Both Tiger and Elin have spoken publicly since the end credits rolled on their relationship. “You don’t ever go into a marriage looking to get divorced,” he told reporters before The Barclays tournament began in New Jersey. “That’s why it’s sad.” You also don’t go into a marriage assuming that your husband will see more beaver than a Canadian park ranger, Tiger. That’s what’s sad.
For Elin’s perspective, you’ll have to either spend four dollars or loiter around your local Borders until they remind you that it’s not a library. Nordegren — who dropped Tiger’s last name in the recycling bin well before the settlement — is only talking once and only in this week’s issue of People. The native Swede hasn’t spilled so much as an umlaut since the beginning of Skankapalooza, displaying an impressively detached stoicism that makes Star Trek’s Spock look like a hysterical bitch.
This week for NBC Sports - Out of Bounds, we employed one of our favorite euphemisms and also discussed the biggest divorce since Princess Diana boxed up Prince Charles’ oversized earmuffs.
I could have said a lot more—an entire second column’s worth—just about why Elin would find it necessary to grant an interview at all. She has everyone’s sympathy on her side, has nothing to prove and, really, nothing to gain by putting her smooth, poreless face on the cover of a magazine that’s frequently located between the beef jerky and the travel sized hand sanitizers in the checkout aisle.
She hadn’t been criticized at all until the divorce became final on Monday and now, thanks to a settlement that has the same amount of digits as my Social Security number, it’s fair game to call her a golddigger, to assume that she knew that Tiger was laying more pipe than Mario and Luigi put together, and to deride her for going from “just a nanny” to one of the world’s wealthiest women in five short—but brutally painful—years.
Look, she was 20 years old when Tiger started pursuing her. Of course she worked as a nanny! Who, other than maybe the kid who started Facebook or another athlete who wears his own last name stitched across his shoulders, has scored a six or seven figure dream job when they’re twenty years old? Her experience tending to other peoples’ children has probably helped her raise her own pair of toddlers, something she’s largely had to do by herself. You know, while her husband was out playing an X-rated game of Clue. Did he do it in the library with the club owner and the Subway sandwich? Or was it in the conservatory with the waitress and the sleazetastic text messsages?
Anyway. Read the article before I break out the words “gender roles” or something.
Team Elin, signing off.
