Tiger Accident Clippings, Vol. 6

The reaction to Tiger's statement became the primary focus of Wednesday's coverage despite a the emergence of a voicemail message and an embarrassing US Weekly story hitting newstands (with AP reporting the voicemail and other details).

Unfortunately for Tiger, Thursday figures to be another day the story drags on as Radaronline reports that Rachel Uchitel's attorney Gloria Allred has scheduled a press conference for Thursday and they believe she's going to reverse her story, admitting to an affair with Tiger and other salacious details about the crash night. The questions asked and answered at that news conference will be of particular interest because Radar also is reporting that Tiger's "organization" paid for her trip to Australia.

Also picking up steam on newscasts, talk radio, blogs and elsewhere are, for what they are worth, Bill Zwecker claiming in the Chicago Sun-Times who says he has Woods camp sources and reports various details about two-a-day marriage counseling sessions and pre-nup renegotiations.

As for the statement, for me the most powerful response to Tiger's statement was penned by Yahoo's Dan Wetzel.

Tiger took every bit of the money his image delivered. And with great rewards come great responsibility. That’s the deal. You can’t have one without the other. You can’t have your image beamed relentlessly into everyone’s living room and then expect people not to be intrigued with your life.

You can’t release glowing pictures of your family and think the public isn’t going to seek information when it comes crumbling down.

It’s fine that he’s not perfect. It’s just that he had IMG sell him as such.

Tiger should’ve stopped after the contrite first paragraph. He should’ve hunkered down and tried to salvage what he can of his marriage. Maybe he still will.

The rest speaks to an athlete detached from reality, myopic in his view of the world which has surrounded him by yes men willing to do anything to keep Tiger the Brand believable.

Christine Brennan in the USA Today is just as blunt, suggesting Tiger came off sounding like "a man who is more sorry about being caught than he is about cheating on his wife," and denouncing IMG for turning into "stumbling, bumbling amateurs when trying to stare down the scary tabloids."

We've learned, for instance, that the image that Tiger has so carefully presented to us on his website, that of the ultimate family man with those beautiful photos of his wife and two children, is a charade. We know this because he has now admitted that he has cheated on his wife and those young children.

We also know that Tiger is furious that the world now knows what he had hoped to keep secret. We can tell that from the carefully-crafted statement he put on his website Wednesday morning.

Then, however, Tiger spends the next two paragraphs basically attacking everyone and anyone who he somehow thinks is responsible for his do-it-yourself fall from grace — everyone except the one truly guilty party, which would be Tiger himself. He lambasts the tabloids and news media for having the audacity to invade his privacy, as if to say, "How dare you do this to me."

When you've been exhibited on national TV at the age of 2 and told by your beloved father that you're going to be the next Gandhi or Mandela, as the late Earl Woods said of his son, this is the way you think. If you're on top of your game, that can work wonders, creating an air of invincibility that can lead to 14 major golf titles before you turn 34.

Steve Elling is decimated by Woods' admission:

With evidence of serial philandering mounting at a seemingly hourly pace over the past week, Woods on Wednesday fell on his sword, pardon the pun.

Another false idol has thus been toppled. Angry at being duped, people in the streets picked up rocks and began stoning him immediately.

Elling also writes about the First Church of Tiger Woods disbanding. Yes, TigerWoodsIsGod.com will be on the web address market soon.

Gary Van Sickle names all of the things Tiger has done wrong and it amounts to a major change in the aura that made him so deadly on the course.

Nothing has stuck to Tiger before. This one, this digital inquisition, will. It has turned into a public-relations nightmare. All Woods can do is lie low, duck and cover. The worst part for Woods isn't the public humiliation, although that's pretty bad; it's the damage to his relationship with his family. There are two children involved and, by all accounts, Woods is a doting father. It remains to be seen how they will pull through this.

Jay Busbee offers advice on rekindling the Tiger mystique:

There are several steps he needs to take, immediately. First off, he needs to quit blaming the media. I'm not saying this as a member of the media, I'm saying this because blaming someone else for his own failures of character isn't going to win him any lasting sympathy.  The whole "I did wrong but it's also your fault for publicizing it" approach he took in his apology is cheap and a way to skirt the real issue. (Plus, there's an old saying by Mark Twain that you don't pick a fight with someone who buys his ink by the barrel -- or, in 21st-century terms, who counts his site visits in the millions.)

Jeff Rude at Golfweek also wasn't taken by Tiger's statement.

