14 DAY TRIAL // Before the November one-vehicle crash that sent Tiger Woods’ popularity downwards by more than a half with the American public, the golfer was the closest thing to a perfect nonperson for our imperfect celebrity culture, the cover story of the latest issue of Vanity Fair says. Complete with photos taken by famed photographer Anne Leibovitz, the piece is meant as a sharp look behind the curtain of what was once Tiger Woods, the beyond reproach public figure.
His fall has been sharper and more shocking than that of any other public figure, politicians included. This was a well accomplished athlete who always displayed the same charming smile regardless whether he won or lost, who seemed to be living what his fans could only perceive as a perfect, enchanted life, complete with a Barbie-esque blonde wife (a former model nonetheless), two children and pets at a perfect picket fence mansion. This was also the man who enjoyed casual encounters, and who chose exotic dancers over the company of his wife whenever he had the chance.
It was the seemingly perfect image that he had worked to built that eventually led to his fall from grace, the magazine says. “In an age of constant gotcha and exposure, he had always been the bionic man in terms of personality, controlling to a fault and controlled to a fault, smiling with humility and showing those pearly white teeth in victory or defeat, sui generis in the world of pro golf, where even fellow pros and other insiders didn’t really know him, because he didn’t want anybody to know him. With Woods, everything was crafted to produce a man of nothing, with no interior—non-threatening and non-controversial. That was Tiger Woods, all of which made him the perfect man and pitchman for our imperfect times, a charming nonperson,” VF writes.
When the harsh reality came seeping in through the cracks in his image, ironically made with a nine iron by what was reportedly a very angry wife, it proved too much for his fans and they all turned their backs on him. “In the end it was the age-old clash of image versus reality… He deluded himself into thinking he could be something that he wasn’t: untouchable. The greatest feat of his career is that he managed to get away with it for so long in public, the bionic man instead of the human one who hit a fire hydrant,” the cover piece goes on to say.
The Vanity Fair cover story also comes with a series of portraits by Leibovitz, taken before the scandal broke in November. Most of them show Woods working out and lifting weights: unguarded, unaware and, perhaps for the first time, himself in front of the camera.