Tiger Indefinite Leave Clippings, Vol. 3

Just another quiet weekend in Tigerland with Accenture dropping the golfing great and widespread reports of a child services visit to the Woods home. Most media coverage continued to focus on his Friday statement and the ensuing corporate response, along with (finally) some thoughts about long term ramifications for the PGA Tour.

Doug Ferguson talks to the "bewildered" golf world that's been reading its own press releases too long and is now faced with reality. Though Brad Faxon did offer this prediction along with an interesting insight from a former TV exec:

"I don't think Tiger is going to come back earlier because we need him to come back. He's going to come back when he fixes his problems," Brad Faxon said. "It's a bit of a worry, but like Greg (Norman) said the other night, nobody's bigger than the game. You could put, 'comma, except for Tiger' in a lot of situations. But we will survive this."

Former CBS Sports president Neal Pilson said the networks' loss in revenue will be much less severe than the drop in ratings. He said companies that advertise around golf are attracted by the demographics of the sport's core fans. Most of those fans watch golf whether Woods is involved or not. The casual fans who tune in only when Woods is in contention aren't the viewers these advertisers are targeting. "While you may have a 50 per cent increase in viewership, a lot of that 50 per cent is just bonus," he added.

Cameron Morfit makes a case that this isn't the end of the world for golf. In fact, it may just help.

Even Tiger's embarrassing missteps have helped, in their own sad, bizarre way.

Maybe they've helped most of all.

Separatists will insist the game is still different, better, cleaner, more like life itself, and so on. They will roll out calcified old chestnuts like, "Yes, but golf is the only sport where the players call penalties on themselves." Let's see: Roberto De Vicenzo signed an incorrect card, fans rolled a boulder out of Tiger's line, Ernie Els was gifted a ruling at the U.S. Open — nope, not one of golf's most memorable rulings involved a golfer calling a penalty on himself.

Golf is not different. Tennis players sometimes call their own service faults. And why pretend self-sacrifice is limited to the country club sports? The assist (basketball, soccer, etc.) and the pancake block (football) are made of the same stuff.

For that matter why pretend that anything is limited to golf, or excluded from it? We've got sex, drugs and the Olympics. We've got video games, tell-all memoirs and US Weekly. For better or worse golf is now part of every wonderful, fascinating and cringe-worthy facet of the human experience, and if that seems like a tough pill to swallow, hold your nose and try to remember: It's good for us.

In a front page LA Times story, Robin Abcarian asks: what did golf writers not know and when did they not know Tiger was a busy guy off the course? She talks to Golfweek's Jeff Babineau and AP's Doug Ferguson among others:

Even the access that Ferguson has had to Woods, he said, never amounted to much in the way of news. "I keep reading that the press had to be nice to him or they would lose the interview, which is funny, because what interview? There was nothing to lose there. I have built up a comfort zone with him, but most of it was clubhouse, locker room, meaningless BS stuff."

By arrangement with the PGA Tour, said Ferguson, Woods does not even enter the press room at a tournament unless he is a defending champion or close to the top of the leader board. "And it's nutty," said Ferguson. "The reason a lot of the press goes to tournaments is because Tiger is there." Even when Woods does agree to answer questions, said Ferguson, he generally doesn't offer much more than bland answers.

AP's Rachel Cohen looks at the television negotiation angle of Tiger's downfall:

During the last round of negotiations, NBC focused on securing rights to tournaments that Woods was likely to play, said former MAGNA research chief Steve Sternberg.

But even before a stream of sordid allegations led Woods to step away from the game, the networks had received a harsh reminder that the lofty ratings they receive when he's in contention aren't assured.
"The television business is about guaranteeing ratings to advertisers," said analyst Larry Gerbrandt, a principal of Media Valuation Partners.

The networks sell ads based on a promise of a certain rating. They can't afford to be frequently caught in the position of needing to make up for ratings that fall short, Gerbrandt said. Networks know how high ratings would be if Woods is in contention, but they can't base their rates on the assumption that he will be.

"You can't run a business that way," Gerbrandt said.

The networks must decide how much money they're willing to pay the PGA Tour based on how much money they believe they can make from advertisers.

"The negotiation to some extent is based on a worst-case scenario," Gerbrandt said.

