With The Masters just around Amen Corner, Alan Shipnuck and others in the sports world are asking that ever-vexing question, "What happened to Tiger Woods?” and “Will he a win a major again?” For the latter to happen, Tiger would be well-advised to take advice from the great sixteenth-century political strategist, Niccolò Machiavelli.
Sounds strange, right? But some of the strategies of warfare and statecraft that Machiavelli prescribes in his iconic political treatise The Prince can be successfully applied on the course. Consider the following tips:
Cultivate Machiavellian Virtu
In The Prince, Machiavelli repeatedly refers to his central term virtú. Unlike the modern term virtue that connotes moral goodness, virtú, for Machiavelli, is the essential quality, the touchstone, of political and military success.
In particular, the concept entails the idea of a tremendous inner fortitude to overcome even the most formidable and recalcitrant opposition and embraces such traits as boldness, bravery, foresight, flexibility, ingenuity, action, and decisiveness. And these very same traits, as Machiavelli might say, are also critical for success on the course.
Here again, Tiger’s most formidable opponent is himself, and, to reclaim his former greatness as a player, he must cultivate those behaviors and character traits that he so shamelessly lacked in the past in order to achieve the kind of Machiavellian “virtu” that is critical to success, whether you’re a sixteenth century Florentine prince trying to acquire and maintain power or one of the greatest golfers of all time trying to win another major.
Go To the Effective Truth of the Matter
Despite his bad rap, Machiavelli was actually a very honorable and upright if somewhat bawdy and abrasive guy. And while he did habitually cheat on his wife as many Florentine men did at the time (not that it makes it right!), he was a loving father, loyal friend, and brutally honest observer of the human condition. He commented on everything he saw — the cruelty, brutality, lies, and deceit, as well as the bravery and brilliance — and wasn’t afraid to tell it like it is.
Machiavelli’s hardheaded analysis later established him as the founding father of political science, a field that investigates politics as it is actually practiced as opposed to how some philosophers and idealists might think it ought to be practiced.
His commitment to the truth is also at the heart of his originality and is, if not explicitly then implicitly, on each and every page of The Prince. We see it in his dedicatory letter to Lorenzo de’ Medici where he writes of telling “the effective truth of the matter.” We see it in chapter 15 when he says, “It seems best to me to go straight to the actual truth of things, rather than to dwell in dreams.” And we see it in chapter 23 where he says that in seeking advice a leader must make it clear that “the truth does not offend him.”
And all of these tips are directly relevant to the question: What happened to Tiger Woods? So what should he do? Machiavelli would advise him to go to "the effective truth of the matter" and make it clear that "the truth does not offend him."
So, here's another memo to Tiger: the truth of the matter is the only thing that will set you free from the imprisonment of your own tortured psyche and soul. We all know that the excruciatingly painful and public demarcation between the Old Supremely Confident and Dominant Tiger and the New Supremely Humiliated and Haunted Tiger was indelibly drawn that shocking night in 2009 when the effective truth of your lurid personal life was so brutally and unceremoniously exposed for all the world to see.
Or, as the French writer and philosopher Emile Zola put it, “When truth is buried underground it grows, it chokes, it gathers such an explosive force that on the day it bursts out, it blows up everything with it.” And so trying to convince us - and, far worse, yourself - that your problems on the course stem from your new swing or ailing back or any other obstacles or ailments is to avoid, subvert, bury, choke, suppress the effective truth of the matter.
And that, to be brutally truthful, is ultimately what is holding you back. You need to be honest with yourself. Or, you don't. Again, it's your choice.
Study the Actions of Illustrious Men
Machiavelli was all about learning from the past. In fact, he backs up his many edicts in The Prince with an astonishingly wide array of historical examples, from classical antiquity to Renaissance Italy. He also advises that the study of history can do much to enrich the life of the mind. This, for him, was an important “end” in itself. But he also believed that a deep knowledge of history could be used as a means to help rulers become great.
