"Because of Florida's domestic-violence laws, admitting to the police that Nordegren in any way harmed him would virtually guarantee that the glamorous Elin would be led out of their mansion in handcuffs, even if he protested it."

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Since the first AP alert on Tiger's accident, I've ascribed to the theory that he needs to just say what happened, maybe crack a joke or shed a tear, and move on ala Letterman or Kobe.

However, evidence is mounting that Tiger has been correct in remaining silent, though not for the reason these two more columnists noted today (here and here, thanks reader Tom).

There is mounting evidence that TMZ's assertion of a domestic violence charge is in play. And as Hanna Rosin lays out in a must read piece on Slate, there is very good legal reason for Tiger's silence, yet that may not be enough to make this go away.

Now, women are arrested in about 20 percent of domestic-violence cases. As such scenarios played out across the country, the updated domestic-violence laws accidentally created a new mythical woman: the Female Abuser. Never mind that the sociological research does not really support her existence in any great numbers.

A close legal reading of Woods' statement suggests that he desperately does not want his wife to fall into this category. "He is going out of his way to protect her from any concern that she's committed a crime," says Kimberly Tatum, a professor and domestic-violence expert at the University of West Florida. In Woods' narrative, the car accident, not Nordegren, caused his injuries. She used the golf club to get him out of the car after he'd crashed. "She was the first person to help me," he said. "Any other assertion is absolutely false." (He also then says that "this situation is my fault" and that he won't do it again, although it's unclear what, exactly, he's taking the blame for in this version. It's his fault he crashed his car? His fault he didn't rescue himself?)

Perhaps that statement wasn't such a great idea. And this is a key point that several pundits have made:

The Woods case brings up the uncomfortable problem with the new domestic-violence laws, which is that strict gender equality often confounds common sense. It is impossible to imagine Tiger occupying the same cultural brain space as Rihanna, with Nordegren playing Chris Brown. If Tiger had been chasing down his wife with a golf club and she had shown up with bruises, even if she had cheated with, say, K-fed, we would be a lot less ambivalent and complacent. If Nordegren had then issued a statement calling her husband her courageous savior, we would be outraged and filled with disdain and pity. All of these gender-dependent reactions make some instinctive sense. But legally speaking, they are beside the point. The law no longer makes the distinction.

Another bizarre wrinkle just arrived in the form of the voluntary outing and evidentiary offering by his neighbors' attorney today. He said that his 911 caller-client saw no indication the golfer was beaten or driving under the influence and that Elin did seem "upset about her husband's injuries" and "asked them to call 911."

Odd for the neighbors wanting privacy to be injecting those assertions into the case today, no?

I can't imagine the police are happy they went public with that statement?

And how could these young men know how to determine a golf-club-inflicted injury?