ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, Apr. 15 2010

A nice guy finishes first
By Colleen Carroll Campbell

They say it's just a game. But the 74th Masters golf tournament that concluded
Sunday was something more — a tale, you could say, of two marriages.

It began as the umpteenth episode in the tiresome Tiger Woods sex scandal. Five
months after the golfer's compulsive infidelities came to light, with a
seemingly endless parade of mistresses continuing to surface, some 5 million
viewers tuned in to ESPN to watch Woods take his first tee shot. The attraction
was more schadenfreude than sporting interest: Would Woods' aggrieved wife make
a surprise appearance on the course? Would he choke at the start of his
much-hyped return to the majors? And if he did well, would anyone cheer?

In the end, Woods made a respectable fourth-place showing, the crowds politely
applauded and the talented-but-petulant champ resumed his old habits of blaming
Jesus Christ for failed shots and snapping at reporters who questioned his
on-the-course cursing. His humdrum comeback concluded with the world's most
famous cad speeding off in the back of an SUV, sullen and alone.

The contrast between that ending and the jubilant one enjoyed by Masters winner
Phil Mickelson could not have been starker. A serial philanderer may have
attracted the pre-tournament press, but it was a family man who stole the show.

The back-story of Mickelson's victory made it particularly sweet. In the past
year, both his mother and wife have been battling breast cancer. Caring for his
wife of 13 years took its toll on his golf game, forcing the 39-year-old father
of three to take a hiatus from the PGA tour to shepherd her through
chemotherapy. After grimly schlepping to recent tournaments alone, Mickelson
was delighted when his entire family accompanied him to the Masters.

The week was not easy: His wife was too weak to come to the course. He spent
the wee hours of Sunday morning caring for his 10-year-old daughter, who broke
her wrist while roller-skating and needed an emergency X-ray and splint.

Yet it all seemed worthwhile Sunday afternoon when Mickelson looked up just
before sinking the final putt to see his smiling wife, Amy Mickelson, who had
dragged herself out of bed to celebrate at his side. After the two shared a
tearful embrace, Mickelson hugged each of his children and dedicated his win to
his family, praising his "incredible wife" who "has been an inspiration for me."

As the poignant scene unfolded, Mickelson's victory looked like a win for
marriage, family and the everyday perseverance that gets short shrift in our
scandal-fixated popular culture. For a moment there on Magnolia Lane, it seemed
as if fans were cheering every devoted husband and father in America. We were
celebrating every ordinary guy who volunteers for the 2 a.m. feeding instead of
rolling over and falling back asleep, who works a job he does not love to
support his family or scales back the work he loves to spend more time at home,
who resists the temptation to numb himself to his family's needs by escaping
into booze or bimbos or an Internet fantasy life.

That guy doesn't get a lot of credit these days. We don't see much of him in
our movies, and when he shows up in sitcoms, it's usually as the butt of jokes.
Compared to stars like Woods, whose vices even seem larger than life, the
ordinary, faithful husband and father looks a little small, at least onscreen.

In real life, he looks like Mickelson: a winner showered with love by a family
that admires him as a man, not only as a golfer. I don't know much about
Mickelson's home life; his marriage probably has endured its share of rough
patches. But I suspect his wife and children can be found standing with him on
the bad days as well as the good, because they know he does the same for them.

That's the hidden reward that accompanies the hidden sacrifices millions of
husbands and fathers make every day. Mickelson's victory nudged us to look away
from the sordid Woods spectacle and focus on something worth watching for a
change: a nice guy getting some well-deserved respect.

It felt so good, maybe we should do it more often.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is a St. Louis-based author, former presidential
speechwriter and television and radio host of "Faith & Culture" on EWTN. Her
website is www.colleen-campbell.com.