Stop putting your foot in it, Tiger

Last updated: 23rd March 2010

Tiger Woods and his management team are not making too many people happy right now.

Indeed, every time the World No 1 takes a step towards re-entering public life, he seems to put his foot in it.

He did it in February when he arranged a press conference to apologize to all and sundry for his serial infidelities - and yes, he's done it again now.

It was bad enough that the February event was restricted to three of four chosen journalists and that no questions were allowed at all, but worse still was that he chose, knowingly or not, to steal the weekend's golfing thunder from the WGC Accenture Match Play by arranging for his public apology to be held during the course of the event.

The restrictions and the timing didn't go down very well at all. but did our Tiger learn from it?

Not on your nellie.

This week he offered interviews to some US TV stations - and guess what?

Once more the time chosen would again conflict with TV coverage of a PGA Tour event - in this case on the final day and very close to the conclusion of the Transitions Championship - and once more it was with restrictions. The TV stations would be given only five minutes of his time.

ESPN and The Golf Channel took him up on his offer but CBS seemed to have had enough of him. They turned him down flat. They made it clear that under his terms they were not interested in interviewing him.

CBS Sports spokeswoman Leslie Anne Wade is reported to have said: "Depending on the specifics, we are interested in an extended interview without any restrictions on CBS. The network is airing much of the Masters golf tournament next month, where Woods is making his return to the game."

But CBS were not the only company with connections to golf who were unimpressed.

Transitions Optical, the sponsors of the weekend's Transitions Championship, were not very happy at all that once more the Woods camp had chosen to go public with more apologies about his string of extramarital escapades on the final day of the PGA Tour event they sponsor.

Would you believe it - while Jim Furyk was on the 18th green, two putts away from his 14th career PGA Tour victory and his first in more than two years, the five-minute interviews conducted with Woods were aired on both ESPN and the Golf Channel.

"I would say that given our partnership with the Golf Channel, we are a little bit disappointed that they chose to air that story at the conclusion of a very exciting tournament," David Cole, the managing director for Transitions, said, clearly doing his best not to vent the real anger he and his colleagues would have been feeling.

"We invest a lot of money in the Transitions Championship as a title sponsor."

The interviews - Woods' first since the recent sex scandal blew up in his face and caused him to drop out of golf and public life and seek refuge in a sex-addiction clinic - aired at 7:30 pm, just as the weather-delayed tournament was coming to an end.

Some apologists are saying the bad weather was not Tiger's fault and had weather not been a factor, the tournament would have gone off the air at 6pm.

But my question is this: Why did Woods and his merry men not arrange the interviews during a weekday?

Surely they must have known that Sunday night's and Monday morning's golf headlines would have been stolen from the Transitions Championship by the more sensational Tiger Woods tear-jerking apologies.

As it was, both ESPN and Golf Channel begun promoting the interviews at 6:30pm knowing full well that the delayed Transitions Championship was still in progress.

NBC-TV, who had the broadcast rights to the tournament, did not interrupt coverage nor make any reference to Woods.

Transitions, which is in the second year of a four-year sponsorship contract with the PGA Tour, pays an estimated $7 million annually as part of its agreement, plus a sponsored Golf Channel segment that airs immediately after the conclusion of each round.

Furyk, joking about the Woods interview afterwards, said that nobody had seen the critical putt that had salvaged the title after he had earlier hit into some trees.

"I can live with it and I'm fine with it," Furyk said. "Winning again is what was important to me."

Furyk, who has proved to be an excellent Ryder Cup partner to Woods, is one of golf's gentlemen. He too was probably saying a lot less than he really felt about the apparent unthoughtful selfishness of Woods and his uncaring crew.

Furyk would probably like to have said: "Tiger, stop thinking about yourself all the time and start thinking about others for a change.

That would be a lot more important than all these apologies that have been trotted out.

There is nothing difficult about saying, "I'm sorry". People do it all the time, often without really meaning it.

Showing you are sorry is an altogether different thing - and it starts by showing that other people really matter to you.