Tiger’s Tale of Woe: Five Lessons from Woods’ Fall

by Tony Shelton, Shelton & Caudle, the Communication Training & Crisis Counsel Division of Vollmer Public Relations

Good-bye, Gillette!  So long,  Accenture!  Adios, millions and millions in endorsement deals!

Why has the public, to say nothing of his sponsors, turned on Tiger Woods so viciously?  Because he betrayed that carefully honed, squeaky clean image and, of course, his wife?  Yes, but there’s more to it than that.

Quite simply, he botched his crisis communication.

Here are five things you can learn from Tiger’s experience:

• If it’s going to come out, anyway, you should be the one to make it known, your way.  The story of the low-impact run-in with the fire hydrant was possibly the weirdest traffic-related story since the slow-speed police chase of O.J. Simpson.  Everyone who heard it tried to make some sense of it. Certainly, after the first woman came forward, Tiger should have known the whole story would come out.
  
  
• Don’t wait.  The very day David Letterman was approached by his blackmailer, he delivered the first part of his story to his audience about the “creepy things” he was accused of doing with women on his staff.  Although he was criticized for not apologizing at that time, he did apologize later and his popularity took only a slight dip.
  
  
• No whining.   Tiger’s first statement was at least half gripe and mostly content-free.  Yes, we know.  Life’s not fair, your personal life should be your personal life, and the media will turn on you.  Blah, blah, blah.  All true, but that’s the life you’ve chosen and, along with the adulation and the millions, comes scrutiny.  Just buck up and deal with it.   Tell us what you’re going to tell us, leaving out the “ifs” and “buts.”
  
  
• Let us see you– at least once.  We’ve got to see and hear you in order for us to decide how to think about you from here on out. You could just put a statement on YouTube, like Michael Jackson’s doctor did, but it’s better to do it at a news conference. (Note: You don’t even have to take questions. You can just read your statement.)  And do not, under any circumstances, ask your wife to stand there while you admit what you’ve done.  Let us hope that Jenny Sanford has delivered us from any such cringe-worthy charades of that kind in the future.
  
  
• Once you admit it fully, STOP talking about it.  Tiger might have said something like: “I’ve done some terrible things.  I’ve been unfaithful to my wife, and we are now working on healing our marriage. I’ve had to admit to myself that I have a serious problem and I’ve entered counseling. I’m deeply, deeply sorry for all the pain I’ve caused. At some time in the future, I hope to be able to return to the game of golf. I truly don’t know what else to say and, for my family’s sake, this is the last time I will be talking about this.”

Curiously, now that Tiger has finally admitted his “infidelity” and said he is taking himself off the tour indefinitely, the jokes may stop, and he may even begin to get some sympathy.  Think of the child who misbehaves and then says:  “I’m just no good.  I’ll go out in the yard and eat worms.” Doesn’t Mommy sometimes say, “Yes, honey, what you did was wrong, but I know you can do better.”  Maybe now the public will begin to forgive and move on.  Besides, we need him.

Without Tiger, professional golf seems to just get lost in the woods.