Okay, first let me reassure you that this is a golf blog and not an 'All things Tiger and EA Sports' blog. I do recognise that two out of the first three posts have been about those two inextricably linked entities, but I promise you, after this entry it will be all 'how to take 35 shots off your score in ten minutes' and '5 tips on how to play a two iron out of a lake' type stuff. In addition I promise YouTube clips of cats holing out from 75 yards, long drive competitions from moving cars and a guide to making your own 'Ian Poulter' trousers.
So it probably hasn't escaped your notice that Tiger Woods has been in a 'spot of bother' to put it mildly over the last 5 months. And if anyone had managed to miss the memo on the rise and fall and fall and fall of Eldrick Tont Woods, the nice people at South Park were kind enough to provide a full dramatisation of every significant moment since the evening of Thanksgiving 2009.
So it probably hasn't escaped your notice that Tiger Woods has been in a 'spot of bother' to put it mildly over the last 5 months. And if anyone had managed to miss the memo on the rise and fall and fall and fall of Eldrick Tont Woods, the nice people at South Park were kind enough to provide a full dramatisation of every significant moment since the evening of Thanksgiving 2009.
South Park's creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker were not content simply to parody the extraordinary events of recent months but also nail the one major endorsee who has stood by the World's number one golfer, EA Sports. In a nutshell Tiger's travails were brought graphically to life in Stone and Parker's vision of what 'Tiger Woods PGA Tour '11' should look like. In their version of the game Elin and Tiger square off in a 'Street Fighter' style beat 'em up and she triumphs over him by harnessing the power of the mighty 'pre-nup' power-up.
This has not gone down too well with senior staff as EA Sports. Entertainment site DailyInfomer was contacted by a member of staff inside the games giant:When our source at the company contacted us, he said that “soon after the airing of the episode the top beef were called in, even [EA Sports President] Peter Moore was informed of the situation” he continued to say that “before the episode aired the marketing folks were already worried, but now they have a lot more to worry about”. Our source later goes into details about a possible lawsuit, saying that “while I personally found the episode quite funny, there are definitely a few copyright infringements in there that I’m sure will be dealt with accordingly.”
The issue of copyright infringement may be the reason that South Park went after Woods and, more specifically, EA Sports with such aggression. In 1998 a member of the game's development team sneaked 'The Spirit of Christmas' AVI into the Tiger Woods PlayStation code. It wasn't accessible via the Sony console but it could be found by placing the disk in a conventional CD ROM drive. Online games specialist IGN reported at the time that senior EA staff were horrified by this action:
The AVI is a profanity-laden tirade made before the South Park property was picked up by Comedy Central; basically an uncensored version of one of the later shows.
So it may well be that Matt Stone and Trey Parker not only like to reflect the current 'hot button' issues of the day, but they also have long memories. And as Eric Theodore Cartman would no doubt explain "pay back is, indeed, a beeeeeeeotch!"
Don't forget that there are 50 (that's fifty) Stiletto Green Tools to be won right now.
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