- SPORTSbyBROOKS comments on the Orlando Sentinel report that some of the first responders to Tiger’s Thanksgiving Day accident were actually part of his security team in their off hours.
According to FOX Sports.com, new details have emerged surrounding Tiger Woods’ car accident, including how he had taken Ambein right before he attempted to flee from his pissed off wife.
Among the details: The half-hour conversation with Uchitel satisfied Elin’s curiosity until details from the National Enquirer story began to leak on the Internet. She again confronted her golfer husband on Thanksgiving night, who argued with her and then took an Ambien to go to sleep. That’s when Elin looked through his phone and began texting his alleged mistress, posing as her husband, according to Daily Beast sources.
“I miss you,” she texted. “When are we seeing each other again?”
Uchitel’s response made it sound like she had talked to Tiger earlier in the night, and Elin called Uchitel to confront her, confirming her suspicions that her husband was cheating.
That’s when Elin went to confront Tiger, screaming and hitting him during their argument. He locked himself in the bathroom where he sent a text to Uchitel, warning her that his wife knew about their relationship.
When he came out, Elin grabbed his phone and found the text. She picked up a golf club while her husband ran to his car, shoeless and still in a haze due to the Ambien he had taken, according to the report.
He crashed his car into a tree and fire hydrant in his neighbor’s yard. One source said Tiger’s story to the cops about his windows being smashed in by Elin to free him was a lie to protect his wife.
I’m sorry, but there’s just something ironically funny about a man being beaten with his own golf club for cheating on his wife.
Nordegren was recently photographed without her wedding ring.
“It would not appear that Elin Nordegren is going to be standing by her man,” Kate Coyne, senior editor at People Magazine, told “Good Morning America.”
Coyne also claimed Nordegren is “shopping around” for a divorce attorney.
But ABCNews.com’s source said Nordegren is not “rushing to divorce.”
“She’s going to take her sweet time. She wants all the dirty laundry to be out on the table before she signs anything.”
When reached for comment, Tiger had this to say in response:
“I’m going golfing!”
Okay, so he didn’t really say that.
Good for Elin. He publicly humiliated her and has been cheating on her with God knows how many women. She should take him to the cleaners and call it a day; she should have no trouble finding someone else.
Knight, Nike’s co-founder, spoke out about the Tiger Woods situation in a recent interview.
“I think he’s been really great…When his career is over, you’ll look back on these indiscretions as a minor blip, but the media is making a big deal out of it right now.”
– Phil Knight, co-founder of Nike
It’s going to be interesting to see how history judges Tiger for his infidelity. Some are saying that it’s the biggest story of the decade, and it’s hard to disagree. Will Tiger be defined by this like Mike Vick is defined by dogfighting? No, I don’t think so. Tiger is too good at what he does to be defined by this. Once he starts dominating the tour again, this will fade somewhat into the background. But Knight is probably being pretty optimistic when he says it will be a “minor blip” in his career.
What happens if Tiger struggles when he returns to golf? He has to get back to being the #1 golfer in the world or this story will follow him around forever.
I am deeply aware of the disappointment and hurt that my infidelity has caused to so many people, most of all my wife and children. I want to say again to everyone that I am profoundly sorry and that I ask forgiveness. It may not be possible to repair the damage I’ve done, but I want to do my best to try.
I would like to ask everyone, including my fans, the good people at my foundation, business partners, the PGA Tour, and my fellow competitors, for their understanding. What’s most important now is that my family has the time, privacy, and safe haven we will need for personal healing.
After much soul searching, I have decided to take an indefinite break from professional golf. I need to focus my attention on being a better husband, father, and person.
Again, I ask for privacy for my family and I am especially grateful for all those who have offered compassion and concern during this difficult period.
There’s a good chance that more things will be revealed about Tiger’s, uh, escapades. So taking a break from golf is probably a wise decision and it’s a good time given that there’s nothing going on in the sport right now.
In Bill Simmons’ latest column, he argues that Tiger’s indiscretions and subsequent accident is the biggest story of the last ten years. Here’s why:
I’m calling it the “Tiger Zoo” instead of “TigerGate,” only because we have to break the habit of slapping “gate” after everything. But the Tiger Zoo nailed every gotta-have-it component for a big-time story with legs. First, it involved one of the most famous living athletes. Second, it started definitively with a specific incident — and not just any incident, but something that made us say, “Wait, this seems fishy, I wonder what really happened here …” and quickly became more complex than we imagined. Third, it built steam over the next week, crossed into the mainstream and dominated conversations, e-mails and tweets. Fourth, it transformed our collective perception of a famous person and made us re-evaluate every opinion we had about him. Fifth, it grew so enormous so quickly that everyone with a forum (radio show, column, blog, whatever) felt obligated to come up with an angle on it.
Sixth, it doesn’t show any signs of slowing down; if anything, it’s gaining steam like a hurricane plowing toward Florida. Seventh, it involves three of the gotta-have-it basics in any gigantic story: sex, (possible) violence, and a (possible) cover-up. Eighth, there’s an unanswerable question looming over everything: Even if Tiger did cheat on his wife, should it matter to anyone other than them? (My answer: It shouldn’t. But that’s the rub of being a public figure. If you don’t want to be a public figure, don’t do commercials, don’t cover yourself in Nike logos and don’t sell a video game with your name on it.) And ninth, it’s a conspiracy-friendly saga that lends itself to all kinds of inventive angles, an absolute must for any story to maintain dominance.
