Beuerman Miller Fitzgerald

Tiger Two

Forget for a moment what Tiger said in his March 16 media interview announcing his return to golf. While the words he used are certainly important to resurrecting his badly damaged reputation, they're not nearly as noteworthy as the lessons he seemed to have learned from the absolutely miserable job he did managing his mess the first time around.

Specifically, from a crisis manager's perspective, Woods deserves high marks for how and where he made his recent announcement, and, by virtue of that decision, for controlling the interview and focusing the conversation on his terms.

Using the little watched Golf Channel and ESPN as his launching pad was a master stroke (get it?) of genius, after all, he greatly limited the potential for interviewer hostility and for questions that might lead him places he'd rather not have gone. In his chosen format, Tiger was able, to the largest possible extent, to control the discussion and constantly return to the subject of golf and his professional career rather than his poorly chosen "hobby". It's tough to visualize Fox News or CNN or the NYT giving him such a pass. In doing things the way he did, Tiger can now justifiably tell other media outlets who want air time with him that he's been there and done that; that what happened in the past has been publicly addressed and analyzed ad infinitum, and that he's moving on.

I must confess to watching Tiger's March 16 announcement with a bit of melancholy, remembering very similar but unused advice I once gave a well known and powerful politician suffering significant reputational damage over "hobbies" of his own. By the way, he's no longer an elected official. But on a brighter note, he's gotten plenty of time to work on his golf game.