Tiger: "There was blood everywhere."
/Tiger Woods showed up an hour early to his scheduled press conference (what a guy!) and appeared in a good mood showing off his new, all-pearly white smile and regaling the assembled videographers (kept at a safe distance) with the tale of his missing tooth.
First, the ledes..
Steve DiMeglio in the USA Today: "Tiger Woods is back. So is his tooth."
Charles Curtis of Advance Media writes: "Tiger Woods says he's telling the tooth, the whole tooth and nothing but ... okay, you get it."
Doug Ferguson's AP story plays it straight, though the AP Tweet went with "The whole tooth and nothing but the tooth" Ferguson reiterates that no one saw the drama as described by Woods.
ESPN.com's Bob Harig slipped the tooth mention into his lede and then lets Tiger tell the story of scrum, blood and pain:
"That didn't feel very good," said Woods, who had traveled unannounced to watch Vonn set a record for victories. "I was looking down, and all the camera guys are below me on their knees or moving all around, trying to get a picture because she's hugging people, saying congratulations to the other racers as they are coming down. Some already finished, some are there already in the changing area.
"Dude with a video camera on his shoulder, right in front of me, kneeling, stood up and turned and caught me square on the mouth. He chipped that one, cracked the other one.
"And so then, you know, I'm trying to keep this thing so the blood is not all over the place, and luckily he hit the one I had the root canal on. That's the one that chipped. But the other one had to be fixed, as well, because it had cracks all through it."
By my count that sounds like two teeth just cracked but intact? That differs from the sympathetic theory from read John, a dentist.
He did clarify the inspiration of the skull mask that absorbed all of the blood and didn't even let a drop seep through, the X-Box game: Ghost Recon.
John Strege notes the moment where a questioner pressed Woods on the believability of his story.
Whether his answer is a satisfactory one apparently is open to debate.
“So many people are not believing your story,” he was asked.
“Dude, you guys, it’s just the way the media is. It is what it is,” he said.
Nathaniel Vinton and Teri Thompson of the New York Daily News filed a more skeptical lede and story, opening with, "Only the Tooth Fairy knows for sure."
But witnesses to the awards ceremony noted that Woods was not present for the ceremony, spending the interlude in a tent near the finish line of the course, secluded from the photographers who had already noted his presence. So far no videographer has stepped forward to shed light on the alleged incident, and photographs of Woods taken at the event don't appear to show any swelling, bleeding or even discomfort on the face of the 39-year-old golfer.
The AP's Armando Trovati had many images of Woods after losing the tooth and no blood stained his Nike jacket. And AP writer Andrew Dampf says he witnessed no incident nor did anyone else in the press corps, including the race organizer charged with escorting Woods.
Golf Channel video of Tiger telling the story and also mentioning the lack of remorse from the videographer, who remains unidentified and on the loose.
**Karen Crouse in the New York Times writes that the focus on Tiger and Robert Allenby is a result of an effort to "fill the vacuum created by PGA Tour fields missing most of the world’s top players, who are on hiatus or participating in events abroad."
Does that mean Tiger is no longer one of the world's top players, under that theory?
Crouse also said suggestions that Tiger's story is a sound one:
The gap in Woods’s mouth drew more coverage than any gap wedge he has hit. Photos of his jack-o-lantern mouth made the rounds online, and conspiracy theorists materialized out of the thin mountain air to question his explanation that he had lost it in a collision with a journalist’s video camera.
**Nathaniel Vinton and Teri Thompson follow up with Nicola Colli, the secretary general of the racing committee who escorted Woods to the awards ceremony where the incident occurred, and he says Tiger's story about the videographer at the awards ceremony is nonsense.
"I was with him from the tent to the snowmobile that carried him away," Colli said. "There was no blood…If Tiger Woods said that, I don't really know what to say."
Colli said the same thing to The Associated Press last week.
"I was among those who escorted him from the tent to the snowmobile and there was no such incident," Colli, told the AP in response to Steinberg's statement. "When he arrived he asked for more security, and we rounded up police to look after both him and Lindsey."
And...
"This for sure did not happen during the awards ceremony," Colli said. "I cannot say if he got injured, for sure not during the ceremony."