Tiger's Indefinite Leave Clippings, Vol. 4

I thought the Tiger story had "bottomed out" as some were hoping when Dennis Rodman and Donald Trump appeared on Larry King Live to defend, uh, their man. But the combination of a children's services visit to the Woods home and a New York Times front page story detailing an FBI investigation into Tiger's doctor has me not so sure we've seen the bottom yet.

More on the doctor in a forthcoming post, first a roundup of coverage, starting with USA Today conducting a Tiger Gallup poll and finding a record drop off in popularity. Michael McCarthy writes:

Woods admitted to "infidelity" Friday. His "favorable" rating dropped to 33% in the latest poll conducted this week vs. 85% from his last poll in June 2005. His "unfavorable" rating, meanwhile, surged to 57% from only 8% four years ago.

Woods posted the highest popularity rating in poll history — 88% — when Gallup first measured him in 2000. The 52-point swing is the largest drop between consecutive measurements since Gallup began tracking it in 1992, says Jeffrey Jones, managing editor of the Gallup Poll. The 55-point falloff from his high to low point matches that of President George W. Bush from 2001-2008.

Gerald Posner has stepped up his reporting since his stunning revelation that caddies often take 10% of player winnings, this time focusing on how Team Tiger has worked behind the scenes, particuarly as the National Enquirer stepped in and agent Mark Steinberg handed matters off to Tiger's legal team:

Within a day of calling Uchitel, The Daily Beast has learned, the Enquirer called Steinberg, who directed them immediately to Lavely. “It’s his way of creating distance between himself and the story,” says a person familiar with the calls between the Enquirer, Steinberg, and Lavely. “It gives Steinberg the ability to say he didn’t know about it later.”

The Enquirer considered Lavely to be Tiger’s “damage-control attorneys” and weren’t surprised Steinberg dropped out and directed them there. Jay Lavely informed the tabloid that he’d get in touch with Woods. A day later, Lavely told Barry Levine that the story was not true, and that Tiger had possibly met Uchitel only one time at a nightclub. It echoed what she had told the paper only a couple of days earlier, leading executives at the Enquirer to believe she had tipped Woods about the tabloid’s interest.

Posner also implicates Bryon Bell, head of Tiger's design firm and one of three board members of ETW. Posner writes:

The other key person in Tiger’s secret life, multiple sources explain, was his childhood and occasional caddie Bell. Tiger was supposed to be Bell’s best man at the latter’s wedding this past weekend, but he was a no-show. Bell’s official roles have been with the Tiger Woods Foundation and later as president of Tiger Woods Design, which earned Woods a reported $25 million to $45 million when Dubai outbid China to land the first Tiger Woods-designed golf course and a luxury housing community dubbed “The Tiger Woods Dubai.” Bell also incorporated ETW Corp. in 1996, created to receive and distribute Tiger’s then-growing income (the initials stand for Earl and Tiger Woods). Among ETW’s current officers are Bell, Tiger, and Tiger’s mother. Attempts to reach Bell this weekend were unsuccessful.

In another post, Posner writes about the infighting over how to handle these matters. Note that IMG is never mentioned by name as being part of the process, even though they employ Steinberg who has reportedly been working "furiously" to get some of Tiger's sponsors to issue public statements demonstrating faith in Tiger. And there was this:

Additionally, The Daily Beast has learned from an executive familiar with Gillette’s relationship with Woods that Procter & Gamble, Gillette’s parent company, doesn’t think Tiger is worth the estimated $20 million Gillette agreed to when it signed the deal in 2007. It is considering sending a formal notice to Steinberg that it wants to reduce its payout schedule starting in 2010.

And Australian AP report says it asked CBS's Ian Baker Finch about the Woods situation:

"Mate, if I say one word about Tiger I will get fired," Baker-Finch told AAP before playing in Australia's richest one-day pro-am at Wynnum Golf Club on Monday.

Neal Gabler in a Newsweek cover story featuring Tiger's image contemplates the thirst for celebrity scandal.

