"Tiger Woods treats his audience like his bimbos."

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Sally Jenkins with another hard-hitting Tiger column, this time picking apart the veracity of some of Tiger's recent statements.

The golf industry seems more than willing to collude in this hasty public rehab, whether it's real or not, given that TV ratings without him can fall by as much 55 percent, and sales revenues are off by 11.6 percent. There's an industry behind Woods struggling and writhing to survive -- and willing to do anything to preserve the empire. Woods gave brief five-minute TV interviews to ESPN and the Golf Channel on March 21, apparently in a deliberate attempt to ease back into the public eye. "There's a natural progression of things he's got to do before he tees off," as Jim Furyk put it. It's not good for business if fans decide Woods's "legendary focus" is just compulsion, his "competitive fire" is just epic selfishness, and his "quest for history" is just insatiability.

But the fact is, despite the rush toward the redemption of Woods, there remains a gap between his lip service and his actual honesty. It's a handicapping issue. When it comes to telling the truth in his public statements, the guy is shooting 80.

"Woods is not invited to stay on the course grounds overnight during the tournament, as he apparently had requested"

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Filip Bondy of the New York Daily News buried this lede in a column today, perhaps because it was coming from one source. Though it wouldn't surprise me since it would cut down on what figures to be an excessive security tab next week:

Woods is not invited to stay on the course grounds overnight during the tournament, as he apparently had requested, according to a source.

Only amateurs and members - Woods is an honorary member, which only gets him into the champions' locker room - are allowed to stay overnight on the course. The amateurs lodge in a 30x40 foot Crow's Nest above the clubhouse, which sleeps up to five.

The cabin arrangement would have been extremely convenient for Woods, who surely wishes to avoid the hassles of commuting and media exposure.

"The Temptation Of Tiger Woods"

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I've read the Vanity Fair story on Tiger's mistresses and it's safe to say that it doesn't cover much new ground if you've read the tabloid reports and believed them. However, Mark Seal pieces together various elements of the Tiger saga in a way that is quite powerful and ultimately very unflattering to Woods, Earl Woods, IMG, Mark Steinberg, Bryon Bell and the National Enquirer (which is hilariously still denying the Men's Fitness quid pro quo deal).

What's interesting is that most of the information in the article has been available for some time, yet news reports only went with the story after Vanity Fair put it all together. And the thinnest component of the story was what got picked up most: the role of Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley in encouraging Tiger to gamble and fool around.

But the story is only impactful because of Woods' poor choice to lie in his 5-minute interview with Kelly Tilghman about his enablers. Had he just answered somewhat honestly (as I noted recently), the Vanity Fair story would not haunt him or those around him. But since he chose to make the silly claim that he had no enablers, the story has cachet and will greatly impact the credibility of Steinberg in particular. 

What does this have to do with golf?

Steinberg's few comments have been of the "media is getting it wrong" variety and he has denied the few reports he's chosen to acknowledge. When it came to Dr. Galea, he strongly denied that IMG or he made the connection between Woods and Dr. HGH. But at this point, and in large part because of Tiger's untruthful statements to Tilghman, it's hard to believe anything the Woods camp puts out.

Here is a Today Show feature on the story, with an interview of Seal:

 

"After the 48 hours the video cannot be rebroadcast at all without the written permission of Augusta National."

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I intentionally chose not to link the New York Daily News story from a couple of days ago on Martha Burk because she asserted that Tiger and Augusta National were colluding as part of some chavinist cabal. But after reading Alex Miceli's item on the club establishing restrictions on the use of video from Monday's Woods conference,  Burk's comments unfortunately will carry a whiff of credibility with some if the club actually enforces this restriction. Furthermore, I can even see a new era of ANGC media scrutiny more hostile than the 2003 Hootie-Martha showdown.
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Third Master Question: How Is Tiger Going To Play?

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We're about to be hit with a bunch of Masters preview stories and a boatload of Tiger talk. So as the bookies make him the favorite, it'd be nice to think ahead a bit and make some completely useless predictions about Tiger's play based on little fact or inside knowledge about his game. (That said, I find it astonishing he's been installed as the favorite when he hasn't teed it up since November and by most honest accounts is said to be understandably rusty.)

The bookies are also offering some bizarre bets.

“We’ve got a whole host (of markets), the funnies around to the serious,” Ladbrokes spokesman Nick Weinberg said. “Obviously, (we’ve) priced him up to win the major, to miss the cut, to have a fight with a fan on the first tee, to kiss an anonymous blonde – which doesn’t include (John) Daly, we point out.”

Despite any off-the-course problems, both Adams and Weinberg said that bettors will stand behind Woods with their money.

“He could have 10 years off the sport and there’d be punters backing him,” Weinberg said. “Even a 50 percent-75 percent Tiger Woods should have more than enough to see off the field.”

But I'm curious how you all would wager (if you were to succumb to a life of sin). Personally, I'd have to think about a bet where he's missing the cut, though Tiger knows the course so well he could probably get around there in 144 with one arm tied behind his back.

Your predictions please.

"The silliest question anyone can ask is, 'How has this changed you, Tiger?'"

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John Feinstein says Tiger doesn't need to answer any more questions about Nov. 27th, the answers can be seen in his post-accident behavior.

Look, we all have a pretty good idea what happened Thanksgiving night: His wife confronted him in some way about his serial extra-marital escapades, and he fled the house in a T-shirt, shorts and bare feet clearly in no condition to drive a car. Do we really need to know more than that? No.

The silliest question anyone can ask is, "How has this changed you, Tiger?"

I'll answer that one: Not at all.

He's still an absolute control freak as demonstrated by his first two public appearances since the infamous accident. The Feb. 19 Tiger-and-pony show would have been fall-down funny if it hadn't been so excruciating. It looked like a "Saturday Night Live" skit, Tiger pausing dramatically to check his script and then saying, "I am so sorry," while those in the invited audience -- including his poor mother -- looked as if jumping off a building would be a welcome relief from sitting in that room.