Nike came out with a new 30-second Tiger Woods ad recently. In it, a mute Woods stares blankly at the camera. Speaking from the hereafter, his father, Earl, says: “I want to find out what your feelings are. And did you learn anything?” Nike refused to offer context for Earl Woods’s words. When did he say it? What were the circumstances? He sounds disappointed in his son when he made these comments, but what had Tiger done? Earl, who died in 2006, couldn’t be addressing his son’s scandal. How deep did Nike dig to find these paternal nuggets to justify their use in an ad that debuted less than 24 hours before Tiger teed off Thursday at the Masters? And why did the son consent to having his father’s words repurposed to push no just a personal message, but also Nike Golf? The last image of the ad is the swoosh. Natch.

“Did you learn anything?” Earl Woods asks. A valuable question, and one that his son has attempted to answer in his no-questions news conference in February; his brief interviews with ESPN and the Golf Channel last month; and his pre-Masters news conference on Monday. But the answer to the father’s question appears to be that serial philandering and addiction rehab can be positioned as a commodity – and that you can roll it out in phases leading to the Nike amendment to the 12 steps: a TV commercial. Nike wants Woods to reclaim some sort of moral high ground so that he can return to regularly representing the company and the golf division that he is crucial to. But an ethical authority Woods owned – undeserved as it turns out to have been – was lost amid the revelations of his many affairs all the tawdry text messages and the Vanity Fair takedown that starred four mistresses in various provocative poses. If Nike felt it had to interrupt the conversation before Wood’s return to play, it should have given him his pal Charles Barkley’s old slogan: “I am not a role model.” Modeling occurs simply by watching others, without any direct reinforcement for learning, and without an overt practice. So with his championships, his scandals/mistresses, as he apologized, this recent ad from Nike – what should be America’s view on Tiger? Dominant American ideas and ideals serve as resources for program development, even when the planners are unaware of them, much as we all take for granted the air we breathe is incorporated as symbolic representation of America society, not as liberal portrayals.

Nike may have thought it was barging into the Masters at an appropriate time, on the eve of Wood’s return to competitive golf. But on Wednesday, as ESPN carried the par-3 contest from the Augusta National Golf Club, Woods was nowhere to be seen, among family-oriented elders like Jack Nicklaus or contemporaries like Phil Mickelson. Having betrayed his wife, Woods may have wanted to stay away from the course, where golfers and their kids had great fun. But showing up at a friendly get-together would have given him far more good will than using his father his return from ignominy. Maybe his fans would have seen a big smile Wednesday – not a Nike-made expressionless face – when Arnold Palmer sank a long birdie putt on the ninth hole.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/sports/golf/08tv.html?ref=media

__Andrew____

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