Tiger's Indefinite Leave Clippings, Vol. 9

I made another cameo with the SI/golf.com roundtable and the Woods saga was kicked around. Here's a fun exchange about future media coverage:

Dick Friedman, senior editor, Sports Illustrated: Yes, this changes everything. Maybe not among the longtime golf media, but suddenly the nongolf media will be out in force, as it is in other sports.

Herre: I think it will, to a degree. I see the media being a little more aggressive, a little less chummy. Also, I think the Woods scandal has been an eye-opener for the gossip sites. I can report here that TMZsports.com will be launched late next month.

Morfit: It won't change a thing about the coverage. What are we going to do now, ask him to go over birdies, bogeys and the musical tastes of Babe No. 4 vs. Babe No. 7? It will change everything about his brand and how well he monetizes it.

Tom English writes about Tim Finchem's answer to press questions about Tiger and Dr. Anthony Galea.

In his reaction to the Galea story, Finchem needed to strike the right balance between fairness to Woods and concern about the threat of doping in his sport. It's not something he did at all well. Instead of acknowledging the cautionary words of proven experts in this field, he went for the brush and the carpet option.

Nobody should assume anything in this case. All they should do is investigate. That's what Finchem should be doing. Keeping an eye on things, talking to WADA, finding out about blood-spinning and what the FBI think they know about all of this, if anything. Dismissing it, pretty much out of hand as Finchem did, is not doing golf any good. It leaves the outsider wondering why Woods is such a protected species and why others, like John Daly, are not.

Nathaniel Vinton of the New York Daily News talked to noted Balco chemist Patrick Arnold about Galea's possible use of Actovegin and shares his experience with the drug:

Arnold drew the substance into a needle and injected it into his knees. He repeated that process a few times over a period of several months.

"It seemed to help a little," Arnold recalls. "It is in my opinion not valuable as a performance enhancer, however some cyclists supposedly would take it intravenously hoping to help their endurance."

Arnold, who designed BALCO's blockbuster designer steroid THG - also known as "the Clear" - spent a good deal of time around bodybuilders, and trained with weights himself. He had heard that Actovegin could help heal his chronic tendonitis. He aimed the self-injections underneath the tendon sheath surrounding his patellar tendon.

"I actually never knew people were using it as a performance-enhancing drug until relatively recently," Arnold says. "I only played around with it because I thought it might help my tendonitis."

Ian Austen of the New York Times explores the benefits of HGH and most doctors think it's overrated.

But physicians and medical researchers who have studied people with medical conditions that lead to growth hormone overproduction said that available evidence suggested that athletes who cheat by using costly H.G.H. may simply wind up being cheated themselves.

“Ultimately I’d have to say that its main effect is that it makes your wallet a little less heavy,” said Dr. Alan D. Rogol, a professor emeritus of endocrinology at the University of Virginia. Rogol also reviews requests to the United States Anti-Doping Agency from athletes seeking permission to use banned hormones for therapeutic treatments.

Suspicions that athletes may be using growth hormone first surfaced in the 1980s. But at the time, the only source of the hormone was cadavers.

If Tiger needs a character witness (or maybe a good dentist?), Michael Bamberger reports that Larry Holmes is available to take the stand.

In the past week, Woods's training techniques have come under question as never before, in part because a Canadian physician who has treated Woods, Dr. Tony Galea, is now facing drug charges. Holmes is dismissive of the connection.

"Those steroids and stuff," Holmes said, "they can kill you. Tiger's too smart to do something like that."

Golf In America author George Kirsch weighs in on whether this is a story worthy of attention from golf historians.

Woods’s biographers and modern day muckrakers who write books about the dark side of professional golf will certainly recount all of the juicy details of this sorry episode, but should I do so in a future revised paperback edition of my book? Since I can devote only a few pages to Woods in a 250 page survey of the sport’s history from the 1880s to the present, is his current ordeal important enough to warrant inclusion? A generation from now, will sports historians view the Woods affair as a major event, minor incident, or mere footnote? Or might they omit it altogether?

Today, in the midst of the daily barrage of news about possible drug violations by Woods and perhaps a monumental divorce settlement, it seems like a “no-brainer”—how could I or any golf historian ignore the Woods saga? But if one takes the longer view, it is possible that in due time Woods may return to competition as a chastened and repentant fallen hero who has redeemed himself, at least in the eyes of the majority of the public. In that case, why should he be singled out for special attention and condemnation, when some of his playboy predecessors (and even a few revered golfing superstars) also committed adultery? (Sorry, I am not going to name them here.) On the other hand, Woods’s self-imposed exile could last a long time, and perhaps result in a dramatic decline in his skills and a freefall in his rank among the world’s golfers. If that scenario unfolds all sports historians would naturally relate the whole story, because of the negative impact of his misbehavior on his golfing career.

Nearly identical reports in the Daily Mirror and News Of The World (how about that segue) each suggest that Elin Woods plans to move ahead with a divorce and custody of the children after Tiger apparently has decided that rehab is not necessary and he can work things out on his own. The News of the World story has him staying with a friend in...Maryland.

The Telegraph says Tiger reports that mom is "angry and disappointed" in Tiger. Really going out on a limb with that one aren't they? 

And finally, The Divotones become the first group to record a song especially for Tiger.