In particular, he writes that “to enrich the intellect, men ought to read histories and study there the actions of illustrious men to see how they have borne themselves in war, to examine the causes of their victories and defeats, so as to avoid the latter and imitate the former.”
This might be so obvious that people might dismiss it. But, for Machiavelli, it was extremely important, and he believed that those leaders who failed to do so were doomed. Similarly, in sports as in war, Tiger should study the actions of past champions to see how they conducted themselves on "the battlefield of the course" and to examine the causes of their victories and defeats, so as to avoid the latter and imitate the former.
Use Humor in Times of Adversity and Crisis
For some five hundred years, Machiavelli has been condemned for his political realism, for advocating the preservation of power at all costs, and for being the founding father of modern-day power-politics. Yet, despite his bad rap, Machiavelli was actually a warm, witty guy who, while arrogant and abrasive at times, was well-loved by his friends for his bawdy, ironic, self-deprecating sense of humor.
In fact, there's a lot of evidence in his correspondence which suggest that he was a very likable, down-to-earth guy who was probably a blast to hang out with in local taverns and bars. But it’s his poems, tales and plays that give us the clearest glimpse of his dark humor and wit.
In his comedic play, Clizia, for example, he mocks the folly of an older man’s pursuit a beautiful younger woman, and in the novella Belfagor he has his protagonist choose between the torments of hell and "the anxiety of the marriage yoke." Anyone who’s been married with kids for long enough can see the humor in that, right?
Even the dark and brooding German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche found humor in Machiavelli’s prose, noting that in The Prince, he “lets us breathe the dry, refined air of Florence and cannot help presenting the most serious matters in a boisterous allegrissimo, perhaps not without a malicious artistic sense of the contrast he risks—long, difficult, hard, dangerous thoughts and…the very best, most capricious humor.”
But the most startling example of Machiavelli's lewd humor and lascivious wit can be found in a letter he wrote to his friend Luigi Guicciardini. In it, he tells a tale about an encounter he supposedly had with a grotesque old hag that he was duped into having sex with one day in Lombardy.
“Damn it all, Luigi!” he begins. “You see how fortune can bring about in men different results in similar matters. You, when you have had her once, you still get the urge to have her again.” He then recounts his own recent foray in a dimly lit room, only to discover, after the fact, that he had been sorely duped.
“My God!” he writes. “The woman was so ugly I almost dropped dead.” On the top of her bald head, he said, “were a number of lice taking a stroll”; her “eyebrows were full of nits;” “one eye looked up and the other down”; her “nostrils were full of snot and one of them was cut off” and “her mouth looked like Lorenzo de’ Medici’s” but “it was twisted on one side and drooled a bit since she had no teeth to keep the saliva in her mouth. And I swear to God!" he quips at the end, "I don’t believe my lust will return as long as I am in Lombardy.”
Did this actually happen?
Who knows. But that’s not the point. What matters is that Machiavelli could find humor in even the grimmest of situations. That he was a master at this is reflected in a letter he wrote near the end of his life in which he cites the lines from one of Petrarch’s sonnets: If at times I laugh or sing/ I do so because I have no other way than this/ To give vent to my bitter tears.
Aww. Poor guy. But here’s the bottom line: there’s a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt, as humorist Erma Bombeck observed. And that's a fate we can’t ever escape.
So what should Tiger do? Laugh and sing, my friends. Laugh and f@*%g sing, just like Machiavelli!
Bottom line: if Tiger can finally “divide and conquer” his inner demons, cultivate “virtu,” honestly acknowledge that his greatest obstacles stem from within and study the actions of past champions while maintaining a sense of humor in his times of adversity and crisis, he will increase his chances of reclaiming his supreme confidence, total dominance and former greatness as a player — and what, I ask, could be more Machiavellian than that?
Suzy Evans, J.D., Ph.D. is a senior editor at California Golf + Travel and the author of Machiavelli for Moms (Simon & Schuster).
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