michael murray

Probably everything that you really need to understand about the Tiger Woods press conference/apology can likely be gleaned from the timing of the event.

It was on a Friday, a day of optimism and relief, a day when people are generally felling just a little bit looser and forgiving of the world around them. Just before lunch, just before the Olympic Games began to broadcast from the West to the East, people had not yet taken off from work, and were just hanging around, likely looking for some pop culture fodder to fuel water cooler chat.

But even more germane is that it took place right in the middle of the Winter Olympics, when there was a huge and eager audience of sports fans. It’s entirely probable that the American audience watching, having grown somewhat weary of the eccentric, niche sports of the North, were ready for some REAL sports news, and so, opportunistically, Tiger Woods stepped into the breech.

Presumably, this was not the moment that he felt most compelled, spiritually and personally, to make a declaration to the world, but the time that Team Tiger, as assemblage of the most skilled PR people on the planet, decided would have the greatest impact. It was like one of those military strikes that had been carefully calibrated to have maximum impact.

The speech, which lasted for about 13 minutes, was expertly written, and the whole thing felt oddly Presidential. He pretty much said all the things that we needed him to say, and in he did so in such a way as to conjure a skilled actor in a big budget movie. When he finished his piece, he hugged his mother for a long time and then exited without taking questions, his heart, presumably unburdened.

As with most everything Tiger Woodsy, this prepared speech felt robotic and micromanaged to me. I would love to see a man such as Woods think on his feet, allowing a little bit of sloppy, inarticulate humanity and improvisation to break through, but Woods seems to be the absolute opposite of improvisation. Everything he does, from his golf stroke to his press conference to the crease in his Khaki’s seemed ironed and pressed to the point of mechanical purity. And in this case, as he stood there reading words written and massaged by a team of experts, you saw nothing of his soul, only a reflection of the culture of therapy he now inhabits and the political machinations of an ever-perfecting and ever-reaching business machine.