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Tiger Woods is not available. He will talk in his own sweet time.
This tactic works fine at golf tournaments and any time he has a product to push. He appears when he is good and ready, and is just blandly helpful enough to give a few snippets of quotes to the waiting world. He’s a green-jacketed master at it.
This is a man who has never had the yips in public. But we are now witnessing his hooking and slicing his image straight into the rough, into the trees, into the drink.
As the great salesman and role model of a very difficult and upscale sport, he is in danger of setting off a recession in the golf industry, unless he puts out a more complete story, soon. Why was he leaving his house in the middle of the night? How and why did he hit a fire hydrant at the end of his driveway?
Just about the entire United States population, even those who do not much care about golf, was discussing Tiger Woods as we got over our turkey this weekend. And no matter what happened in the dark on Friday morning, he did not stop the buzz from spreading.
No mulligans on this one. He has already sullied his controlled image by not having a statement ready within 12 hours of his running over a fire hydrant and hitting a tree after 2 a.m. on Friday.
Just guessing that if I hit a hydrant, the police would be at my door later that day. And if my wife said I was not available, the way Elin Woods did Saturday, the police would be back the next day, more persistently. Woods is not legally bound to give them a statement, but he has endangered his reputation and possibly his value to his sponsors by remaining hidden.
Fire hydrants are public property. Automobile accidents are a public matter. We are witnessing one of the richest and most famous athletes and celebrities in the world stonewalling the authorities in his chosen home of Windermere, Fla. Maybe the authorities are afraid he will move away if they come back with a piece of paper. Bad for real-estate values.
The police are looking rather timid, but Woods is looking worse. He is looking like a man who has something to hide. As we chatted about Woods over the weekend, I advanced the theory that he was probably rushing out to buy baby aspirin because one of his two children was running a fever. He was so worried, he lost control of the car. It could happen.
In the absence of a detailed explanation, however, Woods set up all kinds of speculation.
As the hours went by, Tiger and his flotilla of lawyers, sponsors, agents, managers, publicists, trainers, caddies, gofers and friends did not produce a pediatrician’s note that said Woods had been on an aspirin run. Or he could say he was running out to the all-night convenience store for an iced mochaccino. Or any other logical story. Instead, Woods hunkered down. And his sponsors probably started holding their breath.
On Sunday, the second straight day his door did not open to police investigators, Woods put out a statement on his Web site, tigerwoods.com, saying the incident was his fault. This is what politicians always say when they have no intention of explaining.
“I’m human and I’m not perfect,” Woods said, adding: “This is a private matter and I want to keep it that way.” He also referred to “the many false, unfounded and malicious rumors” about him and his family and said they were irresponsible.
He was referring, undoubtedly, to reports, based mostly on anonymous sources, in tabloids and on gossip Web sites about his private life, which were out there even before Friday’s car wreck. It was hardly worth referring to rumors like that until Woods hit a fire hydrant and a tree, and his wife broke a car window with a golf club. And now he has stonewalled the authorities for a few days.
Tiger Woods, after all, is not some politician who was caught straying off the fairway of life. Politicians merely sell themselves; they don’t sell an entire lucrative sport, the way Woods does.
He can get back some of his lost image by putting out a plausible story. But at this moment, Tiger Woods has lost his touch.
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