Kostis On Tiger: "It is his prerogative to answer questions any way he wants to."

John Huggan talks to Peter Kostis for the Sunday Scotsman golf column and I'm dividing this in to two posts because both are hot topics that will require their own analysis.

Here, Kostis is talking about his 2010 interview of Tiger following the final round of the Masters.

"Anyway, with Tiger last year I tried to ask open-ended questions that would give him an opportunity to go wherever he wanted with his answers. He chose, in my opinion, incorrectly. It would have been appropriate to say the fans were great, that Augusta National is wonderful and that the Masters is his favourite tournament. Whatever. But that scenario wasn't meant to be. He was just angry because he hadn't won.

"I tried to help by saying that he had made mention of trying to control his emotions and behaviour on the course but, until he holed out for eagle on the seventh hole, I had seen nothing from him emotionally. At that, he bit my head off. His feeling was that he was hitting it so badly he wasn't going to show much emotion. Which is fine. It is his prerogative to answer questions any way he wants to."

That's right. And as in this year's lame interview with Bill Macatee, the questioner gave a man who had expressed in several public apologies/pleas for forgiveness a desire to "change." These interviews provided the opportunity to show his new and improved self and he ably demonstrated both times that in fact he had changed. For the worse.

And as Kostis says, that's Tiger's prerogative. It's just not a recipe to winning back fans or lucrative endorsement deals.