Taking questions from the media for the first time since he crashed his SUV outside his Florida home last November, Tiger Woods admitted to ESPN’s Tom Rinaldi that he was “living a lie.”
From ESPN.com:
“I was living a life of a lie, I really was. And I was doing a lot of things … that hurt a lot of people. And stripping away denial and rationalization you start coming to the truth of who you really are and that can be very ugly. But then again, when you face it and you start conquering it and you start living up to it, the strength that I feel now … I’ve never felt that type of strength.”
“I hurt a lot of people, not just my wife,” he told Rinaldi on Sunday. “My friends, my colleagues, the public, kids who looked up to me. There were a lot of people that thought I was a different person and my actions were not according to that. That’s why I had to apologize. I was so sorry for what I had done.”
“I’m sure if more people would have known in my inner circle, they would have stopped it or tried to put a stop to it. But I kept it all to myself,” he said.
“I’m a little nervous about that to be honest with you,” Woods told ESPN’s Tom Rinaldi, who asked him what he expects when he returns to golf on April 8 following an auto accident which led to an indefinite leave from professional golf and an admission of multiple affairs. “It would be nice to hear a couple claps here and there.”
Tiger is a scumbag for cheating on his wife with multiple women and he’s paying for it through public embarrassment. But here’s the thing, outside of hoping he learns some humility throughout this situation, there’s nothing else more that he needs to do. He’s apologized publicly to his wife and his family, he’s gone through treatment and he’s spoken with the media. He doesn’t owe any explanation to anybody outside of those close to him. So in my eyes, he’s already gone above and beyond. (I don’t want to throw a parade for him – I just don’t think he needs to do anything else but move on.)
I don’t know Tiger personally – I just know what I see and hear on TV. He could be down to earth guy or he could be a pompous ass – I have no clue. But the guy has made a mistake and he’s paying for it. And quite frankly, when you strip everything away, his personal life has very little to do with his golf game. So if he gets booed at the Masters next week, then I think people need a reality check.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions about him, but in the end he owes us nothing.
Photo from fOTOGLIF
