Tiger Woods can't hide from the cops
Tiger Woods can't make it all go away by hiding in his compound and keeping his mouth shut. Credit: Getty Images File
For three days, I was more than willing to let go of whatever happened in Tiger Woods' driveway the other night, and I'm sure many of you were, too.
I really don't care how many girlfriends he has or doesn't have, where he was going at 2:30 on the morning after Thanksgiving, why he was driving a Cadillac when he endorsed Buicks for so long.
When it comes to personal lives, even in the case of our most public figures, I am very much of the belief that another couple's marriage is a foreign country where I don't speak the language.
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What goes on in Chez Woods is none of my business. And it's none of yours, either.
But there is this little matter of the Florida Highway Patrol, which for some reason just refuses to let the matter die.
The police seem to suspect a crime was committed that morning.
In that case, it's no longer the private business of Mr. and Mrs. Woods. It's a public matter about which the cops have every right to demand answers, and sooner or later, Tiger Woods is going to have to come up with some.
Maybe he can skip his golf tournament this week in Thousand Oaks - one of the few events designed to benefit a charitable foundation rather than fill the already stuffed pockets of Eldrick T. Woods - but eventually, he will have to answer questions, and truthfully, or risk spending some time in the Martha Stewart Academy for Wayward Celebrity Perjurers.
Because for perhaps the first time in his carefully crafted life, Woods is involved in something neither he nor his army of image-makers can game plan. The cops don't take advice from IMG or Nike chairman Phil Knight, and unlike the golf media, no PGA or USGA flack is going to tell them what questions they can and cannot ask.
Through his own actions, Woods no longer controls his message. And every day he chooses not to answer, he just creates more questions.
Investigators want to know whether there's more to this thing than just some guy backing out of his driveway into a Johnny pump. Believe me, I've done it, and the investigation takes all of five minutes. Clearly, they're looking for more than skid marks in the street.
It seems the cops may not buy the story told by Madame Woods, and confirmed by her husband, that she took a golf club to the back window of the SUV in a frantic effort to save his life.
It's not as if he was trapped in a burning vehicle or had driven off a bridge into the channel off Chappaquiddick Island. Why all the urgency? And if the impact was severe enough to knock him unconscious for a reported six minutes, why didn't the air bags inflate? Or, did someone do a number on Woods and try to dress it up as a car crash?
If that's what they're looking for, then what happened that night is no longer the private property of Mr. and Mrs. Eldrick Woods of Isleworth, Fla.
Tiger is mistaken if he thinks he can make it all go away by hiding in his compound and keeping his mouth shut. He has double-bogeyed this one and now, it's out of his hands.
This thing ain't over until the cops say it's over, and they're not ready to say that yet.
In that case, neither are we.
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