Tiger the sinner becoming the winner is big deal?

By Al S. Mendoza

THE sinner as winner?

If you are rooting for Tiger Woods to win tomorrow (granting he made the cut in the Masters as this was written in advance), you chose a sinner.

I chose the sinner as my topic for this since Tiger Woods, the one who turned from The Good One to The Bad One, remains the hottest hotcake in town – cut off or not on Saturday, a winner or not by tomorrow (Monday).

He was a sinner wanting to be a winner when he teed off on Friday, April 9 (I did this on Thursday) at Augusta National in Georgia, the most revered golf course in the world.

The late Jim Murray, the greatest American sportswriter of his era, called Augusta National the “cathedral of golf.”

Rightly so.

The Augusta National is a near-perfect golf course, built by the legendary Bobby Jones.

Why, because Bobby Jones himself was the marvel of everything perfect.  He was a champion golfer, the best player of the game ever who didn’t turn pro.  He was a literary genius and a brilliant architect as well.

The Augusta National is his Sistine Chapel.  His Mona Lisa.

Believe you me because one, immortal bragging right I have kept close to my chest all this time is, I have been at Augusta National.

For its sheer beauty and magnificence, I kissed the course’s first ground planted with the greenest grass in the world that I had to step on before proceeding to the massive Press Center.

That was in April of 1991, and, as I closed my eyes while my lips touched the dewy blades of grass, I thought of Taj Mahal: the classic edifice of love at its purest.

Bobby Jones must have built the Augusta National with only three men in mind:  Jack Nicklaus with 6 Masters titles tucked under his belt, and Arnold Palmer and Tiger Woods with 4 apiece.

Of the three, only Tiger Woods is left chasing trophies as Nicklaus and Palmer have retired.

Did Tiger the sinner make the halfway cut?

If so, will the sinner be the winner by tomorrow morning?

The sinner tag has been dangling in Tiger’s neck since his shocking, salacious and sordid sexual trysts with more than 12 women other than his wife were exposed in November.

He went into exile.

He had therapy.

He went back to Buddhism to regain his “core values” of “being a good person again.”

Now, he’s back.  Like the Prodigal Son.

And, like the Prodigal Son, he also has sinned.

But who hasn’t?

Even in Mass, the ritual is for the priest to remind us that we all are sinners.

As Jesus Christ said, by way of challenging a mob out to stone to death a woman allegedly caught committing adultery as per edict of the Pharisees and scribes aka the original hypocrites of humankind, “The one without sin, cast the first stone.”

No one called the challenge.

One by one, they walked away.  All of them.

“Woman, go. And sin no more,” Jesus said to the woman.

Win or lose, Tiger Woods will be like that woman when he leaves Augusta National tomorrow.

Judged but not condemned.

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