“We immediately jumped on that and said we have to dig deeper"

In an NY Times Business story, Brian Stelter explores TMZ's business model and upcoming expansion into sports.

This year, TMZ continued to provide fodder for news media ethics classes (and police investigations) by, for instance, publishing a photo of the singer Rihanna after an assault and reprinting details of the actress Brittany Murphy’s autopsy report.

Sometimes the objections to TMZ’s tactics come from within Time Warner. In an interview on Golf.com, James P. Herre, the managing editor of the Sports Illustrated Golf Group, called TMZ’s sourcing on recent pieces about Mr. Woods “beyond flimsy.”

But Mr. Levin defended the reporting, saying TMZ “has the same rigid standards as any operation in America.” Its track record of accuracy may speak for itself. He recalled that the initial claims surrounding Mr. Woods’s car accident on Nov. 27 “made no sense.”

“We immediately jumped on that and said we have to dig deeper,” he said.

Tiger's Indefinite Leave Clippings, Post Christmas Edition

Though the story itself didn't tell us much, the New York Daily News piece focusing on Tiger-trainer Keith Kleven shifted some focus from talk of affairs and back to the question of how Woods gained 25 pounds of muscle.

Teri Thompson, Michael O'Keeffe, Nathaniel Vinton and Christian Red tried to track down Keith Kleven for comment and were unable, but they suggest that Kleven is distancing himself from Woods and they talk to skeptical trainers about Tiger's transformation.

But over the last three weeks, Kleven has chosen not to respond to interview requests from the Daily News, or, according to his business manager, from any media. Kleven, like many of Woods' corporate sponsors, has apparently joined the stampede of those taking refuge from Woods' fall from grace in the wake of his post-Thanksgiving car crash.

Thanks to reader Tuco for Norm Clarke's Las Vegas Review Journal "Confidential" column suggests the Daily News isn't the only publication probing for more information into Tiger's physical transformation.

Vegas Confidential was contacted by several major media outlets in recent days, each citing my Sept. 8, 2006, interview with Kleven, who said Woods had gained 25 pounds of muscle. At the time of the interview, Woods had won five tournaments in a row.

The Woods-Kleven connection goes back to the early 1990s, just before Woods committed to attending Stanford.

"He came to UNLV to look at the school and to talk to me. I was caddying and working for (golfer) Mark O'Meara," said Kleven, whose institute is at 3820 S. Jones Blvd.

Kleven told me that Woods had become an animal in the gym during the conditioning program. "I send new things to him all the time," Kleven said.

John Paul Newport offers this food for thought into Tiger's eventual attempts to restore his career.

I have interviewed Mr. Woods one-on-one, in person, four times. All but one were short, routine encounters, but in 2002, two days after he won the Masters, I spent nearly an hour with him in Las Vegas and part of that interview felt like a real conversation. He talked about the struggle he was having finding balance in his life, not just in balancing the demands on his time, but more in the sense of finding harmony—in his words, "a sense of who you are."

His life these days is pretty clearly out of balance, and I have zero idea whether Mr. Woods has the inner resources required to regain it, either on the course in the form of his intimidating mojo, or in his personal life. He might. It's not as if whatever drove him to have so many sexual affairs instantly invalidates his physical talent, his capacity for work, his desire to achieve.

The other sharpest memory I have of my time with him in Las Vegas suggests a place from which he could start: the range. After our conversation, I watched him hit balls for a while. It was not a practice session per se, but a 10-minute respite between a photo shoot, a television interview and some pre-arranged interaction with two clients. In those 10 minutes only, curving balls right and left at a distant boulder despite a howling crosswind, he seemed to be himself, having fun, stripped of myth.

One among the many rumors in circulation about Mr. Woods these days is that he has found a way to hit golf balls at night, to clear his head, away from prying eyes, somewhere in Orlando. I hope that's true. For him, that's getting back to basics.

The next few pieces have taken on a post-mortem analysis even though as far as I know, Tiger is with the living. (Where? Who knows).

Several readers emailed Mike Wise's Washington Post column.

Three stories piquing prurient interest the past year involved a born-again former Pro Bowl quarterback, a college basketball coach who wore his Catholicism on his lapel, and Tiger, the heir apparent to Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan in the sports world, an icon marketed to be the most wholesome of them all. When all three fell from pedestals -- and one of them paid the ultimate price for it -- that's not a dangerous trend of infidelity; that's disease.

When married billionaires bring breakfast waitresses to the family home in the middle of the day after they've already hooked up in a parking lot, that's not sex; that's real affliction.

When the world's most recognizable athlete uses his Blackberry to text a relative kid in Las Vegas about how much he misses her -- and she's but one of a dozen -- that's not sex; that's sickness.

Doug Glanville compares Tiger's situation to that of baseball players faced with daily temptations.