Larry Dorman puts it more bluntly:

Although Woods is not solely responsible for the economic growth of the tour, he is given much of the credit for the quadrupling of prize money since he joined it — from $70 million in 1996 to $278 million in 2009. Most of the larger purses directly result from higher revenue from title sponsors, and the PGA Tour is in the midst of negotiating new deals with the sponsors of a dozen events that will expire by the end of 2010. Therefore, uncertainty about his availability will have a negative impact on the negotiations.

Also in the New York Times, Tim Arango considers Tiger's likely earnings potential down the road.

“Tiger is the best example of a walking, individual corporation,” said Ben Porritt, a public relations executive who advised Alex Rodriguez, the Yankees third baseman, last spring after his onetime steroid use was disclosed.

“Tiger is going to come out of this as somewhat of a bankrupt brand,” said Mr. Porritt. “He will have to restructure and go forward.” But, he said, “It’s going to be an ugly few months.”

Several companies that measure consumer reaction believe the ugliness has already started. Zeta Interactive, a digital ad agency that monitors message boards, blogs and social media posts, said that positive sentiment toward Mr. Woods had already plummeted. Before the accident, buzz about the golfer was 91 percent positive; by Friday, that figure had sunk to 43 percent.

The turnabout “is the quickest fall from positive to negative we’ve ever seen,” said Al DiGuido, chief executive at Zeta Interactive.

The great Marvin Collins reports that punters expect Tiger back soon.

Bookmakers William Hill, meanwhile, fully expect Woods to take part in the first major of the year, in early April, offering 4/6 he starts and 11/10 he does not. Indeed Hills do not think that his personal troubles will be transferred to his game, offering 5/2 that he wins his comeback tournament and 33/1 that he wins all four Majors in 2010.

Tiger is 1/6 to play in the Ryder Cup against Monty's European team and 7/1 to be the USA's top point scorer. "We expect Tiger back soon and the odds suggest that he is a certainty to play in the Ryder Cup as a solid performance could repair some of the damage for American golf fans" said Hill's spokesman Rupert Adams.

"However, we do not expect his absence to effect turnover as Tiger actually puts off many of our smaller stake golf punters and despite his absence we saw record turnover during the 2008 Open."

Jason Sobel and Bob Harig speculate on Tiger's return and how he'll be received. Harig:

We are unlikely to see a personality makeover, but perhaps a few changes are in order. And it won't be easy, because it's simply not Tiger to smile and wave to the crowd or engage well-wishers.

But he can hang to sign a few more autographs, look a few young fans in the eye, try a little harder. I am not suggesting we view him as a sympathetic figure these days, but it is hard to imagine the embarrassment he is enduring right now. And whether it is deserved is not the point here. He'll have a lot to overcome when he returns, and it's not just a rusty golf game.

It was Radar that first reported a Children Services visit to the Woods home on Friday to check on the kids, confirming once again that everyone on the planet but a state attorney in central Florida thinks something potentially criminal took place Thanksgiving night. 

Playgirl has passed on purported Tiger self portraits, deciding they'd be best left to the National Gallery. Love the back-patting quote from their rep Daniel Nardicio:

"This is a prime example of the direction Playgirl does not want to take," Nardicio said. "I prefer subjects who are willing."

Spurned lover Jamie Jungers keeps sharing embarrassing revelations, this time telling News of the World about Tiger's frugal ways (shock!) and an encounter the night Earl passed.

The Telegraph's Nick Allen has tracked down Tiger's first girlfriend living in God's Country and quite happy it all didn't work out.

And today's final word is from the Wall Street Journal's John Paul Newport:

Mr. Woods had established a foundation with a noble but non-controversial cause (helping under-advantaged children learn to bootstrap themselves to success). His approval and recognition ratings were consistently among the highest, if not the highest, in the world. And, above all, he was living a scandal-free life.

And so, without my quite realizing it, this vision of a future President Woods colored how I thought about him. I projected. I half-convinced myself, I guess, than in that private universe that Mr. Woods so adamantly roped off for himself, he and his wife sat around on their yacht, named Privacy, reading biographies of Abraham Lincoln.

Apparently not. But at least I wasn't the only fool to be fooled. If Mr. Woods wants us back, he has a lot of work to do.