Nike Won’t Let Us Forget Tiger’s Philandering Dad

How desperate is Nike and Tiger get back into your pocket? They’ll exhume Tiger’s dead dad Earl Woods to help restore six-iron sales.



(Gee, I’d forgotten Earl said that. Thanks Nike!)

Thank goodness 99.9% of the people who will watch the :30 spot have no idea that in 1997 Tiger effectively traded in his relationship with his father for the honorable pursuit of selling golf bags.

Before Tiger signed with Nike, he was just like his dad in public. Fun-loving and prone to foul-mouthed misjudgement. (See GQ interview.)

Then the golfer signed over his soul to Nike, and that naturally likable personality was lost. Replaced by something out of the late ’70s Soviet Politburo. As was Earl’s influence, despite what golf media drones were writing at the time. (And some to this day!)

So now that Nike’s image of Tiger has burned down, what do they do? Dig up the old man the company previously pushed out of the picture as quickly and forcefully as possible.


What does the late Mr. Woods get out of that? Folks like me reminding readers that Earl was a serial philanderer who abandoned his first wife and three children after meeting Tiger’s mom Kultida in Bangkok. Then cheating on Kultida to the point where she moved out and the couple only pretended to be married.

And that Earl once said to Tiger, “marriage is unnecessary in a mobile society.”