September 20, 2004

Disney Nixes Tiger Woods Name Change to 'Tigger'

Tiger Had Hoped Change Would Improve His Golf Game

Poor Tiger Woods. Few things seem to be going right at the moment. His golf game is lagging badly. Rumors swirl that he and his fiancee might split up.

Now comes news that Disney is threatening to take him to court if Tiger goes through with his plan to change his first name to Tigger. Disney, of course, owns A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh and all the Pooh characters, including the winsome tiger named Tigger.

Tiger the golfer apparently hopes that changing his name to Tigger would boost his golf game. Woods' stubbornly poor performance on the links lead to his recent dethronement as the world's top golfer.

The name change plan came to light when a court petition for the change that was supposed to be sealed was inadvertently put in the wrong file. A reporter for an alternative weekly newspaper in Santa Monica discovered the document.

The petition said that changing Tiger's first name was necessary "to facilitate the improvement of his standing in his chosen profession." The widely held assumption is that the language means Woods hopes adopting the Tigger name will improve his golf game.

"We have let Mr. Woods' attorneys know that should he go through with the name change plan, we will exercise our legal rights to protect our trademarked and copyrighted property," a Disney statement on the matter said. "We admire Mr. Woods' as an iconic American golfer and we wish him well as he pursues his very successful career, but we do not want to dilute our Winnie the Pooh franchise."

A senior executive at Disney, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the objection was not toward Woods adopting Tigger as a name, per se, but rather a concern that other celebrities or pseudo celebrities might begin adopting Disney character names.

"We should have taken action long ago to stop the use of 'Donald' and 'Mickey', but we didn't and we learned our lesson," the executive said. "What we don't want to do is open the door to some pro wrestler naming himself 'Christopher Robin.' If 'Eeyore' was available, next thing you know there'd be two dozen people across the country named 'Eeyore' running for Congress or governor."

Tiger's fascination with the Tigger character apparently stems from his childhood when his father read Winne the Pooh as the toddler and future champion golfer, still in diapers, practiced putting on the living room carpet. He came to see Tigger as a good luck talisman. Now, having lost his No. 1 golf ranking, he is casting about for something dramatic to jump start his game.

"He should try some good old fashioned passion for winning," grumbled a spectator at the Ryder Cup competition in Bloomfield, Michigan, which the United States team lost to the Europeans over the weekend. Woods played well Sunday, but spectators had been critical of his play earlier in the Ryder series.

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