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Golfer Tiger Woods is the world’s top-earning sportsman, according to Forbes.
He is said to have earned $64-million from endorsements last year, most of it before his sexcapades became public knowledge. Although he was dumped by a couple of sponsors after that, his income would have to drop substantially before he gets pipped.
The next highest earners were soccer star David Beckham ($18-million), tennis player Roger Federer ($16-million), Nascar driver Dale Earnhardt ($14-million) and then basketball stars LeBron James ($13-million) and Kobe Bryant ($12-million).
The richest team brand is English soccer club Manchester United, which has a value estimated at $270-million. They edged out the New York Yankees baseball team, apparently worth $266-million.
If there’s one person who must surely be happy with these stats, it’ll be Woods’s wife Elin. Should she get divorced, she could become the world’s richest sports-earner without having ever played sport.
The happy couple
This is the latest email joke doing the rounds – Tiger Woods, supposedly fresh from his accident, posing with wife Elin Nordegren.
I love golf – playing and watching it. And I have no problem with the sport winning a spot on the Olympic programme for the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro (see full story here).
The problem, I reckon, is the format – a 72-hole strokeplay tournament contested by a 60-strong fields of professionals in both the men’s and women’s events. Remember the good old days when Olympicism was about amateur codes? Of the former mainstream sports, boxing is the only truly amateur code.
I understand that sport is about money, and the Olympics would love to boost their value by potentially getting Tiger Woods into their line-up. But why a strokeplay event?
The pinnacle of professional golf remains the US Masters, closely followed by the British Open. The other two Majors are the US Open and PGA Championship. They’re all strokeplay events. Olympic golf should have been a matchplay tournament between two-person teams, playing twice a day.
Starting with a 64-team draw they could get a winner in three full days of play (64 to 32 to 16 on day one; 16 to eight and four on day two; and four to two to champion on day three), with an extra day or two being set aside in case of bad weather.
That would have given Olympic golf a meaning. But in its strokeplay form, it’s not going to surpass the Masters and the other Majors for me – even if every top golfer in the world competes. It’s like Olympic tennis for me – I still rate Wimbledon higher than the Olympic title.
Rugby Sevens will be a big hit for South African fans, but I hope it doesn’t detract from other members of the SA team, like the top swimmers, athletes, rowers, canoeists, etc.
Tiger Woods is all over the internet after apparently farting – just after Ernie Els has hit his shot during a golf tournament.
According to comments on the internet, there’s no doubt about the origin of the noise, which can be heard while the camera is focused on Els’s ball travelling down the fairway.
When the camera turns back to the tee box, Woods is sporting a huge smile.
Maybe he’s merely human after all, or perhaps that is what he thinks of Ernie’s golf at the moment.
There is another video on YouTube where Tiger shakes his leg while farting, but somehow I think that’s been doctored.
