Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Tiger to talk -- on his terms, of course

Tiger Woods will finally talk Friday.

It's been a long time coming -- too long -- but Woods is going to try and get in front of the sordid story that has dominated the golf world for months. His problems with his wife and the reports of countless affairs for the best golfer on the planet have made Woods the butt of jokes.

The way Woods is doing this is curious, though. Here's the statement from Woods' website about what he's doing.

Tiger Woods will be speaking to a small group of friends, colleagues and close associates at 11:00 a.m. EST on Friday at the TPC Sawgrass Clubhouse in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. Tiger plans to discuss his past and his future, and he plans to apologize for his behavior.

While Tiger feels that what happened is fundamentally a matter between him and his wife, he also recognizes that he has hurt and let down a lot of other people who were close to him. He also let down his fans. He wants to begin the process of making amends, and that's what he's going to discuss.

His remarks will be open to a press pool for live coverage. It is NOT a news conference.


Here's the Associated Press preview of Woods' talk.

And this comes directly from the AP's story, referring to Woods' statement coming on Friday rather than, say, Monday, when no big tournament was being played in Arizona: The timing is peculiar. It will be held during the third round of the Accenture Match Play Championship in Arizona, sure to steal attention away from the first big event of the year. Accenture was the first sponsor to drop Woods when he became embroiled in the sex scandal.

"He's got to come out at some point," Rory McIlroy said. "I suppose he might want to get something back against the sponsor that dropped him. No, I don't know. It just went on for so long. I'm sick of hearing about it. And I'm just looking forward to when he's getting back on the golf course."


I'm looking forward to Woods getting back on the golf course, too, as are many others. Selfishly, I hope he'll play in Charlotte again in 2010. But I hope, first and foremost, he's got his life straightened out.

Because although he can control who he talks to Friday, it was Tiger's lack of control that has put him in this place to begin with.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Isn't it funny that he got caught after the 19th hole?

Anonymous said...

I still don't understand why so many people want to hear every intimate detail of every sordid escapade in Tiger's life. If all the allegations are true, he was going to get caught eventually. If he hadn't had a car accident Thanksgiving week, something else would have brought it to light.

And all this talk about how he deserves to lose sponsorships and such because he's a hypocrite, I'm not buying that either. Tiger Woods never said he was a perfect angel, never said everyone should be like him (as Michael Jordan did). All he did was shoot commercials that said, "I like this product and recommend it to you." It's the hysterical, class-envious public that put him up on a pedestal, declared him perfect, and then got all outraged when it became obvious he was cheating on his wife.

So do you really think that Tiger's severely messed up personal life should affect advertising? If you found out a co-worker was cheating on his wife, and then he told you he had bought a new Buick SUV and he just loved it, and said you should check it out next time you go to buy a new car, would you really decide, "I'm not going to buy a Buick, because a guy I know that loves Buicks cheats on his wife." If you really think like that, I'll pray for your healing.