While the flame of the Olympic torch (doobie) burns on the waterfront in downtown Vancouver, Tiger decided it was finally time to talk publicly about his philandering. His agent sent out an e-mail to golf writers for three wire services, including my buddy Butch (Mike) here at the Winter Games. He was sitting in the work room here at the media center when the following message hit his inbox:
Doug, Mike and Mark,
We wanted you to be the first to know on the record:
Tiger Woods will be speaking to a small group of friends, colleagues and close associates at 11:00am EST Friday at the TPC Sawgrass Clubhouse in Ponte VedraBeach, FL. Tiger plans to discuss his past and his future and he plans to apologize for his behavior.
While Tiger feels that what happened is fundamentally a matter between he and his wife, he also recognizes that he has hurt and let down a lot of other people who were close to him. He also let down his fans. He wants to begin the process of making amends and that's what he's going to discuss.
Butch's first reaction -- "Wow"
His second reaction (to our man running the show here in Vancouver) -- "Dave, looks like I'm heading to Florida."
(Here's Butch, still shocked from Tiger's announcement...)So while the AP reporter was following the golf tournament in Arizona and his blackberry wasn't receiving messages amid the cacti, Butch breaks the Tiger story from right here in the media center in Vancouver. Tiger's mea culpa will come while the Accenture Match Play Championship is going on in Arizona... Oh, and Accenture dumped Tiger as a sponsor after news of his off-course exploits surfaced. How bout that for timing?
Of course, Butch's jaunt across the continent means that I get stuck watching Johnny Weir and the other men's figure skaters do their thing on the ice instead of going over to the halfpipe at Cypress to watch snowboarders Gretchen Bleiler and Hannah Teter...
Thanks, Tiger.
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