Tiger Woods must repair his broken soul as he prepares for Masters comeback

By Mark Reason 600PM GMT sixteen March 2010

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Age of ignorance Tiger Woods has most work to do prior to he can retrieve his golden image, insists Mark Reason Photo AP

Woods wouldn"t know the law if it came wrapped in a enamel cover and had Nike hammered on it. He"d usually wish to know how most he could turn it.

A month ago Woods did his good mea culpa speech. "I need to change," he said. "I was wrong, I was foolish," he said. "I don"t get to fool around by opposite rules," he said.

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Then he gravely looked in to the camera and told the universe "I do plan to lapse to golf one day, I usually don"t know when that day will be I don"t order out that it will be this year."

What Woods meant to contend was "I don"t order out that it will be this spring."

No earlier had Woods exited by those plush blue fate than a trusted intimate was murmur that the lapse competence be earlier than everybody thought.

Tiger probably suspected that he would be entrance behind close to the Masters. He usually chose to fudge it at his ostensible impulse of atonement. Will he never learn?

The headlines that Woods has selected Augusta for his quip to golf will additionally endorse his pretension as golf"s Mr Selfish. When he disrupted the Accenture Matchplay by creation his matter on the Friday of the championship Ernie Els indicted him of selfishness.

The players will right away be even angrier. Steve Stricker, the universe No 2, pronounced at the week end that he didn"t think the immature jackets would be happy if Augusta was incited in to "Tiger"s comeback" rather than the Masters. Geoff Ogilvy asked Tiger to banish the playground by creation an coming prior to his lapse to contest golf. Woods seems to be shouting in their faces.

Eight years ago Tiger was smashed by the charge at Muirfield, a favourite marked down to stumbling incompetence, a golfing King Lear. When he did eventually have a birdie on the 17th hole he incited to the heavens and carried his hands in ridicule celebration, that electric grin opposite his face.What happened to that man?

What happened to the man who was means of such self-deprecation? What happened to the humour that done us see brazen to those early press conferences? What happened to Woods"s humanity?

Celebrity is not forgive enough. There is a good essay by Paul Gallico about the imperishable Bobby Jones. Gallico wrote "Jones"s remoteness was assailed from sunrise until night nonetheless I never listened of him being on purpose rude.

"He never once pronounced the wrong thing, never angry any one or harm the feelings of any sect, organization or people. I have never well known him on purpose to distortion to the press, the usual error of each journal celebrity."

Gallico talks about how Jones coped with carrying "five to eight thousand semi-lunatics trampling at his heels" whilst the rest of the margin went about the peaceful business. He talks of the irritability of the scores of designation hunters that Jones was assailed by. Sound familiar? It"s usually the greeting that is different.

Gallico concludes "Jones"s calm regularly vacant me. He was the usually luminary I ever knew who was rebuilt to accept as gracefully as probable each chastisement there is to be paid for celebrity and broadside in the United States.

"His clarity of the almighty silly lay really close to the aspect and I think he mostly saw himself as a somewhat comic figure that did things that amused him vastly. People who are means successfully to giggle at themselves are means to take a good volume some-more of low mark and abuse than the humourless crew."

Where has Woods"s delight gone? Will he be means to see at himself in a new part of South Park this week called All the Temptations and find Jones"s clarity of the almighty ridiculous? Will Tiger giggle or will he crack to an additional channel?

Two years ago Tiger Woods did the impossible. He overcame a damaged leg and a crumpled knee to win the US Open. Overcoming a damaged essence will be a most harder task.