Last weekend, Eldrick Tiger Woods played in his first golf tournament in 65 years after getting his ass beat by his wife with a nine iron.  His first tournament was the Augusta National Golf Club … or as I like to call it – the Klan’s Major.  Tiger finished fourth, which is mightily impressive considering he was freebasing Ambien with vodka shooters and engaging in auto-asphyxiation with one of John Daly’s ex-wives.

Well, that’s what I heard …

Regardless of what may or may not have transpired, Tiger has been covered ad nauseum in the last five months.  He’s a cheater.  He’s a sex addict.  He’s a delusional celebrity.  I have a different perspective.  I have the truth about Tiger.

Tiger scored a lot of trim.  A lot of trim.  He’s been living a teen sex comedy for the last 15 years.  You know the type – where all of the girls are hot, nymphomaniacs clearly in the mid-20s with surgically enhanced bodies.  Tiger has been humping everything that moves and somethings that don’t.  It’s hard for me to blame him though.   Well.  I will blame him for the stupid ad with the voice of his dead father.  His father asks from beyond the grave, “did you learn anything?”  Funny.  Coming from Earl Woods, the same man that cheated on Tiger’s mother, that has a palpable degree of stomach-turning irony.  But … back to the point.  I don’t blame Tiger for dipping his toe in the waterhole.

Tiger is man.  He is only a man.

I’ve got an analogy about men.  Every man, every single one, past – present – future, is like a recovering alcoholic.  We are addicted from the womb.  The 12-step programs tell you one thing – once you are addicted, you will ALWAYS be addicted.  It will be a daily struggle the rest of your life to avoid relapsing into a Hunter S. Thompson binge and waking to a dead hooker stuffed in the trunk of your rented Kia.  The danger is always there.  When recovering alcoholics go to parties, they cannot have even one sip of a beer.  They stand in the corner in a neurotic fit of rage, nervously fiddling their sparkling water and gnawing on toothpicks.  One drink – disaster.  A life long battle to stay clean and sober.

Here’s the rub (pun intended) – we’re not addicted to alcohol (well, not all of us anyways), men are addicted to booty.

As soon as we emerge from the uterus, grow hair on the nuggets, from every waking moment until the Grim Reaper reads us Thanatopsis we are thinking, nay dreaming, about poon.  Peal back the forehead of an adolescent boy and you’ll find visions of  debaucheries on the level that would make Roman emperors blush.  The male sub-conscience is genetically programmed to lay pipe.  It is a fact across the animal kingdom.  Another analogy – did you know that if you give a horse an endless supply of food, they will eat themselves to death?  Starting to see a pattern here …

This does not mean that we are at the complete mercy of our instinctual drive.  It just means that some of us are better at dealing with our temptations that others.  And it means that most of us don’t have the temptation that celebrities must endure.  For most people, i.e. non-famous, non-rich people, we do not have the same bright, red target on our backs for all the gold diggers.  There is a portion of the female population that are predators.  They use sex as a credit card.  I don’t know the size of this population.  Short, un-athletic, poor kids don’t have those types of worries.  Most of us don’t.  We can go about our day avoiding the drive by the liquor store, going to dry parties, etc.  For famous people, particularly the most famous athlete on the planet, these temptations are literally thrust upon him.

To beat the recovering alcoholic analogy beyond recognition, pretend that our ex-drunk is going to Starbucks and as soon as he is in the door, someone is literally holding a loaded beer bong over his head.  He goes to the gas station and tequila pours from the nozzle.  Everywhere you go, everywhere you look – there is a big breasted blonde waiting to cash in.   There is no man that can resist that type of temptation.

Proof?  JFK.  Michael Jordan. Brad Pitt.  Even Martin Luther King, Jr. was getting jiggy with it.

The only guy I can think of that didn’t jump headfirst into the panty pool was FDR … but his dinger stopped working in 1934.  He was in a wheelchair afterall.  The only way that this type of failure can be avoided is to avoid even seeing the temptation.  Remove yourself from the situation.  Why are fat people fat?  Cause they’ve got a shelf full of twinkies and ding-dongs in their house – eat me, eat me … that’s a recipe for disaster.  And that’s the first step.  Understanding that men are addicted to new booty.  We don’t have the willpower.  Well, except Asians.  Those dudes light themselves on fire and then meditate on it as they are burning.  Tiger ain’t Asian enough.  Buddhist my ass.

I have a standing arrangement with my wife.  If I ever get rich and famous … at 33 years of age this is becoming more and more of a longshot, but … IF I ever get rich and famous she is to travel with me wherever I go.  I am going to handcuff her to me.  If I fly out to shoot a movie, she’s on set.  If I go to a humanitarian award banquet in Prague, she’s at the table.  If I got to the urinal, she’s going to aim for me.  Everywhere I go, she goes.  That’s the only way.

So I don’t judge Tiger.  Not really.  Sure, he’s a dumbass for leaving voice mail messages and sending texts to his whores with his own cell phone.  Yeah, that was dumb.  He’s kind of a lowlife for cashing in on his dad’s memory for his comeback commercial.  He was completely unrealistic for getting married in the first place, knowing the time commitments to golf and his already wild appetite for the skirts.  And I whole heartedly agree with Chris Rock, “when you cheat on your wife, you cheat on your kids.”  That is why the struggle to stay clean and sober from our booty-addiction is worthwhile.  But as far as the dipstick regularity, he’s just as guilty as any man given the keys to the candy store.   He suffers from the same weakness that we all do.  He is only a man.

I am Tiger Woods.