from passion.”
Tiger unwittingly defined it perfectly in his Friday statement: “I convinced myself normal rules didn’t apply.”
It might be the most human of all human failings.
Right here in our little town, a city councilperson, a recent appointee to county office and prominent business owner, has been arrested on suspicion of selling marijuana. He hasn’t been convicted of anything, nor even as I write this charged with anything.
There was a lot going on that we don’t know about that led to his arrest. But, man, the hubris!
In the days my dad was smoking, there had been studies showing the harmful effects of cigarettes. They hadn’t yet gotten around to putting warnings right on the packs.
My father knew full well he shouldn’t be smoking, but he was very clear that his Sunday school sin was none of my business. You got bigger things to worry about, kid.
My old man had his blind spots, but for the most part he tended toward forgiveness. For instance, he forgave Nixon. OK, he had his blind spots.
“Hubris” is found one page before “human” in my Webster’s unabridged.
Also nearby is “humane”: “Having what are considered the best qualities of mankind; kind, tender, merciful …”
Tiger doesn’t need our forgiveness. If he gets Elin’s, well, great; and I’m inclined to let him look for it behind closed doors, as he asked.
He said he convinced himself normal rules didn’t apply. Well, they don’t, and they won’t. He’s Tiger Woods.
If normal was at play here, he wouldn’t have had to call a “news conference.” But he’s Tiger Woods.
A human, being human.
He will again, he said, be back playing golf. So, as my father might have said, shut up and let him.
These guys are good
The only parallel between filling out the brackets for the Accenture Match Play golf tournament and the NCAA’s March Madness is a proximate number of entrants and a relative closeness on the calendar.
If you figured to apply the same philosophy to filling out your match play bracket that you use every year in your March Madness pool, forget it.
For instance, in basketball, No. 1 seeds don’t lose to 16s. They just don’t. If a person knew nothing about basketball, he or she could bet nothing but the bracket’s higher seeds from upper left to lower right and probably do more than all right.
The 9s and 8s are tough to call, and the 10-7 and 11-6 games are tricky, and that’s where the upsets happen.
In the match play, there’s no such thing as an upset. No one, not even a 16 seed, is a Cinderella.
There can be no such thing as a “method” in filling out a bracket. It’s about as much use as a horse player betting the color of a jockey’s silks.
In the 32 first-round Accenture matches last week, one No. 1 and two No. 2s were blown out. None of the other No. 1 seeds made it out of the second round.
In the final, relative normalcy prevailed: a No. 3 (Ian Poulter) defeated a No. 2 (Paul Casey).
In the Match Play, the field is (roughly) the top 64 players in the world. No mid-majors, no token conference champions ecstatic just to be invited. Just good players, really good players, many of whom make most of their money in Europe or Asia.
Might as well bet the caddies.
For the record, Poulter, in the pink silks, paid out 28-1.
Freelance writer Bart Potter can be reached at greygoatee06@comcast.net.
