"There is nothing to be gained from building barriers between the athlete and the media."

Ron Sirak, formerly "Ronnie" Sirak to Tiger until this column, points out that Woods has nothing to gain, everything to lose by taking his antipathy toward the golf press to another level.

One of the difficult parts of being an athlete is talking after a bad day at the office, but it has to be done. To be fair, no one has been in the media room since 1996 more than Woods. He has not always been as open as we would like, but he is not alone in that regard. But this is the wrong time for him to take a step back from the media. The media is your enemy only if you make the media your enemy, and that is the danger he faces right now.

We are tying to sort out what happened to that once marvelous game and we can't do that without Tiger's help. And what Tiger has to face is the fact that this is not the year 2000 anymore. He can no longer set the agenda for how he is covered. And unless he participates in the coverage of his game and, to a certain extent, his life, that coverage will be inaccurate, at best, and perhaps even mean spirited.