Can't see the Woods for the Giggs?

 

Tiger and Ryan canter onto the turf once more this August and try and look convincing and concentrated, puffing out their cheeks, stretching and maybe even doing a star-jump with a serious, furrowed expression. Polite and slightly incestuous interviewers will ask sensible questions about driving accuracy and fitness levels, all the time secretly wanting to acknowledge the crash of elephants in the room with questions such as: ‘Have you been treated over the summer for sex addiction, because in my day it wasn’t considered an illness?’

For these two former squeaky-clean-imaged sporting bores have both taken on the Frankenstein features of a Tabloid Monster, only to be safely viewed through the browned glass of a man-sized bell-jar or from the back row of a panoramic 19^th Century operating theatre.

But on closer inspection, the two are not peas in a pod, nor chips off the old block.  Yes, they are fine specimens of post-ultra-modern-man, with their cars, their properties, their worshippers, their casual sexual liaisons. However, we need to exhibit each individual facet of their lives to discover the quintessential difference between men at each side of The Pond. The awkward, slapstick, smutty postcard of Giggs suddenly appears dog-eared and absurd in the light of the slick, bleach-blonde, blurred lens, blue movie shoot of Woods.

Put their sporting accolades side-by-side, like Top Trumps: Woods is the highest earning athlete ever. Next to this fact, Giggs’ OBE and Sports Personality of the Year seem embarrassingly English; as twee and obtuse as a BAFTA is to celluloid superstars. Giggs has a fine property in Worsley, Manchester, but this is dwarfed by Wood’s complex in Jupiter Island, Florida. Woods has a $20million yacht mockingly called the Privacy; Giggs’ boat is modest in comparison and filled with gravy.

The mistresses themselves juxtapose all that is American and all that is British. Like roast beef and burgers, a beast can be skinned in an entirely different manner. For among Woods’ harem there exudes a flashiness, a sassiness, a frilliness and an ass-shakingness: a waitress, a cocktail-waitress (as if carrying a tray of Cosmopolitans is somehow more saucy than dirty plates), a porn star and, oh, another porn star. In return, Giggs offers up an all-brunette triangle of doppelgangers, including ex-Big Brother contestant and his brother’s wife to underline the small-town sexual frustration of provincial Britain – was there a drunken fumble in a bingo hall followed by mutual self-loathing, or were they planning elope to a chilly, wind-battered village for the weekend?

For Woods is the pectoral-pumping, arm-flexing equivalent of the ripped man next door doing the lawn with his shirt off in Desperate Housewives; the sort of man who stares impassively at himself in bedroom mirrors whilst doing the deed. In contrast, Giggs is a fretting Dev from Coronation Street, tangled in a complicated manage a trois-quatre-cinq-six, at the centre of an ever-expanding family, yet spending too much time in denial with solicitors and all-in-all bobbing around with the dark, curled hair and sideburns of a Player and the gaunt, devious expression of anything but a Gentleman.

But perhaps there is something helplessly boyish about Giggs’ predicament; a profound innocence that finds him cycling unflinchingly around to Natasha’s house with pockets clumsily stuffed full of twenty pound notes for her abortion. His blank admission to an ex-teammate, Andrei Kanchelskis, sounds more like a teenager at a school disco, or a child regretting his choice of ice-cream:

“I go out with three girls but just can’t choose which one is the best”

Woods, tour diary and pager in hand, would pour derision at such a haphazard way of handling affairs.