If you live in the United States and even remotely like sports, you’ve undoubtedly heard about Tiger Woods’ SUV crash last week.
In my opinion, it just might be the most interesting sports story to happen this year. You have Tiger – arguably the most widely-recognized athlete in the world – crashing his SUV at 2:30 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving. The same day news of the accident leaks, a report is released that says Tiger’s wife Elin (who is kept locked away and only surfaces for photo ops) broke through the back window of the car with a golf club to pull him out.
This, of course, is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s not like he was drowning. All she had to do was open the door on the driver’s side and pull him out and call the police. But she didn’t call the police (a neighbor did) and TMZ reports that Elin had scratched up Tiger’s face just before the accident and it would seem insane for her to be running down the Woods’ family driveway at 2:30 in the morning with a golf club in hand.
But even with the three paragraphs above (and a reported affair Tiger had with a NYC hostess) available for public consumption, it seems a good portion of the general public still believes Elin Woods is a hero because that’s how Tiger’s strong PR team is framing the situation.
That’s all fine, but the thing to keep in mind throughout all of this is that Tiger and his people don’t trust anybody with his personal information. He’s an incredibly private person who has molded his public perception as a golf-loving, family-oriented android. We know nothing about behind-the-scenes Tiger besides his love for his parents and he’s currently trying to keep it that way.
The latest news in the Woods car crash saga is that Tiger and his wife aren’t talking to Florida highway patrol about the crash. This is (probably) because Tiger has something to hide (there’s about a 95% chance he and his wife were fighting) and he doesn’t trust the police to keep it quiet. Quite frankly, I wouldn’t either.
Even though the public’s interest as incredibly high, I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear nothing from Tiger’s camp. He’s such a powerful guy who’s so vital to the game of golf that even though this isn’t resolved heading into the 2010 golf season, I don’t think the golf journalists would ask him anything about it because they’re all scared of getting on Tiger’s bad side.
So even though the public craves information, I wouldn’t expect any anytime soon.
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This post was written by Eric Van Dril. For more of his writing, check out RipcordNews.com.
