Tiger News Conference

I know I shared my thoughts on this earlier but here are some additional comments as well as my reaction to his news conference this morning.

Pre-Conference Thoughts

Selfishness: PGA players who say Tiger is selfish for holding his conference during the Accenture Tournament have lost touch. Perhaps each of them would like to give back 3/4 of the money they have earned since Tiger joined the tour because his presence in and promotion of the sport earned that money for them.

The real golf fans, those who followed the sport pre-Tiger, will still be enthusiastically tracking the leader board at Accenture whether they tuned into Tiger's announcement or not. The other fans that came to the tour only to see Tiger (constituting about 75% of the sport's recent base) were never Ernie Els fans to begin with.

As a casual fan, I was not even aware of the Accenture Tournament until I heard the whiners playing the selfish card.

Apologies: To all those who think Tiger owes anyone an apology, let's consider that. Bear in mind, there is a difference between who would "appreciate" an apology and who is "owed" an apology; we are discussing the latter group.

He hurt his wife and kids so they are owed apologies. If he made promises about representing a corporate brand with integrity and moral character then he owes his sponsors an apology. I know they are a vilified group, but I would say that if he lied to his mistresses, he owes them an apology. He also seems to have embarrassed his mother and his wife's family so I would put them on the list. All total, that's about 30 people and a dozen corporations.

I am sure those parents who held him up as a role model to their children would appreciate an apology but they cannot claim that he owes them one.

The public in general has no case for an apology whatsoever. Nor does the PGA tour. Nor do the players on the PGA tour.

Post-Conference Thoughts

I wish he hadn't read his statement but I understand the need to be careful with word choice and to get his message out accurately.

I think the highlight was his admission that he felt he was "above the rules" and entitled to privileges. That's laying your soul pretty bare.

I think he will get blasted by the media for repeating that he won't answer questions about personal details. As I said before, people are curious but don't have the right to know. The press will take his defiant stance as a challenge and it will likely ignite their ongoing furor to bring him down.