tiger slays melbourne

so i listen to a lot of NPR because it rules. they cover a lot of things that the tradmed doesn't (i'm not that big a fan of the tradmed). more of a global look.

now, i'm a bit late on this one since the tournament is over and all. didja notice tiger woods played the australian masters in melbourne? no? well, shit, he won the damn thing by two strokes. didja know he accepted an appearance fee to play? here's the rub: the appearance fee for him was $3 MILLION. by winning the tournament, he won $300,000. look at those numbers again for me...what if he didn't win? what if he missed the cut?

oh hell, i nearly forgot to tell you WHO paid the appearance fee. that would be the local government.

seriously, i'm a lonely little blogger here and who gives a shit about my opinion on the subject but this bugs the hell outta me. woods makes approximately $75M (prolly more) in endorsements each year, add winnings and whatever else on top and i'll bet my house he's knocking on 9 figures a year.

lots of players/celebrities accept/demand appearance fees and i, on its face, have no issue with that. and i get the point of leverage (money) to appear halfway across the world. but when the appearance fee is 10x the winner take, don't you think there is something tragically out of step? ever more so, during this wonderful economy, that a government paid that fee? NPR said that because of woods' appearance, tickets were sold out for the tournament and officials/organizers/government would make a good chunk of money above and beyond what they paid him. so we're left with a golfer taking $3M in australian taxpayer money. i'd have no issue if this was privately funded, to be clear.

the other part of it is that he accepted the money, or even demanded it! the least woods could do is donate some back into the community. build a park or something for the, ya know, taxpayers. the story didn't seem to get a lot of play here but should brand tiger take a hit for it? i think so, terrible planning there. i think the demand or acceptance (whether it was offered by the australian government or demanded by brand woods was unclear) really stinks. what did the taxpayers get out of this? how do they directly benefit from spending their money to bring woods over? maybe brand tiger should re-examine their guidelines to play in tournaments.

anybody from melbourne reading? fly me out and i'll write and say whatever you want. it's getting cold in chicago...