Two weeks that shattered the legend of Tiger Woods
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His popularity ratings were plunging. Crisis management experts around the country crowded in front of news cameras urging him to stop hiding behind Web site statements and come clean to the public — and quick.
Still, there was no sight of Woods. The statements stopped, and he remained in seclusion.
His alleged lovers weren't so shy. Suddenly women began appearing seemingly everywhere on Web sites and magazines to claim they had affairs with Woods. Two became four, four began eight, and by some counts 10 or 12 or more.
Worse yet, they didn't mind sharing intimate details about the alleged encounters. Soon, anyone with a computer or iPhone was privy to what they claimed to know about Woods and what he liked to do behind closed doors.
Woods spent almost all his life keeping score on the golf course. Now people were keeping score on him.
Nothing, it seemed, could satisfy the insatiable appetite of the celebrity media to find out more about Woods, and their reports had no trouble finding an audience. Traffic to the biggest sites jumped 50 percent or more, and major portals weren't shy about further blurring the line between gossip and real news by blogging along details without necessarily checking out the source.
With good reason. Yahoo Inc. CEO Carol Bartz told an investor conference that the Woods story was "better than Michael Jackson dying" for bringing people to her site and helping the company sell enough extra advertising to boost profits.
The mayor of Las Vegas thought the same thing. With many of Woods' alleged lovers having links to the city and with Woods well known in Vegas casinos and nightclubs, Oscar Goodman said it would provide a boost to the local economy even if people no longer believed that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
Still, Woods remained in seclusion.
A police report released Monday in support of a Florida trooper who suspected Woods was driving under the influence merely upped the ante. The trooper had wanted Woods' blood test results, after a witness who wasn't identified in the report said Woods had been drinking alcohol earlier and had been prescribed two drugs, the sleep aid Ambien and the painkiller Vicodin.
The next day his mother-in-law was rushed to the hospital after collapsing in the bathroom. A frantic call from a woman who was either Elin or her twin sister was quickly released, complete with the sound of a child crying in the background.
None of it was funny, but that didn't stop the jokes. Every nighttime television host had his own, and what the professionals missed was filled in by amateur comedians.
An animation from Taiwan showing a very Asian-looking Woods crashing his car was an Internet hit, and a country-western song about him was released. Someone posted another Barry White-like song on YouTube, using the voice mail Woods allegedly left Grubbs with a backing chorus, and at Hollywood Park a horse named driveliketiger finished third in a race.
Though most of his fellow players expressed support for Woods and were careful about what they said, the player who introduced Woods to his wife wasn't as forgiving. Elin Nordegren worked as a nanny for Swedish golfer Jesper Parnevik when she and Woods first met, and Parnevik thought they would be a good match.
"I told her this is the guy that I think is everything you want. He's true. He's honest. He has great values. He has everything you would want in a guy," Parnevik said in an ESPN interview. "And, uhh, I was wrong."
Even his own management company piled on.
Barry Frank, IMG's executive vice president for media sports programming, was on a panel about college sports media, where all the panelists were asked what sports business story they would be following closely in the next year.
"How many girls Tiger was with," Frank said.
