"The Temptation Of Tiger Woods"

I've read the Vanity Fair story on Tiger's mistresses and it's safe to say that it doesn't cover much new ground if you've read the tabloid reports and believed them. However, Mark Seal pieces together various elements of the Tiger saga in a way that is quite powerful and ultimately very unflattering to Woods, Earl Woods, IMG, Mark Steinberg, Bryon Bell and the National Enquirer (which is hilariously still denying the Men's Fitness quid pro quo deal).

What's interesting is that most of the information in the article has been available for some time, yet news reports only went with the story after Vanity Fair put it all together. And the thinnest component of the story was what got picked up most: the role of Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley in encouraging Tiger to gamble and fool around.

But the story is only impactful because of Woods' poor choice to lie in his 5-minute interview with Kelly Tilghman about his enablers. Had he just answered somewhat honestly (as I noted recently), the Vanity Fair story would not haunt him or those around him. But since he chose to make the silly claim that he had no enablers, the story has cachet and will greatly impact the credibility of Steinberg in particular. 

What does this have to do with golf?

Steinberg's few comments have been of the "media is getting it wrong" variety and he has denied the few reports he's chosen to acknowledge. When it came to Dr. Galea, he strongly denied that IMG or he made the connection between Woods and Dr. HGH. But at this point, and in large part because of Tiger's untruthful statements to Tilghman, it's hard to believe anything the Woods camp puts out.

Here is a Today Show feature on the story, with an interview of Seal: