I confess, I played a round

OPINION: ''Woods ... You will stay behind after school and write an essay entitled What I've Done Wrong.", writes Joe Bennett this week.

"But sir."

"You heard me Woods. Ah, there's the bell. Off you go the rest of you."

All the little children, except for Woods and one other little boy, leapt up and ran from the classroom into the sunshine.

"You too, young Caddy,' said the teacher, "Woods is going to have to manage the spelling on his own for once."

The other boy left.

Woods took out his pen and sucked it. Then he curled his upper body around the paper as if trying to hug himself.

"T Woods," he wrote

"Hole in One

Gated Community

Isleworth

Florida

United States of America

The World

The"

"Get on with it, Woods," said the teacher.

The boy sighed. "What I've Done Wrong," he wrote and he underlined the title twice, so fiercely that the nib almost went through the paper. Then he started writing.

"I have done many things wrong. I am sorry. It's all my fault. I could blame the pressure that's been put on me since I was an infant, but I don't. I alone am to blame. I chose to do what I did. And now I wish to confess. I don't ask to be forgiven. My sins are too great to forgive. I hope only that some of you may come to understand why I did what I did."

"I haven't got all day, Woods," said the teacher, who had tiptoed around behind the boy and was reading over his shoulder, "and neither has your reader. If you're going to fess up, get fessing."

"Sir," said the boy, and he put his pen to the paper again. "IT Woods confess to the world that"

"Punctuation, Woods, punctuation. `I T Woods' makes you sound like an arboreal computer company."

The boy crossed out the sentence and started again. "I, Tiger Woods, confess to the world the following sins:

"I have encouraged people to venerate me. I have allowed people of unimaginable poverty of mind to form fan clubs in my name.

"I have cultivated a bland public face.

"I have endorsed products for whoever would pay and in doing so I have become a mere corporate cipher.

"Worst of all, I have taken golf seriously. Golf may be borderline acceptable as an occasional recreational activity. As a fulltime job for a grown man, it's a joke.

"In short, then, I have become a whore to the commercial delusion that is professional sport. I have helped to stultify the brains of millions. I have embodied a fantasy for others while creating a conformist hell for myself. My life has been hollow. And all along I have pretended that it has been full, solely to deceive the world, to foster a myth and to profit from that myth. I see now the error of my ways and from this day forth I swear I shall do all I can to be a real man, carrying my own bag down the rugged fairway of life.

"To this confession I sign my"

"Whoa there, Woods."

The boy looked up at his teacher.

"You don't imagine you've finished, do you?"

"Sir?"

"What must a penitent sinner do, Woods?"

"Make amends, sir."

"Exactly, Woods, make amends. Atone for your crimes."

"But how can I atone for crimes that stink to heaven, sir?"

"That is for you to decide and for me to judge, Woods. But you could begin perhaps by undermining that ridiculous PR-generated face of probity that you have been showing to the world in the manner of a televangelist, from whom, I might add, you differ in fewer ways than you may imagine. You are both, in the end, entertainers. So do your duty, Woods, and entertain the people properly for once. Why not confess to, oh I don't know, consorting with cocktail waitresses or something? They'd love that. They'd come over all moral and condemn you with the greatest possible ferocity while simultaneously feasting on every detail of your infidelity and – what's up Woods?"

"But I have been consorting with cocktail waitresses, sir. For years."

The teacher stood in silence. Then he laid a hand on the boy's shoulder.

"Do you know, Woods," he said eventually, "I've been teaching for 30 years and I still haven't met the child who didn't have some good in him. Off you go. Out into the sunshine to play with your mates. But no more golf, you understand. And no more commercials. They shrivel the soul."

"Yes sir, thank you, sir," said little Tiger and he ran out of the classroom like one who has had a great weight lifted from his shoulders.

» Joe Bennett is an English-born travel writer and columnist who lives in New Zealand with dogs. His columns are syndicated in newspapers throughout New Zealand.

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