1) Unfortunately, he spent much more space pleading for and preaching about privacy than he did apologizing. Playing defense with offense is nothing new. I agree that everyone should give the man his space; his marriage is a private matter. That said, he has no one to blame but himself – not the news media, not other parties.

Michael Bamberger ponders what life will be like when Tiger returns.

Sportswriters will be freed up, at least for a while. For years now, if you asked Woods about steroids or politics or his home life, he gave you close to nothing. Guys basically gave up. Or I did anyway. Now that he's no longer untouchable, it's a new day. Who knows? It's not likely, but maybe Tiger will talk more about himself now. A safer bet is that others will now be more willing to engage in Tiger talk.

Not one sponsor will drop Tiger. This whole thing will have absolutely no effect on his golf game. He's not as good now as he was in 2000, but nobody is ready to stand up to him week in and week out. Phil will have his weeks, but Tiger's a marathoner and over time — the next five or eight years — he will wear you out. He'll get to 19 and fade away.

Jeff Neuman attacks the various questions, posing as a sports therapy hotline operator consoling a fan. This was a nice reminder of how things have changed:

You're pretty flip about adultery.

Or maybe realistic. Athletes screw around. They're young, fit, competitive, and spend a lot of time on the road. It's nothing new; look to the pantheon of all-time greats in any sport and you'll find a surplus of testosterone and a dearth of selectivity. Golf is absolutely not exempt from this.

Sports stars are targets, and have to recognize in the TMZ Age that their reputations are only as good as the cell phones around them. We don't have grainy video of Babe Ruth and three flappers having a grand time in a room above a tavern, but not because he wasn't up there. Also, the press wouldn't report such things back then. Today? Fuggedaboudit.

Nancy Armour reports that sponsors are sticking by Tiger--for now, while the New York Times' Larry Dorman and Stuart Elliott note that future negotiations will be a lot more interesting.

A Gillette spokesman, Michael Norton, added on Wednesday, “At this time, we are not making any changes to our existing marketing programs.”

Although the tone of that remark was neutral to positive, saying “at this time” kept Gillette’s options open. Large corporations play hardball, and as Phil de Picciotto, president of Athletes & Personalities at the marketing firm Octagon, sees it, recent events have made hardball much more of a possibility in future negotiations with Woods.

“Companies may use this opportunity as an excuse to try to renegotiate compensation, given their outside budget pressures due to the economy,” de Picciotto said. “Or they may take the tack that, ‘We stood by Tiger, we had to suspend some advertising, and therefore there’s some diminished value and we’d like a reduction in price or an extension.’

Out at Sherwood, Jim McCabe reports Tiger friend Steve Stricker's remarks Wednesday:

“I’m not going to kid you,” Stricker said. “It was a shock to see (how this has unfolded). First of all, the accident and then all the developments after that.”

Of course, Stricker was referring to Woods’ statement in which he apologized for his “transgressions,” in light of the stories being published about allegations of his infidelity. While he conceded it was a personal matter, Stricker seemed to understand that Woods’ celebrity will keep it in the forefront of the news.

Mark Lamport-Stokes lets Tiger know that Zach Johnson is there for him.

"My belief system is it's a time for forgiveness," added American Johnson, a devout Christian. "It's time for putting things aside and trying to become better people.

"I try to put myself in that situation and say: 'You know what, he's a friend of mine, I forgive him and I hope they get through it.' If I can be of any support, I'm here."

Bob Harig talks to fans at Sherwood about their views of Tiger and his handling of the accident. Harig also steps back and wonders if some of the early publicity would not have been as bad had IMG proactively issued a statement instead of letting news agencies lean on a detail-light FHP report to dictate the first news that went out on the wires:

On Friday, when news first broke that Woods had been in a car accident, initial reports indicated he was in a hospital in serious condition.

Truth was, Tiger was already home before the news broke. For a couple of hours, followers were under the mistaken impression that Woods was hospitalized with serious injuries.

It took a long time for word to come that Woods was fine, and it took even longer for Tiger to respond with a statement in which he rebutted speculation that a domestic dispute was part of the accident.

Much of the media circus outside the Isleworth gates could have been avoided had more information been forthcoming.

Rex Hoggard counters that it's not so simple in a piece pondering where Tiger goes from here.

Some have criticized Camp Tiger since “Black Friday,” saying they didn’t move quick enough to gain the public relations higher ground. Those people don’t know Woods, who has won 14 major championships and 71 Tour titles doing things his way.

Rick Reilly with lengthy comments about Tiger in an ESPN appearance:



And finally, Rocco Mediate is fired up in his defense of Tiger and his disdain for the media coverage: