Tiger's Indefinite Leave Clippings, 34th Birthday Edition

With Furman Bisher's stamp of approval, publications galore (and heavily trafficked blogs) have picked up the "real story" email details, with some now quoting Bisher directly! (Give credit to the Daily Mail for taking down their version that originally said "Bisher writes" every other sentence.)

Deadspin's A.J. Daulerio details how many times he's received the email and notes the added details in later editions. (My favorite is the stuff about Mark O'Meara playing poker with Tiger Thanksgiving night, even though he moved out of Isleworth a while ago and lives in Houston.)

Leslie Gornstein of E! analyzes the validity of the email and even manages to get a quote from agent Mark Steinberg about the contents:

"This is just another patently false rumor being circulated," Steinberg tells E!

Note to Steiney: just a few details from your end would put a stop to a lot of the speculation and absurd stufff. For example, you could explain that you weren't in Orlando the night of the incident, so that would make it kind of hard for you to have hopped in the car and headed to the hospital. Just a thought!

Gornstein also notes this regarding the Bay Hill aspect of the chain mail:

The email says: Woods is now staying in golf legend Arnold Palmer's upscale golf community, Bay Hill, in Orlando. Apparently, Woods' sports agency implored Palmer to coach him through this tough time; Palmer is seen as possibly the only person who can get through to Tiger.

The truth: That's news to staffers at Bay Hill Country Club, who tell E! they are unaware of Woods visiting since the incident.

Stephanie Wei tracks the source and puts out an APB on the culprit.

I'm just disappointed the version I posted hasn't been picked up by Bisher yet.

Just four years removed from the "Tiger at 30" orgy of columns, features and other assorted essays, Randell Mell is the only golf writer daring enough to tackle Tiger's 34th birthday needs.

But if you were going to get him a gift, what would you get him?

A compass? To find his way back?

A chauffeur? To avoid driving into fire hydrants at night?

Ear plugs? To shut out the jeers that may be coming?

Forgiveness? If you haven’t granted it, will you?

Words of encouragement? And if so, what would they be?

A prayer? If you believe, what would you pray?

Speaking of his birthday, X17 says he's spending it at Wickenberg, Arizona clinic for PR purposes.

"He has been there for a few days since his handlers forced him to enter the program. They feel that if he blames his cheating on addiction, the public will forgive him."

Jose Lambiet talks to several folks in Palm Beach and Tiger definitely is not there living the good life with Rachel Uchitel. (Thanks reader Steven T.)

It seems several people are taking issue with the UC Davis study that has now been picked up all over the place. Holes are punched here, here, here, here and here.

Steve Elling praises Golf Digest for benching Tiger's column:

We'll probably never know who made the editorial call and why, but the game's most popular publication, Golf Digest, has benched playing editor Tiger Woods indefinitely in the aftermath of his trysts with various women in various towns at various times in various positions (hey, that's about as nice as I can phrase it). After enduring ridicule for having Woods on the cover this month with a photo-shopped picture of President Obama -- the cover was in production weeks before the Woods scandal broke -- the monthly magazine elected to give the world No. 1 some time off to plot his personal and professional course. Besides, the next cover story was probably something like, "Tiger Woods: Escaping the Ultimate Bad Lie." Just wondering aloud: How many of these firms that have, somewhat controversially, stood by Woods have signed binding contracts they cannot escape from?

And finally, Bob Harig talks to several players about Tiger's play golf over the last decade.

As for anyone else putting together this kind of 10-year stretch?

"You never say never," Cink said. "When Jack was doing it, we all said, 'Nobody will ever do this again.' I think it probably will happen again, just because of the way that history does repeat itself.

"But at this point, it's hard to imagine. It's hard to imagine someone getting a lot better. Except if Tiger was an extremely straight driver of the ball. The next guy to come along to be the greatest ever will have to be a really accurate driver. That's the only thing someone could do better, and even then it's not guaranteed."

Tiger's Indefinite Leave Clippings, Post Christmas Edition

Though the story itself didn't tell us much, the New York Daily News piece focusing on Tiger-trainer Keith Kleven shifted some focus from talk of affairs and back to the question of how Woods gained 25 pounds of muscle.

Teri Thompson, Michael O'Keeffe, Nathaniel Vinton and Christian Red tried to track down Keith Kleven for comment and were unable, but they suggest that Kleven is distancing himself from Woods and they talk to skeptical trainers about Tiger's transformation.

But over the last three weeks, Kleven has chosen not to respond to interview requests from the Daily News, or, according to his business manager, from any media. Kleven, like many of Woods' corporate sponsors, has apparently joined the stampede of those taking refuge from Woods' fall from grace in the wake of his post-Thanksgiving car crash.

Thanks to reader Tuco for Norm Clarke's Las Vegas Review Journal "Confidential" column suggests the Daily News isn't the only publication probing for more information into Tiger's physical transformation.

Vegas Confidential was contacted by several major media outlets in recent days, each citing my Sept. 8, 2006, interview with Kleven, who said Woods had gained 25 pounds of muscle. At the time of the interview, Woods had won five tournaments in a row.

The Woods-Kleven connection goes back to the early 1990s, just before Woods committed to attending Stanford.

"He came to UNLV to look at the school and to talk to me. I was caddying and working for (golfer) Mark O'Meara," said Kleven, whose institute is at 3820 S. Jones Blvd.

Kleven told me that Woods had become an animal in the gym during the conditioning program. "I send new things to him all the time," Kleven said.

John Paul Newport offers this food for thought into Tiger's eventual attempts to restore his career.

I have interviewed Mr. Woods one-on-one, in person, four times. All but one were short, routine encounters, but in 2002, two days after he won the Masters, I spent nearly an hour with him in Las Vegas and part of that interview felt like a real conversation. He talked about the struggle he was having finding balance in his life, not just in balancing the demands on his time, but more in the sense of finding harmony—in his words, "a sense of who you are."

His life these days is pretty clearly out of balance, and I have zero idea whether Mr. Woods has the inner resources required to regain it, either on the course in the form of his intimidating mojo, or in his personal life. He might. It's not as if whatever drove him to have so many sexual affairs instantly invalidates his physical talent, his capacity for work, his desire to achieve.

The other sharpest memory I have of my time with him in Las Vegas suggests a place from which he could start: the range. After our conversation, I watched him hit balls for a while. It was not a practice session per se, but a 10-minute respite between a photo shoot, a television interview and some pre-arranged interaction with two clients. In those 10 minutes only, curving balls right and left at a distant boulder despite a howling crosswind, he seemed to be himself, having fun, stripped of myth.

One among the many rumors in circulation about Mr. Woods these days is that he has found a way to hit golf balls at night, to clear his head, away from prying eyes, somewhere in Orlando. I hope that's true. For him, that's getting back to basics.

The next few pieces have taken on a post-mortem analysis even though as far as I know, Tiger is with the living. (Where? Who knows).

Several readers emailed Mike Wise's Washington Post column.

Three stories piquing prurient interest the past year involved a born-again former Pro Bowl quarterback, a college basketball coach who wore his Catholicism on his lapel, and Tiger, the heir apparent to Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan in the sports world, an icon marketed to be the most wholesome of them all. When all three fell from pedestals -- and one of them paid the ultimate price for it -- that's not a dangerous trend of infidelity; that's disease.

When married billionaires bring breakfast waitresses to the family home in the middle of the day after they've already hooked up in a parking lot, that's not sex; that's real affliction.

When the world's most recognizable athlete uses his Blackberry to text a relative kid in Las Vegas about how much he misses her -- and she's but one of a dozen -- that's not sex; that's sickness.

Doug Glanville compares Tiger's situation to that of baseball players faced with daily temptations.

In an athlete’s environment, money can be its own pollutant; you can become desensitized to the significance of what it can buy. Typically, if a person spends hundreds of dollars on arrangements to pass time with someone, that someone would be important in his life. But when you have extensive financial resources, it’s easy to send similar signals to people who are meaningful only for a moment. Even worse, you might only concern yourself with what it means to you. As the money flows in, so do the toys — cars, clothes, bling — and once in the stratosphere, a la Tiger, it is amazing how easy it is, if you are not careful and grounded, to start seeing women as another accessory in your life.

Karen Crouse considers the role Earl played in Tiger's life.

Woods’s parenting role model was his father, Earl, who was committed to rearing him after having two sons and a daughter in a failed first marriage. Earl, a retired Army officer, attributed the divorce to military obligations that took him away from the family. Asked how he would manage to be there for his children when golf takes him away from home so much, Woods told me, “It’s going to be a lot more difficult, there’s no doubt.”

Maybe it is impossible. Perhaps Woods was destined to be like his father, only not in the way he had hoped. Over lunch on the veranda at the Masters one year, Earl Woods said, “I’ve told Tiger that marriage is unnecessary in a mobile society like ours.”

The way Woods talked about his children, I was sure he was going to prove his father wrong.

This Herald-Story notes that after four weeks of mostly negative comments, the discussion forum on TigerWoods.com has been taken down.

Weeks after Tiger Woods admitted to the world he had been unfaithful in his marriage, the forums section of the golfer's official website has finally been shut down.

Administrators of the website had continued to allow angry fans to express their disgust at the golf superstar's fall from grace, with many of the posts highly abusive.

“You are such a piece of garbage ... good job wrecking your family, butthead,” said one of hundreds of postings. 

Another said: “You are a laughing stock - just another arrogant athlete who thought he could get away with anything ... your image was nothing but a fraud.”

The story also noted this:

The scandal has proved to be fodder for Facebook users with groups and fan pages attracting large numbers.

Among the most popular has almost 400,000 fans, while another "I did not sleep with Tiger Woods" has 40,000 fans.

Less popular are the groups "Free Tiger Woods" with 1000 fans and "Get off Tiger Woods already!" with 400 followers.

Andrew Adam Newman notes that Tiger's "How I Play Golf" will be an audio book this spring but the lightly anticipated paperback release of the remainder shelf staple has been tabled because the hardcover "still sells well," according to the editor at publishing imprint, gulp, Hachette.

In the audio book, Mr. Woods shares the “psychological practices he uses daily to keep his game in top shape and help him transcend all the ups and downs of golf,” according to a description in Hachette Audio’s spring-summer 2010 catalog, which was mailed recently to bookstores and journalists.

“The catalog went to bed months before the scandal unfolded,” Anthony Goff, publisher and director of Hachette Audio and Digital Media, wrote in an e-mail message. “We had no idea he’d be all over the news for anything other than his golf game.”

And finally, in the how far we've sunk as a society/how far Tiger has sunk as a brand category, they've woven a Tiger joke into the torturous Aladdin show at Disneyland. People pay to see this?



"Get out now, sponsors. The golf brand has been wrecked."

Not to sound like Tim Finchem...but there are so many more elements to golf tournament sponsorship than just Tiger Woods. The LA Times' Dan Neil--an incredible auto reviewer and Pulitzer winner--reinforces the that lack of sponsorship understanding in a point-misser piece suggesting Tiger's phony image means all of pro golf is a charade unworthy of corporate support.

Without Woods, the game trails off and rolls back into the weeds of cultural irrelevance, long weekend tourneys among more or less evenly matched men in more or less equally ugly clothes slapping balls around while the real players get loaded in corporate hospitality tents. There is no heroism in golf without Tiger -- at least the Tiger we thought we knew -- no drama, and scant male pulchritude besides. Unless your business is actual golf balls or clubs (Titleist or Ping or whatever), I'd say your marketing dollars could be best spent elsewhere.

And, of course, as a practical matter, there will be far fewer eyeballs watching golf on TV. Various estimates have the viewing audience sans Tiger dropping by 50%. Who knows if they'll ever come back.

The illusion that professional golf was somehow a sport with a higher calling, a game of honor and ethics played by fundamentally decent men, has been shattered. This isn't about counting strokes you took while nobody's watching. Tiger's trollop-taking is precisely the sort of thing we've come to expect from pro basketball and football players -- and, shamefully, our indifference implies consent. For the most dominant golfer of all time to be so caddish seems to be a signal that lesser golfers transgress in lesser degrees. In any event, the safe harbor of golf's presumed decency has been drained. Meanwhile, now that the tabloid press has had a taste for golfer flesh, I wouldn't be surprised if we have to live through a season of golf-related exposes. All the more reason for marketers to pull up stakes.

Apparently Tag Heuer didn't get the message. Their homepage today:

Tiger's Indefinite Leave Clippings, Vol. 8

I can just feel the news cycle turning. First Tiger wins athlete of the decade, and now my peers voted him player of the year. Add having to accept that award in front of 300 members of the media on Wednesday of Masters week to the list of reasons he might think twice about returning to golf at Augusta.

In less cheery news, the NY Times's Michael Schmidt and Juliet Macur followed up today with sources suggesting the FBI is in fact focusing on Dr. Anthony Galea giving professional athletes performance-enhancing (and illegal) drugs.

The complaint said that Catalano told authorities that she planned to meet with Galea after crossing into the United States. The complaint made no reference to whether Catalano told authorities that Galea had provided performance-enhancing drugs to professional athletes. But several people who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that she did.

Those who spoke about the matter said they did not want to be identified because they were discussing an active investigation.

Dan Herbeck in the Buffalo News (thanks reader Cardinal) has a source inside the investigation that says Tiger's name has not come up in anyway:

“I know of nothing that has come up in this investigation that would indicate Tiger Woods was using [performanceenhancing drugs], and I know of nothing that would put him into any trouble with law enforcement,” said one source close to the probe.