In an athlete’s environment, money can be its own pollutant; you can become desensitized to the significance of what it can buy. Typically, if a person spends hundreds of dollars on arrangements to pass time with someone, that someone would be important in his life. But when you have extensive financial resources, it’s easy to send similar signals to people who are meaningful only for a moment. Even worse, you might only concern yourself with what it means to you. As the money flows in, so do the toys — cars, clothes, bling — and once in the stratosphere, a la Tiger, it is amazing how easy it is, if you are not careful and grounded, to start seeing women as another accessory in your life.

Karen Crouse considers the role Earl played in Tiger's life.

Woods’s parenting role model was his father, Earl, who was committed to rearing him after having two sons and a daughter in a failed first marriage. Earl, a retired Army officer, attributed the divorce to military obligations that took him away from the family. Asked how he would manage to be there for his children when golf takes him away from home so much, Woods told me, “It’s going to be a lot more difficult, there’s no doubt.”

Maybe it is impossible. Perhaps Woods was destined to be like his father, only not in the way he had hoped. Over lunch on the veranda at the Masters one year, Earl Woods said, “I’ve told Tiger that marriage is unnecessary in a mobile society like ours.”

The way Woods talked about his children, I was sure he was going to prove his father wrong.

This Herald-Story notes that after four weeks of mostly negative comments, the discussion forum on TigerWoods.com has been taken down.

Weeks after Tiger Woods admitted to the world he had been unfaithful in his marriage, the forums section of the golfer's official website has finally been shut down.

Administrators of the website had continued to allow angry fans to express their disgust at the golf superstar's fall from grace, with many of the posts highly abusive.

“You are such a piece of garbage ... good job wrecking your family, butthead,” said one of hundreds of postings. 

Another said: “You are a laughing stock - just another arrogant athlete who thought he could get away with anything ... your image was nothing but a fraud.”

The story also noted this:

The scandal has proved to be fodder for Facebook users with groups and fan pages attracting large numbers.

Among the most popular has almost 400,000 fans, while another "I did not sleep with Tiger Woods" has 40,000 fans.

Less popular are the groups "Free Tiger Woods" with 1000 fans and "Get off Tiger Woods already!" with 400 followers.

Andrew Adam Newman notes that Tiger's "How I Play Golf" will be an audio book this spring but the lightly anticipated paperback release of the remainder shelf staple has been tabled because the hardcover "still sells well," according to the editor at publishing imprint, gulp, Hachette.

In the audio book, Mr. Woods shares the “psychological practices he uses daily to keep his game in top shape and help him transcend all the ups and downs of golf,” according to a description in Hachette Audio’s spring-summer 2010 catalog, which was mailed recently to bookstores and journalists.

“The catalog went to bed months before the scandal unfolded,” Anthony Goff, publisher and director of Hachette Audio and Digital Media, wrote in an e-mail message. “We had no idea he’d be all over the news for anything other than his golf game.”

And finally, in the how far we've sunk as a society/how far Tiger has sunk as a brand category, they've woven a Tiger joke into the torturous Aladdin show at Disneyland. People pay to see this?



"Get out now, sponsors. The golf brand has been wrecked."

Not to sound like Tim Finchem...but there are so many more elements to golf tournament sponsorship than just Tiger Woods. The LA Times' Dan Neil--an incredible auto reviewer and Pulitzer winner--reinforces the that lack of sponsorship understanding in a point-misser piece suggesting Tiger's phony image means all of pro golf is a charade unworthy of corporate support.

Without Woods, the game trails off and rolls back into the weeds of cultural irrelevance, long weekend tourneys among more or less evenly matched men in more or less equally ugly clothes slapping balls around while the real players get loaded in corporate hospitality tents. There is no heroism in golf without Tiger -- at least the Tiger we thought we knew -- no drama, and scant male pulchritude besides. Unless your business is actual golf balls or clubs (Titleist or Ping or whatever), I'd say your marketing dollars could be best spent elsewhere.

And, of course, as a practical matter, there will be far fewer eyeballs watching golf on TV. Various estimates have the viewing audience sans Tiger dropping by 50%. Who knows if they'll ever come back.

The illusion that professional golf was somehow a sport with a higher calling, a game of honor and ethics played by fundamentally decent men, has been shattered. This isn't about counting strokes you took while nobody's watching. Tiger's trollop-taking is precisely the sort of thing we've come to expect from pro basketball and football players -- and, shamefully, our indifference implies consent. For the most dominant golfer of all time to be so caddish seems to be a signal that lesser golfers transgress in lesser degrees. In any event, the safe harbor of golf's presumed decency has been drained. Meanwhile, now that the tabloid press has had a taste for golfer flesh, I wouldn't be surprised if we have to live through a season of golf-related exposes. All the more reason for marketers to pull up stakes.

Apparently Tag Heuer didn't get the message. Their homepage today: