Chapter 73

Isleworth Golf AT&T follows shortly thereafter, wishing Tiger well but publicly ending its sponsorship agreement. Gatorade and Gillette both decline to continue using Tiger in their marketing programs.

Tiger’s once sterling image continues to quickly tarnish as more allegations and affair partners come forth, what Fox Sports calls an “onslaught of porn stars, strippers, escorts, and party girls”—more than a dozen women claiming sexual relationships with Tiger.

Elin is stunned and devastated. “The word betrayal isn’t strong enough,” she reveals. “It seemed that my world as I thought it was had never existed. I felt embarrassed for having been so deceived.”

She’s been keeping a low profile, hunkered down with her two kids and her mother and her twin sister, Josefin, who’ve both flown in to offer their support. “I never suspected—not a one,” Elin says. “I felt stupid as more things were revealed—how could I not have known anything?”

A child of divorce herself, Elin wants to save the marriage… but she’s not sure if they can weather this crisis.

In January, the National Enquirer finds and photographs Tiger in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where Pine Grove, a sex, alcohol, and drug addiction center, is located.

A few weeks earlier, Elin was also photographed by paparazzi while at a gas station, her bare ring finger a source of major speculation. Public consensus suggests that she was making an intentional statement. “She knew what she was doing when she stepped out and pumped gas without her wedding rings,” an unidentified source tells MSNBC. “There are plenty of people who would have filled the tank for her so she wouldn’t even have to be photographed.”

The banner at the bottom of the TV screen reads LIVE FROM PONTE VEDRA BEACH.

“It was like church, very somber,” says AP reporter Doug Ferguson of the atmosphere in the clubhouse on February 19, 2010, at TPC Sawgrass, where Tiger is about to give a press conference, his first public appearance since Thanksgiving.

Tiger won the Players Championship here at Sawgrass in 2001, but today he’s surrounded not by tour competitors but by forty friends and relatives plus three reporters—one from Reuters, one from Bloomberg News, and one from the Associated Press.

A mile away, three hundred more reporters and photographers cluster in the Champions Ballroom at the Sawgrass Marriott Golf Resort & Spa, reluctantly complying with conditions set by Team Tiger. “We were not happy with the terms. We wanted more people in there and we wanted to ask questions,” says Bob Harig, an ESPN.com staff writer who is also vice president of the Golf Writers Association of America. Harig says the organization that two months ago anointed Tiger as the 2009 PGA Tour Player of the Year is boycotting today’s event on principle.

Tiger steps to the clubhouse podium. Instead of his familiar golf shirt and cap, he’s wearing a dark sport coat and a light blue dress shirt with an open collar. “Tiger Woods forgets his tie,” comments men’s fashion blog Dappered, which deems the look too casual, though it’s clear that no detail of this long-awaited public appearance has been left unconsidered.

Tida sits in the front row, Tiger’s Stanford teammate Notah Begay III nearby.

Elin and the children are not in attendance.

“I was unfaithful. I had affairs. I cheated,” Tiger tells the assembly and the cameras, heaping blame on himself while praising Elin for her “enormous grace and poise” and for her wisdom. “As Elin pointed out to me,” he says, “my real apology to her will come not in words. It will come from my behavior over time.”

Tiger admits to having believed that his celebrity status exempted him from censure, that getting “to enjoy all the temptations around me” was something he somehow deserved. “I was wrong. I was foolish. I don’t get to play by different rules.”

He knows the criticism is deserved. “Parents used to point to me as a role model for their kids. I owe all those families a special apology.”

Tiger reveals that he’s spent the last forty-five days “in inpatient therapy receiving guidance for the issues I’m facing. I have a long way to go. But I’ve taken my first steps in the right direction.”

This press conference is part of his treatment. He’s making public amends.

After speaking for close to fifteen minutes, Tiger crumples into his mother’s arms. She returns the embrace, whispering tenderly, “I’m so proud of you. Never think you stand alone. Mom will always be there for you and I love you.”

When Tiger was young, Tida would warn him, “You will never, never ruin my reputation as a parent, because I will beat you.” Today she fiercely defends him. “I am upset the way media treated him like he’s a criminal. He didn’t kill anybody, he didn’t do anything illegal,” she insists. “As a human being, everyone has faults, makes missteps and learns from it.”

His tour colleagues are supportive. “It sounded heartfelt to me,” says Stewart Cink. “He handled it very professionally,” John Daly tells CNN. “I’ve always said the toughest major he’s got is keeping his family together, but it looks like they’re doing it.”

Just last week, Tiger spent $3 million to buy his wife Solitude—a sixty-one-foot boat “designed for Elin, who loves the sport” of scuba diving, according to a source in Parade magazine, who optimistically speculates that the boat may help bond the couple. “Romantic sea air can do wonders for a troubled marriage.”

The biggest challenge for Tiger, muses Nick Faldo, will be whether he “can, emotionally, look at Elin and say, ‘You and the family—that’s it—are my big kick. When I come off and I’ve won the tournament, pumped up full of adrenaline, I can come home and be a family man.’”