Well, it is no surprise that Tiger Woods has announced that he will participate in this years Masters.  In fact, Tiger’s break from golf was very disingenuous coming as it did in golf’s offseason; to this point Tiger has missed only 3 “minor” tournaments. I think we knew all along that he would be back for the Masters because it just seems like the, pre-packaged made for TV sports “comeback”  that we have come to expect from the major networks. It doesn’t matter that Tiger was absent not because of a torn fibula or rotator cuff but  because he had been caught cheating on his wife with a parade of busty bimbos and was too ashamed to appear in public.  And what will the reaction of the galleries  be ?  I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone at Augusta cheered Tiger just as Dodger fans cheered Manny Ramirez upon his return last year after a 50 game suspension for steroid use. The plain fact is that athletes nowadays are not held to very high standards. An athlete can do something disgraceful, such as Marion Jones, or act with complete hypocrisy, such as Tiger,  but as long as they have not lost their game people will cheer for them.  In all honesty, athletes have always been given a break. When incidents of supposed domestic violence in Willie Mays’s marriage were reported  in the San Francisco papers in 1961 no one really cared – according to James Hirsch in his new biography of Mays.  But there was nevertheless a moral code which, if transgressed, made it difficult for a player to continue to compete in the public arena.  A good example is Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich who in the mid 1970s swapped wives – and eventually their entire families – and were subsequently booed in every city they played in.  Both were out of baseball in a matter of a few years despite promising careers.  The Tiger Woods scandal has had all the sleazy headlines of the Kekich-Peterson affair and Tiger for his hypocrisy should hear thunderous and incessant jeers upon his return. But this will not happen. because people, as I said, just don’t care anymore.