Tiger Woods gets a recharge that soccer stars like Ronaldinho could only dream about

While those with a shaky theological base may have thoughts that Tiger Woods is, in fact, God, one would be hard pressed to find that same opinion shared by the world’s top soccer players.

Saying he was exhausted from his hectic schedule, Woods announced he will be skipping the Tour Championship, effectively calling it a season.

“Playing seven out of nine weeks with an additional trip to Ireland for Ryder Cup practice was taxing both mentally and physically and I feel like I need another week away from competitive golf,” said Woods.

Preparing for a Spanish League game against Recreativo Huelva, Barcelona star midfielder Ronaldinho Gaucho must wonder what all the fuss is about. Having spent the year competing for Brazil’s national team in the World Cup, World Cup qualifying and friendlies, as well as with his club team in La Liga, the UEFA Champions League, exhibitions and the Spanish national tournament, the man many consider the world’s best soccer player could only dream of taking a three-month break to recharge at the end of a season.

It comes down to the simple nature of the games, however, and the athletes that participate in them. With the exception of the U.S., professional soccer is played by athletes that grew up poor. With one ball and some empty space, you have yourself a soccer game.

Golf, of course, requires a bit more. While there are stories of players who emerged from poverty to excel on the links, the vast majority of pro golfers come from much more elite backgrounds. A Google search for “poor golfers” will just bring you stories of golfers who aren’t very good.

So while Tiger Woods is to be commended for his brilliance and dedication to his craft, and while we understand losing his father was a mighty emotional blow for him, we find his “mental and physical” exhaustion to be overly dramatic. Playing 60-70 competitive rounds of golf a year (including a weekend at the corporate ass-kiss tournament, the Tavistock Cup) really doesn’t qualify as some overwhelming burden that requires several months of recharging to recover from, in our book, especially with the ample rewards that come along with it.

And while it is a logical fallacy to say that correlation implies causation, it is not difficult to see players like Woods and Phil Mickelson, burdened by the imagined brutality of golf, as large signs of why the U.S. continues to fail miserably at international competitions in nearly all sports.

Tiger and our other top athletes are too well-paid, too pampered and too far removed to dominate those from other nations any longer. And for the foreseeable future, this will likely remain the case.

–WKW