That last point cemented the Tiger Zoo as an iconic story. Maybe Michael Vick’s fall from grace was mildly incredible on paper, but there were no real layers to it. The facts came out, Vick’s reputation was tarnished, he paid a price, and that was that. People across America weren’t having arguments at cocktail parties about Vick, nor were they spending dinners breaking down facts and spouting opinions like Mel Kiper and Todd McShay debating the NFL draft.
He goes on to theorize how the night of the accident played out. Bill is full of theories.
SNL is taking a bit of heat this week for its sketch of Tiger Woods (impersonated by Kenan Thompson) and his wife Elin (played by host Blake Lively) at a press conference in which he keeps getting beat up (presumably) by his wife.
Here’s the skit:
The problem that some are having with the skit is that the underlying theme is about domestic violence and the musical guest that night was Rihanna, who has been a victim of domestic violence herself.
And apparently, some didn’t even find the skit funny in general. From Popwatch.com:
It wasn’t just unfunny, though: It was also incredibly tone-deaf. Intimate partner violence isn’t a ripe source of material in the first place, but with Rihanna as the musical star the sketch seemed even more poorly thought out. The whole joke was that Tiger Woods was lying about his wife assaulting him, with every imaginable cliché and crummy lie we’ve seen in a hundred Lifetime movies about domestic violence. It was lazy.
Could there have been a funny bit here? Definitely. But this hypothetical funny take would need to present an actual point of view, a unique thought, or some sharp commentary. This bit suffered from both an ill-conceived problem (Tiger Woods covering up his wife assaulting him) and a total lack of transformation or change. It was a padded stand-up bit, not a fully realized sketch, which makes it really hard to forgive the poor taste of the subject matter.
Not to sound insensitive, but I laughed several times throughout the skit. That doesn’t mean I think domestic violence is funny, because I don’t. But Woods’ incident and Rihanna’s situation are two different things and while the timing was bad, there are some comedic elements to Tiger’s ordeal, which SNL portrayed.
Is it a double standard? Yeah. But I don’t think SNL went over the line, which some are suggesting.
…one athlete who has banged a countless number of beautiful women continues to have a spotless reputation. This man is DEREK JETER. Do you know why? Because he’s NOT MARRIED.
Any professional athlete, especially an athlete the caliber of a Tiger Woods, should NOT get married—at least not until much later in life. Derek Jeter has slept with Ms. Universe, Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Mariah Carey and who knows how many other hot chicks. Only NOW, as he enters the back-end of his career is he finally starting to settle down.
This is a good point that is often overlooked. Society pushes people to get married in their early 20s, and as our childhoods continue to drag out longer and longer, most twentysomethings aren’t mature enough to be in a relationship for the long haul. This goes triple for the professional athlete that is rich and famous and will have women throwing themselves at him as long as he’s playing.
Chris Rock said it best — a man is only as faithful as his options. And Tiger has a lot of options.
He is 33 years-old and should just now be thinking about settling down. Who knows if he’ll ever be capable of being faithful, but he would have had a better shot had he sowed his proverbial oats through his 20s and 30s and got it out of his system.
Never shy with his thoughts and opinions, FOX Sports’ columnist Jason Whitlock recently took aim at sports writers Charlie Pierce and Rick Reilly for the way they’ve covered the Tiger Woods scandal.
Pierce’s latest offering is an I-told-you-so column. He rages that Tiger’s puritan image is phony and points out that he wrote in great detail in 1997 that Woods was a scandalous, tail-chasing hound.
I don’t know how many rich, famous and good-looking 21-year-old athletes/men Charlie Pierce has interviewed. The ones I’ve met have all been scandalous, tail-chasing hounds. No different from the frat boys I met in college or the corner boys hustling on the block.
Pierce should’ve opened his column by admitting he dislikes Woods and his opinion is skewed by that bias. We’re journalists. We’re supposed to be transparent. Two weeks ago on Deadspin, Pierce trashed Bill Simmons and his New York Times-bestselling book. In that hit piece, Pierce failed to mention that he tried to befriend and mentor Simmons at the beginning of the decade and that in 2002 Simmons told Pierce to go (expletive) himself. That little nugget of information would’ve been very enlightening when reading Pierce’s Deadspin take.
I’m sharing this because it’s important for the public to know that the media act dishonestly all the time. We’re far more phony than Tiger Woods ever could be.
- The SUN-TIMES is reporting that Tiger Woods and his wife have entered intense marriage counseling and that Elin is being paid a “hefty seven figure amount” as an incentive to stay. The report also states that the couple’s pre-nup is being totally rewritten. Oh, what a tangled web we weave…
- MIDWEST SPORTS FANS has audio of a voicemail message that Tiger left for one of his alleged mistresses.
- FOUL BALLS has excerpts from an interview with Ron Artest where he admits to drinking Hennessy at halftime when he played for the Bulls.
- THE 700 LEVEL asks the question, who’s really calling the shots for the Sixers?
- SHUTDOWN CORNER points out that Bill Belichick left the door open for the possible return of Charlie Weis.
