On the Couch / Beating the money game

Not a word about Tiger, I promise. Well, almost no word - other that to quote John Daly, no stranger himself to seeing his personal life under the world's microscope. Big John said he'd no interest in what happened outside Woods's home in the earlier hours of last Friday: "I don't really care what happened between Tiger and ... whatever happened. I'm just glad he's OK. We need him to keep things going, the way the economy is. Tiger's the biggest asset the tour's had in a long, long time."

So, while the tabloids, and now just about everybody, concerns themselves with Tiger's love life or lack of it, maybe it's better to focus on the other issue which seems to grab everyone all the time - the money that mega sports stars earn.

It's a fixation. Even generally staid and well-balanced sports enthusiasts mutter "obscene," "odious" or "downright objectionable" whenever how much they make comes up. And it always does. John Kander and Fred Ebb were clearly pointing to the future of the sporting world when, back in '72, they wrote in their Cabaret song, "Money makes the world go round, world go round, world go round." But why blame the players? What about bankers, stock brokers, real estate agents and advertising executives - do their earnings get scrutinized so persistently, or perversely?

In every Harry Potter review is it mandatory to note the earnings of JK Rowling, or when evaluating Brad Pitt's latest performance how much he pulled in? Or, in fact, the lesser-light guys and gals?

Sure, Tiger is deservedly one of the world's best-known sportsmen, and the most marketable. He commands sponsorship deals with GM, Nike and others, the top-earning sportsman on the planet who, according to Forbes magazine recently, was the first athlete to break through the billion-dollar earnings mark. He brings in an annual $110 million, more than twice that of his nearest competitor.

But, there are fairy-tales and there's the Tiger tale - how many Woods are there, even in big-moneyed golf? How many golfers come even that close - a dozen or 20 perhaps in all the world. For the rest, it's a struggle just to make a decent living from the game. Especially in this troubled economic climate.

Take the women's tour, which has made giant strides forward. How the galaxy of brilliant teenage Korean golfers, with parents in tow (or parents towing them), will manage with sponsorship waning, and even threatening to dry up, is a big issue. More likely, the issue will be what will the others do when the determined Korean girls capture most the lolly, leaving only crumbs for the rest?

The New York Times' Karen Crouse has some timely revelations: "The LPGA is a model of diversity and inclusion that has been at the forefront of globalization. Yet it is wobblier than it has been since its infancy in the early 1950s," she writes, noting that the 2010 women's schedule will feature, at most, 24 tournaments, down from 34 in 2008 and 27 this year.

What's more, the opening two events, in Thailand and Singapore, are limited to 60 golfers. "You put a lot of pressure on yourself to do well now so you're not playing catch-up next year," she quotes Reilly Rankin, one of the tour's rank-and-file.

"Rankin," Crouse points out, "is a college graduate, who earned more than $400,000 in two years plying her chosen trade. Now she's just another member of the LPGA middle class trying not to slip through the economy's cracks. With her golfing schedule cut drastically this year and the bills piling up, Rankin lost her financial footing."

Rankin was so broke she was only able to complete the 2009 tour when a kindly uncle came to the rescue. Crouse concludes, "For the top five dozen women - the Lorena Ochoas and Michelle Wies and Natalie Gulbises - the shrinking schedule is less of a concern than an inconvenience, obliging them to grace tour stops they would have skipped in the days when they had more options. For everybody else, it is cause to consider taking a part-time job to help stay afloat."

Or take tennis - whenever a tournament is written about, there seems to be a mandatory prefix revealing the "zillions" of prize money on offer. Having earned upward of $50m in prize money alone, Roger Federer can afford a $3,000-a-night suite for his expanded family, but how many have his or Maria Sharapova's image appeal to command massive endorsements?

Everyone was immediately on edge to learn how much Nikolay Davydenko earned for the no small achievement of beating Nadal, Soderling, Federer and Del Potro in succession at the season-ending finale in London. He sure deserved the rewards and anyway he looks like he could do with the extra cash to buy himself a square meal.

Jokes aside, as the "Tennishead" Web site noted, "Davydenko didn't sign a single off-court autograph. He had dinner each night with his wife and team at the players' hotel, and practiced for a couple of hours each day with his unstenciled, unsponsored Prince rackets. In a world of endorsements and glamour, the Russian is the embodiment of the low-key sportsman, the antithesis of the Federers, Nadals and Williamses."

It begs the question - how good does a tennis pro have to be to make a living? During the US Open back in September, Marc Gicquel, 81 in the world, was being beaten by Andy Roddick. John McEnroe quipped on ESPN that he "might have to start looking for another job."

When appointed British LTA player director, the former Belgium Davis Cup captain Steven Martens, explained why tennis makes such demands of its players. "Only the top 100 in the whole world are making a good living - the same number as, say, the first-team squads of four football [soccer] clubs. When you watch the top tennis players you are watching the proficiency of Ronaldo and Ronaldinho; there is no place, for example, for a John Terry."

It's estimated many players earn a really comfortable wage. Last year, some 200 men and 140 women pulled in at least $100,000 in prize money. That, however, included formidable expenses - pricey air travel, paying coaches, and paying for the travel of their entourage. Of course, no one is saying it isn't a grand thing to be doing, especially when you're young, and out to enjoy life and the world. Like the Ukrainian-born Briton, Elena Baltacha, ranked 102nd in the world, interviewed recently by Bloomberg News. "I could easily have gotten a nine-to-five job," said Baltacha, 25, "but I love the opportunity. It's definitely a challenge to try and get better, and to get yourself into the top 100 and into a Grand Slam draw."

Some might charge I'm defending the indefensible. Just don't bring up the truly obscene money that rules (or, is that "ruins") soccer! Still, I can't get hot under the collar about the salaries of mega soccer stars either, so long as the outlandish sums don't have mean-spirited owners raising ticket prices for regular fans.

That's another story, especially given the massive amounts that find their way into the pockets of player agents. This week there was mandatory publication of how much clubs in the Premiership spend on agents: a whopping 70 million pounds, it emerges, in just a year. This involved 803 separate transactions carried out by the 20 Premier League clubs. The sum is certain to raise concerns about financial excess in England's elite league and questions about what agents actually do for their money.

No wonder some are losing their passion for the "People's Game." Speaking of passions - a sobering postscript about owner-fan relations from the woes of Beitar Jerusalem. No one familiar with this column could ever brand me a Beitar fan or for being soft on Beitar fans. But was there ever a more unworthy slur than that cast on the faithful by one of their erstwhile saviors, the Jerusalem businessman, and former pre-Gaydamak chairman, Moshe Dadash? Asked on Israel Radio where the passion in "Teddy" had disappeared to, he sniffed, "the passion in the club never came from below, always from above."

You can accuse Beitar fans of a lot of unsavory things, but to accuse them of not being passionate about their team - Moshe Dadash, go make a million on someone else's back!