Not exactly a shocker.  Tiger Woods’ caddy Steve Williams has stated that he will continue to support his boss.

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It’s always sad when our heroes let us down.

It’s also a reminder that they are human and make mistakes.  When someone is so good, so talented at what they do, that everything they touch turns to gold, it becomes difficult to see them as full human beings with flaws and conflicting emotions.  I’m sure we can all think of heroes who have let us down.  Andre Agassi recently confessed that he was abusing meth while competing on the professionally on the tennis circuit.

There are probably too many examples to name, and the truth is that almost everyone of our heroes would let us down if we dig deep enough.  Together, between our heroes and us the fans, we create an image that is impossible to live up to.  This does not excuse his behavior nor should it explain it away.  It’s just a reality that we have deep connections to our heroes and they will eventually let us down.

Although Tiger has been able to create and foster a squeaky clean image, I have heard other things about him that made me question the truth of it.  Regardless, there is no question about his talent, his drive or his dedication to the game.  But we can’t pretend to know what someone is like as a person based only on their professional results, whether it be trophies collected, money earned, albums sold, mansions bought, and the many other ways in which we judge how successful our celebrity heroes are.  Tiger’s image has been carefully groomed and manicured.  He has the best advisors money can buy, and he should have those.  Someone with as much influence as Tiger should have teams of people looking out for him.  He is responsible for the rise in popularity of golf.  It is the Tiger era.  With influence comes responsibility.  With celebrity comes the power to influence huge amounts of people.  And this will have an impact.  People will remember.

Tiger will recover from this incident. We won’t know what’s happening behind closed doors, away from the spotlight of the media.  We can continue cheer on his victories.  But in the end, we will always know that he is human.  That he is capable of making mistakes of judgment.  And in the end that makes him more like one of us.

The Tiger Woods Rulebook To Being A Huge Success

If you believe in evolution, you know there wasn’t some superstar golfer caveman from which Tiger Woods evolved centuries later. His talent and subsequent success were not a genetic lottery win — let’s take a look at 12 factors that we can adapt from this legendarygolfer.

Even if Tiger Woods was somehow physically superior, all that gossip could be laid to rest, when Tiger Woods won this years U.S. Open playing with a bum knee. Ok, so maybe a knee isn’t that crucial to a golfer, but walking on it while experiencing a great deal of pain and keeping the focus does prove that there’s more to this man than his stroke.

12 Rules for Success From Tiger Woods

1. Constant and Never Ending Improvement

“No matter how good you get you can always get better and that’s the exciting part”~Tiger Woods

2. A Bigger Plan

“I think it’s an honor to be a role model to one person or maybe more than that. If you are given a chance to be a role model, I think you should always take it because you can influence a person’s life in a positive light, and that’s what I want to do. That’s what it’s all about.”~Tiger Woods

3. Embrace Defeat

“I’m trying as hard as I can, and sometimes things don’t go your way, and that’s the way things go.”~Tiger Woods

4. Take Life Lightly

“If you can’t laugh at yourself, then who can you laugh at?”~Tiger Woods

5. Don’t Stop

“Tiger may have used his golf club as a cane, but he refused to use his injury as a crutch.” ~Brian Clark

6. Live Your Own Expectations

“One of the things that my parents have taught me is never listen to other people’s expectations. You should live your own life and live up to your own expectations, and those are the only things I really care about it.” ~Tiger Woods

7. Do What You Love

“I get to play golf for a living. What more can you ask for – getting paid for doing what you love.”~Tiger Woods

8. Focus

“My main focus is on my game.”~Tiger Woods

Having one solid goal which you can devote all your focus into pools together all your available resources. You begin to enroll other people into your vision and they start to believe in you. This will give you access to new tools, mentors, and even more resources to get to your goal faster and better.

9. Pay It Forward

“My dad has always taught me these words: care and share. That’s why we put on clinics. The only thing I can do is try to give back. If it works, it works.”~Tiger Woods

You don’t know how much money you have until you give it away. I’m sure you’ve heard that before many times. The same thing goes for our talents, skills, and other opportunities. When we can empower people by giving a piece of ourselves to them we can leave a legacy or live on through them. Besides we’re programmed to feel good when we are kind to others.

10. Learn From All Mistakes

“The only thing you can do is take a learning experience from it, positives and negatives, and apply them to the future. What did you do right, what did you do wrong, and I did a lot of things right this week” ~Tiger Woods

You can subscribe to the idea that everything is put into our life as a challenge. When things are going bad it is our challenge to over come them. When things are going great it is our challenge to remain grounded and humble. It’s all there so that we can learn from it and grow, so there’s no point getting hung up on or experiencing a huge grief over a bad mistake. Be happy that you learned a valuable lesson.

11. Celebrate Your Victories

“It’s been a lot of fun to see some fruits of my hard labor.”~Tiger Woods

No matter how many times Tiger wins he treats each win as if it is special. This provides a constant positive reinforcement to keep him interested in giving the game his best. Perhaps if he only celebrated once a year, after the final stats were in and he saw he was still the best, he wouldn’t be living so much in the moment. If Tiger wasn’t living in the present, or at least one game at a time, there is no way he would be as happy as he could be.

12. Pay No Attention To Naysayers

“You know, all the nay-sayers said that I was doing the wrong things. They can understand why now I made those changes.”~Tiger Woods

Had Tiger payed attention to the first critic that told him he wouldn’t make it he would have given up when he started golfing at the age of 5. If he gave up the second time he wouldn’t be here either. During Tigers career there have been thousands upon thousands of people commenting and gossiping that this game wouldn’t be his game, and even if it is he still won’t win it all. Nonsense. By going for his goals despite the nay-sayers Tiger made it all happen.Practical Application.

He has earned it.  He has an amazing track record, legions of fans, has singlehandedly kept the golf industry alive, and even when he doesn’t play, he almost wins the tournament (except for the British Open, or The Open as it is called, where he missed the cut).

As someone who is working toward becoming a scratch golfer, Tiger’s accomplishments seem so unreal.  Don’t get me wrong, the man is not perfect, and he is not a saint.  He is a human being, with an enormous amount of talent, at the right place, and the right time, and has an incredible work ethic to top it off.

It just amazes me that anyone could accomplish what he has.  I think human potential is virtually unlimited, and for the most part untapped, except for a few people who somehow make extraordinary things happen.

http://www.thegolfchannel.com/shag-bag/forbes-woods-crosses-1-billion-mark-32538/