Arjun Atwal puts it in ConText
One of the main reasons for the soaring popularity of Text messaging was that it was a cheaper way of communication compared to a voice call. When David Beckham sent his first raunchy Text message to Rebecca Loos he thought to himself, ‘Gee, I saves 30 pence if I text. Why waste money on a phone call?’
Many sports stars followed Beckham’s thought process (which post facto, seems like the perfect illustration of ‘Penny-wise Pound foolish’) preferring texting as a communication method to give vent to their inner carnal desires. Shane Warne, Cashley Cole and Tiger Woods (to name a few users known in the public domain), all caught indulging in ‘Consensual Text’.
But as we all know, these seemingly ‘cheap’ messages cost a fortune to some in terms of lost endorsements, created havoc in their marital lives and in one case lead to a divorce as well. In almost all cases the recipients of the text messages made a small fortune by making the contents public. In the Beckham story a snooping nanny benefited from his excessively itchy fingers. It can be safely claimed that never in the history of literature did each word fetch as much as in the above mentioned cases.
Apple always being at the forefront of technology and charging a bomb for it , came up with an application aptly named TigerText on its iPhone. The application allows users to send self destructing Text messages so as to not leave any proof but isn’t a foolproof solution to the star senders’ misdemeanors.
All the prohibitive costs that Tiger had to bear for his texting habits haven’t deterred him from continuing with his addiction. And even now the recipients of his text messages seem to be making BIG money out of it. Just 2 days back Arjun Atwal, Tiger’s practice partner, won the Wyndham Championship and pocketed a cool $ 918,000. All it took was daily text messages from Tiger advising him what numbers to shoot the next day.
Following are the excerpts from Arjun Atwal’s interview after winning the Wyndham Open
Q. Did you talk to him or was that a text?
ARJUN ATWAL: Text. It's all texts. We never talk.
Q. Why not?
ARJUN ATWAL: He's just busy, I guess
Congratulations, Arjun Atwal for becoming the first Indian golfer to win on the US PGA tout and also thank you for giving us one more reason as to why sports celebrities send Text messages rather than calling up on phone 