So whether someone thinks Tiger Woods’s conference was good for his image breaks down like this:
Broadcasters: They are preconditioned and afraid of change. They are also beholden to the last dollar on the table. They want TV ratings to be high, and they still need Woods to show up for vanilla comments about nothing after rounds, so they won’t ask any tough questions, and they will fawn all over anything he does, including asking the press to be a token marker and silent partner at pressers.
Magazines: Finally, Dan Jenkins has chimed in with a terrific opinion about why he doesn’t believe we should give Woods a free pass. From the article:
“Hogan, Palmer and Nicklaus never set themselves up to become future statues in Central Park.
They never pretended to be the All-American Daddy-Pop Father of the Year Who Also Wins Golf Tournaments.
They never sold themselves as the greatest Family Values brand ever, and conquered the marketplace with it, shamelessly scooping up hundreds of millions of dollars while saying, “My family will always come first.”
They were never what Tiger allowed himself to become from the start: spoiled, pampered, hidden, guarded, orchestrated and entitled.
I’ll tell you what Hogan, Palmer and Nicklaus were at their peak.
They were every bit as popular as Tiger, they endured similar demands on their time, but they handled it courteously, often with ease and enjoyment.”
Still, about half of the magazine writers gave Woods a passing grade, half didn’t, but the half that did react favorably to the presser are still looking sternly at him to back it up going forward.
The print journalists are slamming him, with a mantra of fool me once = shame on you, fool me twice = shame on me. They are rightfully indignant about Woods – the most demonized man in the world for the last two months – ordering them to show up and shut up at his conference.
Here’s Sally Jenkins’s article. For those of you scoring at home, she is Dan’s daughter. From the article:
“Tiger Woods has always been artificial, but never has he seemed more waxen than in his so-called public apology. Here’s the problem: Woods and his handlers staged a fake news conference to apologize for being fake. To these ears, it was stilted and rehearsed to the point of insincerity….it’s hard to feel sorry for an effigy….His words were often halting, and meant to be moving, but largely blank. They included self-serving howlers about the kids, and Buddhism, and privacy. I’m just so relieved that “the work will go on” for those “millions of children” he has helped. He said all the right things. But he’s always said all the right things, and the words were hollow then, so what reason do I have to believe them now?
It would have been easier to accept Woods’s confessional at face value if he hadn’t followed such an obviously calculated, familiar media crisis strategy: lead off with heartfelt apology, transition to trumpeting charitable work, and then attack the press. What do I want from Woods? Not much really. Just an unscripted, spontaneous exchange that suggests he respects his audience enough to be honest with us. He peddled a false icon and hushed up his transgressions and continues to stage-manage himself to the point of opacity. His so-called public appearance on Friday was a heavily armored, mock affair. The nature of the proceedings — the limiting of admission to a few friends, the refusal to entertain any queries, even from a set of golf writers who have been egregiously kind to him — suggested that Woods is still determined to have things on his own terms. Which calls into question just how much he’s changed, or whether he even thinks he needs to..”
Steve Czaban slammed Woods as well, calling it a second car wreck:
“Tiger said the least he possibly could, in the most chickenshit manner, to a comically staged room full of cronies – the commissioner included….His robotic opus of therapy inspired talking points hit all the scripted notes. Some TV commentators insisted that he wrote the entire thing himself. This was a laughable assertion that was both unknowable and pointless even if true. For a guy with a team of advisers ballsy enough to dictate terms like this for an apology, to think they didn’t at least poke their nose a bit into the script proves that gullibility is a chronic condition….
If I were a golf writer covering the Tour, getting to the Zero Hour facts is precisely where I would start whether Tiger likes it or not. Because hard as it may be for him to understand, more than a few journalists still care about pursuing and reporting the truth, especially when they themselves or others have grossly misrepresented the facts.”
Czaba followed it up with a list of questions that – like it or not – we will be asking Woods and we will be expecting answers…and if we don’t get answers, we will dig until the answers come out, from him or from others, because it is our job to dleiver a truthful story, not be a pitch/PR person for famous people. Those questions include:
Q: You were injured in that car crash. How much of it do you remember, and did you fear for your life or golf career at any point?
Q: What kind of surgery – if any – did this accident require?
Q: Have you added any new people to your management team, or dropped anybody in the wake of this?
Q: Will you become more fan friendly once you return as part of your rehabilitation?
Q: Why didn’t you do more to avoid holding this press conference during a live tournament day? Explain more clearly why your schedule demanded this?
Those are just the tip of the iceberg for Czaban. I’m just as curious about allegations regarding Dr. Galea – the unlicensed Dr. doing modern bibbity-bobbity-boo on his leg and who was caught with Antivegin and HGH. I also think that when he comes back, the golf media can’t just let him get away with not answering questions about his behavior – on and off the golf course – because letting him walk away is the easiest thing to do.
Finally Sal Johnson – who I am trying to teach that it’s “He could HAVE, not he could OF – has this article analyzing the whole presser and giving too much of a free pass. From the piece:
“I want to give Tiger the benefit of the doubt on today’s speech and say this, if he doesn’t change and if we find out, which we will, that Woods was blowing smoke up our rear ends he will be discredited by not only members of the press but golf fans. There is going to be zero toleration of anything Woods does in the future, he is going to have every paparazzi following him around, there will be even more woman that will love to see if they could break him of his vows. Many think of today’s actions as the biggest sham in golf, that Woods was play acting and not sincere. No too ways about it, this time next year we will know what the truth is and I just hope for golf and for Woods and his family that things will be different in the future.”
Oh…and Sal…the caption should read “A somber Tiger Woods”…not a SLUMBER Tiger Woods:)
