I’ve been following the Tiger Woods field day the media are having and read numerous opinions from both journalists and people like myself. Some say he’s still the greatest golfer and his personal life doesn’t matter ... he’ll bounce back just like Kobe Bryant.

Others have tried to label him as the "devil of 2009" and think he should be stripped of everything he owns. Still others wonder how he could cheat on a beautiful model and risk his marriage and kids.

There are hundreds of reasons to cheat on a spouse and almost none of them ever qualifies as an excuse, but there is one glaring opinion that I think has been missed.

Tiger Woods’ father died on May 3, 2006, before the earliest claims of these affairs even began. Tiger’s father not only created his "golden boy" image by comparing him to Gandhi, he was probably the one person Tiger looked up to and would never want to disappoint. Is it possible that once his father died, he either: (a) lost his anchor that kept him moored to his father’s image of him, or (b) no longer felt he needed to live up to values that had been pushed on him from the age of 2?

I’m not offering this as an excuse for Tiger in any way. If you want to fool around, stay single. However, almost all of us go through a wild-child period where we know the difference between right and wrong and simply choose to do wrong until we’re faced with painful consequences. It is usually when we’re hit with those consequences that we finally straighten up and fly right. But when you’ve flown right all your life, it’s only going to be much more dramatic and tragic when you finally crash.

Sgt. 1st Class Jeffrey JonesHeidelberg, Germany

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