When you come to think of it that is the secret of most of the great holes all over the world. They all have some kind of a twist. C.B. MACDONALD
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."
The surprisingly chipper talk of Tiger coming back unblemished meant this exchange from the SI Confidential went unnoticed:
Anonymous Pro: The thing that we thought would drive the Tour was the World Golf Championships. If anything, those events are killing the other tournaments. Why? The WGC tournaments draw top players away from regular Tour events, which we need now more than ever.
Bamberger: The Tour basically oversold Tiger, and in the end it's an uphill slog when he doesn't appear. The Tour's long tradition is about local events and local charities. They tried to join the big leagues and were somewhat successful but found that golf is still a niche sport, although it can break out from time to time. The WGC events haven't connected with anyone and at the same time have ruined the real heart of the Tour, stops like L.A. or Hartford or Colonial that are now unfairly perceived as second-rate.
Anonymous Pro: Tiger and Phil wanted the season to end sooner. They weren't playing after mid-August, sometimes not even in the season-ending Tour Championship. Now that the FedEx Cup concludes the season in September, they're taking advantage of the downtime they asked for by playing overseas for big appearance fees. Didn't Finchem know that was going to happen? I'm not blaming Tiger or Phil. I'd play in a dress for $3 million. It is the Tour's fault for allowing it, and it really rubs me the wrong way. This is the biggest bogey Finchem has ever made.
Short term I think it's terribly wrong to call the WGC concept a bogey. But in the post-Tiger accident and Great Recession economy, long term the events appear to bring as many complications as solutions.
I'm guessing that hard questions internally about the value of WGC events will be forbidden as long as Finchem is commissioner. But the combination of increased animosity outside of the U.S. toward the America-centric concept and the inability of stops like San Diego to draw sponsor interest, could mean 2010 will lead to a closer examination of the World Golf Championship concept. Long overdue.
In an NY Times Business story, Brian Stelter explores TMZ's business model and upcoming expansion into sports.
This year, TMZ continued to provide fodder for news media ethics classes (and police investigations) by, for instance, publishing a photo of the singer Rihanna after an assault and reprinting details of the actress Brittany Murphy’s autopsy report.
Sometimes the objections to TMZ’s tactics come from within Time Warner. In an interview on Golf.com, James P. Herre, the managing editor of the Sports Illustrated Golf Group, called TMZ’s sourcing on recent pieces about Mr. Woods “beyond flimsy.”
But Mr. Levin defended the reporting, saying TMZ “has the same rigid standards as any operation in America.” Its track record of accuracy may speak for itself. He recalled that the initial claims surrounding Mr. Woods’s car accident on Nov. 27 “made no sense.”
“We immediately jumped on that and said we have to dig deeper,” he said.
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?
More good stuff, especially about 7 minutes in when Paul Goydos starts talking about how "architects have gotten lazy" and how it takes imagination to design short holes that test all kinds of players.
It appears the long rumored Apple tablet may be announced in late January and based on the alliance of major magazine publishers along with Apple's push to sign up television networks, this will be a content driven device (as will the many other tablets under development).
A recent Sports Illustrated demo suggests great potential for magazine reading on a tablet. And for golf, just imagine a magazine instruction spread including embedded video.
I'm curious how many of you see this as the way you may read books, magazines or even blogs in the future (connectivity questions abound, but we have to assume there will be built in wireless)?
So while I understand we have no idea how much connectivity will cost or even what the devices will run,I'd love to know how many of you have been tracking the tablet rumors and are you intrigued by them as a way to read your stuff in the future.
First, how much might you be willing to pay for such a device?
And probably most important to some of the media folks reading this post, what are you willing to pay for a magazine subscription and what's an enticing price for individual issues?
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
