Playing With Fire

A. The story is told of a man with two badly burned ears who went to the emergency room for medical treatment.

1. “What happened,” asked the doctor.

2. “Well, my wife was ironing while I was watching the ballgame on TV,” began the man.

3. “She put the hot iron near the telephone and when the phone rang, I answered the iron.”

4. The doctor nodded, “But what happened to the other ear?”

5. “Well, no sooner had I hung up,” said the man, “then the phone rang again.”

6. Ultimately, getting burned is no laughing matter!

B. Eldrick Tont Woods, better known as “Tiger” is an American professional golfer whose achievements to date rank him among the most successful golfers of all time.

1. Woods grew up in California, and was a child prodigy, being introduced to golf before the age of two, by his athletic father Earl, who was an excellent amateur golfer and one of the earliest African American college baseball players at Kansas State University.

2. Before turning three, Tiger entered and won the Under Age 10 section of the Drive, Pitch, and Putt competition, held at the Navy Golf Course in Cypress, California.

3. At age three, he shot a 48 over nine holes at the Cypress Navy course, and at age five, he appeared in Golf Digest and on ABC’s That’s Incredible.

4. Tiger’s father, Earl, wrote that Tiger first beat him when he was 11 years old, with Earl trying his best. Tiger beat his father every time from then on.

5. Woods graduated from Western High School in 1994 at age 18, and was voted "Most Likely to Succeed" among the graduating class.

6. Woods was recruited very heavily by college golf powers, and chose Stanford University where he won the first collegiate event he entered.

7. At age 20, he became the first golfer to win three consecutive U.S. Amateur titles, and he won the NCAA individual golf championship, and after two years of college decided to turn pro.

8. Currently he is ranked #1 in the world, and has been World Number One for the last 275 weeks and for a total of 617 weeks in his career. (More than 12 years of his 14 year career)

a. Just for comparison, Greg Norman is second on the list of those who have held the #1 world ranking, and he held it for 331 weeks during his career.

9. Tiger is the highest-paid professional athlete in the world. So far this year, Tiger has earned an estimated $90.5 million from winnings and endorsements.

10. Woods has won 14 professional major golf championships, second only to Jack Nicklaus, who leads with 18.

11. Woods has won 71 PGA Tour events – many pro golfers haven’t even won any!

C. On a personal level, Tiger became engaged to Elin Nordegren, a former model from Sweden, in November 2003.

1. They married about a year later at a resort on the Caribbean island of Barbados.

2. They settled into a suburb of Orlando, Florida, but also have homes in Jackson, Wyoming, California, and Sweden.

3. In January 2006, they purchased a $39 million mansion in Florida.

4. On June 18, 2007, Elin gave birth to the couple’s first child, a daughter, Sam Alexis Woods.

5. On February 8, 2009, Elin gave birth to their son, Charlie Axel Woods.

D. I must admit that I have been a Tiger fan over the years.

1. I enjoyed watching him play and win.

2. I enjoyed seeing him become a family man.

3. I enjoyed watching him break the racial barriers that excluded people of color from the world of golf in the past.

4. I am very saddened by the terrible mess he has made of his family life in the last year.

E. On November 25, 2009, The National Enquirer published a story claiming that Woods had an extramarital affair with a nightclub manager, a claim she denied.

1. The story began to attract media attention when Woods had a car accident a day and a half later as he left his home around 2:30 A.M. in his SUV.

2. Tiger refused to speak to the police and the accident fanned intense speculation for two days, until Woods released a statement on his website taking blame for the crash and adding that it was a private matter; he also praised his wife, Elin, for getting him out of the car.

3. Woods announced shortly afterward that he would neither play in nor attend his own charity golf tournament, nor any other remaining tournament in 2009.

4. Interest in the story grew, until a San Diego cocktail waitress publicly claimed in the gossip magazine Us Weekly that she had a two-and-a-half-year affair with Woods, producing voice and text messages that she said Woods left her.