While Woods faces damaging fallout from recent revelations that he cheated on his wife with an assortment of mistresses, no evidence from the Galea investigation indicates that he cheated in his bodybuilding regime with steroids or human growth hormone drugs, four sources close to the investigation told The News.

And in an odd twist Galea's lawyer offered a non-denial denial related to Tiger and his former client:

“Any suggestion of any linkage to Tiger Woods is nonexistent,” Galea’s lawyer, Brian H. Greenspan, said outside a Toronto courtroom Friday. “I’m saying categorically it does not relate to anything that’s alleged before this court.”

I'm not sure anyone suggested Tiger was linked to the charges before the Canadian court, did they? Why offer that up?

Anyway, here are the details on the charges brought before the court Friday.

A few days ago, Rick Telander found Tiger guilty of using performance enhancing drugs:

The PGA, you know, never tested until a year ago for performance-enhancing drugs. And the tour's testing now is basically a joke. Old-schoolers have always dismissed the ludicrous notion that steroids or the like could help elite golfers, anyway. They used to say the same thing about major-league pitchers. Hi, Roger Clemens.

Woods has already displayed the quality of his ethical decision-making. And as a spiritual guide, his late dad, Earl Woods, now looks more like a Mike Agassi clone than a developmental saint.
Tiger Woods is your AP Athlete of the Decade, folks.

If he did use performance-enhancing drugs, wouldn't that be perfect?

Ken Belson on Tag Heuer limiting its Tiger Woods "exposure."

“The partnership with Tiger Woods will continue,” Jean-Christophe Babin, TAG Heuer’s chief executive officer, said in a statement. “But we will downscale the use of his image in certain markets for a period of time, depending on his decision about returning to professional golf.”

Babin did not define what “downscale” meant. Advertisements featuring Woods have been prominent in luxury magazines, as well as billboards and other outdoor advertising. Babin said the company would still support the charitable Tiger Woods Foundation.

The WSJ suggests Tiger is making at least $2 million a year from Tag Heuer:

In 2002, Mr. Woods stopped promoting Rolex's Tudor, a watch he had pitched for about five years, after securing a deal with Tag Heuer, which paid him an estimated $2 million annually for a three-year pact, according to people close to the company. The pact was then renewed; it isn't clear what the new terms were.

Brian Viner interviews Peter Alliss and he certainly isn't holding back:

"No, it's very sad. Of course, people say his advisers must have known what was going on, and should have put a stop to it, but he's the goose that lays the golden eggs. If you'd worked for one of the old press barons, would you have gone up to Beaverbrook and told him to stop misbehaving? This is no different.

"We're supposed to feel sorry for his family. But I don't know his family. She [Elin] might be a cow to live with, I don't know. What I do know is that the jokes will go on for 20 years. 'In the hole, Tiger' has a whole new connotation now, and will he be able to put up with that? If he can, if he does go on to win another five majors to move ahead of Nicklaus, I think everything he's done in the last 12 years will pale into insignificance. It will be a huge achievement. Of course, you can gain forgiveness in America even from those who would like to whip you with thorn bushes or whatever. You can go on Oprah. You can own up to things, like Jimmy Swaggart, the evangelist. But that won't stop the jibes. And Tiger's a proud man. He'll hate the jibes. But he's got to re-enter society sometime."

Walter Pacheco of the Orlando Sentinel notes this change in the Arnold Palmer Invitational's website banner:

The New Yorker's John Cassidy notes this about Tiger's continued disappearance from visibility of any kind.

From the first day, when he refused to come out and say anything about his car wreck, Tiger has made a series of terrible moves, culminating in his decision to take an “indefinite” leave from professional golf. By pulling a Howard Hughes and disappearing from view, Tiger has left the field open for others, few of who have his best interests at heart, to shape the narrative in ways beneficial to them. What started out as a serious problem for Tiger has evolved into a career-threatening crisis. Unless he reverses course and tries to seize control of the story, his days as the world’s premier athlete-celebrity may be over.

And he notes that as a former senior editor at the New York Post...

where I helped to direct the coverage of the O.J. trial and other juicy yarns. Even back then, before the growth of the Internet, tabloid stories of a certain magnitude were capable of taking on a life of their own. Today, with TMZ.com, OMG!, People.com, Gawker, and who-knows how many other Web sites offering real-time coverage, the self-perpetuating nature of stories involving mega-celebrities is even more evident.

Rumors continue to circulate about Tiger's whereabouts, with the Palm Beach Post reporting on Privacy's location as of Thursday night.

And finally, Chelsea Handler lands the first interview with Tiger...