A ghost dad in Tiger's ad

Tiger Woods has made a bizarre ad for Nike, but is it right to use his late father's voice to sell sports gear, wonders KATE HOLMQUIST

IN THE stark black-and-white TV ad for Nike, Tiger Woods stares at you blankly and silently like an overgrown child numbed by chastisement.

Then you hear the voice of his dead father, Earl Woods, coming from beyond the grave: “Tiger, I am more prone to be inquisitive. I want to find out what your thinking was. I want to find out what your feelings are, and did you learn anything.” Tiger merely blinks robotically in response to the advice of his father, who died in 2006.

The effect is creepy.

Earl Woods's neutral and ever-so-slightly disappointed voice, recorded before his death in 2006, is emotionless, yet kind – like the computer Hal's in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is the sermonising of a benign mentor who has formed its slavish progeny from birth.

Whatever you think of it, this weird 33-second ad – shown in the US on Wednesday, the eve of the Masters golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia – certainly marks a new departure in the sale of sportswear. Earl’s voice is so god-like that it could be like the one Moses heard on the top of the mountain when God handed down the Ten Commandments. Except that for Tiger, there will be much less chiselling of stone tablets involved, because the ultimate message is about selling brand Nike, which famously uses a mere three words: Just do it.

“Just do it, Tiger, as long as you learn from it.” Is that what Earl Woods is really saying? Is that what he taught his son, who clearly believed he’d get away with just doing it? And is this the moral message that Nike, by association, is preaching? Just do it and, no matter what the consequences, it’s OK, as long as you learn from it? For the sinners amongst us, there but for the grace of God and all, there’s a certain appeal in a message like this, which firmly takes the moral high ground while appealing to the public’s higher instincts – especially in the US – for miraculous redemption. The ad amounts to an invitation for the public to look into its heart and join the Great Tiger Woods Rehabilitation Road Show (golfwear optional, ex-mistresses and strippers excluded).

The ad is clever in the way it exploits the American love for the public chastisement and humiliation of sinners – equivalent to that grand old New England colonial tradition of putting sinners in stocks in the town square.

But this bizarre ad has caused more controversy: using the voice of your dead father in the context of sex rehab in order to sell sports equipment may be more questionable than playing away when you’re, well, playing away.

It’s a big risk for Nike. TV ratings for the Masters are predicted to rival that of Obama’s inauguration, giving Nike an ideal platform for its redemptive message in the church of golf. Though the only thing that will redeem Tiger now is to win the tournament and break down in tears as his Swedish wife Elin and photogenic children rush on to the green to embrace him, as Obama and Oprah smile on benignly. Now that really would be a miracle.