Yet it is not only that celebrity has triumphed over more traditional forms; it has, like cultural kudzu, subordinated the media generally. Since celebrity is a narrative in the medium of life, it requires magazines, newspapers, television shows, and perhaps most especially the Internet to promote it—a service these media happily perform and from which they get great residual benefits. As a result, the media are filled with celebrity narratives, constantly hawking them so that celebrity is to America today what the movies and television were to earlier generations, only more so. It is almost as if celebrity hangs ever-present in the ether where no previous entertainment has ever existed. We practically breathe it.

And so today we are gripped by Tiger Woods's story, and when his disappears, as it eventually will, another narrative will arrive and then another and then another, ad infinitum. That is how celebrity works—as a kind of endless daisy chain that amuses us, unifies us, and even occasionally educates us.

A former People Magazine editor and now SI/golf.com contributor Dick Friedman also ponders what this story has meant for media coverage and celebrity.

I have never seen a story cut across demographic lines the way this one has. Men, women, young, old, golfers, non-golfers. Everyone's talking about it. Everybody's e-mailing me about it. In restaurants, trains, in lines waiting for coffee, you hear Tiger talk. Obviously, it's right in the wheelhouse of late-night talk-show hosts. But did I expect to turn on MSNBC's "Hardball," a political show, and find Chris Mathews and his guests hashing out Elin's options?

There are many reasons that everything is all Tiger, all the time. One is that this story has so many of the elements that make for sensationalism: the world's most famous athlete, sex, secrets, wealth, youth, plus the beautiful and mysterious wife — topped off by amazingly specific and titillating detail. But the biggest reason is technology: the Internet.

Golfweek's Martin Kaufman notes this about Tiger's relationship with the media:

Remember how Woods went ballistic at the 2006 Ryder Cup when The Dubliner published photos of a topless model purported, falsely, to be Elin Woods? The same publication also belittled the wives of David Toms, Jim Furyk and Chad Campbell, but no one gave them any mind. We were too busy defending the honor of Elin and Tiger. Fair enough. It was a sophomoric satire that had gone terribly wrong, and The Dubliner had to acknowledge as much and pay the Woodses $183,250.

Aside from The Dubliner’s poor taste, I suspect what really bothered Tiger was that he wasn’t used to being challenged by the media. That wasn’t part of his bargain with the press: I play great golf, and you cretins in the media tent stick to covering the birdies and bogeys. That was the deal.

Mike Walker reports on Hugh Hefner clarifying his views on Tiger, because I know you were all dying to know.

Hefner took issue with reports that said he approved of the married Woods's alleged liaisons with women around the country. Hefner said he meant that he wasn't surprised by the allegations; he didn't mean it was OK for Woods to lie to his wife.

"But I don't approve of it. I just was not surprised by it," Hefner said. "The reason that I wasn't surprised is that he’s traveling the world. He's a handsome, young guy and beautiful ladies are throwing themselves at him. You never know the circumstances of a personal relationship or a marriage and how well it worked and I think that the immorality of infidelity is the lie. It isn't really the sex. It's the cheating."

Radar says Tiger has now matched his major total as a 14th woman emerges and hires Gloria Allred.

That list includes one woman who really wants her privacy, so she appeared on the Today Show and told several embarrassing stories.

TMZ among others featured this photo of Elin looking like a happy woman and minus a wedding ring. And pumping her own gas.

Regarding the child services visit and possible investigation into a domestic violence case, Radar interprets the police code:

The document - police dispatch notes - details that the investigation centers on possible domestic violence between Tiger and his wife taking place in front of their young children. Using police code, it also spells out that a unknown weapon may have been involved. A source close to the situation told RadarOnline.com that the weapon is a golf club.

The Orlando Sentinel reports that the call to investigate was prompted by a call to the Florida Abuse Hotline.

On a lighter note, it's great to see former National columnist Norman Chad back to his old self in the Washington Post: "It's every man's nightmare: Pulling out of your own driveway, you hit a fire hydrant and 37 mistresses drop out of the sky."

He goes on to layout a day in the life of Tiger, post accident. Starting with: 6:10 a.m.: Wakes up, gets dressed and goes home.

Another song has appeared, this time eliminating any chance the PGA Tour will ever use the Eye of the Tiger spot again (well, I think it was probably in the vaults already after the last two weeks):

In reenactment video news, we have two new items. The first involves news of Elin's home purchase in Sweden and recreation of Tiger spending the night with his mistress when Earl passed away.