Mark Spector

Mark Spector is a columnist for sportsnet.ca

The folks at Golf Channel knew they had a tight lie Thursday, as Tiger's own tournament opened at the Sherwood club in L.A. Tiger's image was on billboards all around the course, while his other image was being plastered everywhere else in the golf world.

You see, more than most in the golf industry, a huge part of the network's very existence is due to Woods and the boom in the golf business his presence has created. GC opened its doors in '95. The next year Tiger won his first two PGA tournaments.

Companies pay Tiger to be a spokesman, then those same companies buy time on GC. The PGA needs them both, and together they -- the advertisers, PGA and Golf Channel -- have ridden Tiger's popularity to the bank for years now.

And so they stand by their cash cow, er, man. And an hour before Round 1 of the Chevron World Challenge began Thursday, "Tee It Up With Tiger" appeared on Golf Channel as scheduled.

It was one of those mic'ed Q and A's, where folks pay way too much money to ask Tiger and Anthony Kim questions, while Kim hit balls on a practice tee and Tiger tells stories. It was taped who knows how long ago and could easily have been replaced. But alas, it was a chance to apply a Band-Aid to Tiger's wounded character, and opened with Tiger waxing over how great a teacher his father Earl was.

Fade to family pictures of Tiger with his mom and dad, little Eldrick all ears and hat. Behind golf's equivalent of the manger scene, viewers heard Tiger reminisce about beating his dad for the first time at age 11.

(Sometime, years from now, perhaps they'll ask Elin if she recalls the first time she beat Tiger. "Well, I had a 3-iron from about two-and-half-feet…")

They showed Tiger's tears as he won the ‘06 British Open (he has feelings too, you know). And then this beauty:

When we come back, how has fatherhood changed Tiger?

This was one nervy plug -- one that we're not sure even Leafs TV could stomach.

When tournament coverage was ready to begin, the hang dog looks were unanimous among GC's talking heads. It was as if they were about to announce that Christmas had been cancelled. Indeed, perhaps their Christmas bonuses had been.

"With the tournament host at the centre of a sad saga and out of the tournament," the commentator began, before analyst Brandel Chamblee chimed in with what would be the final word on Tiger's situation.

"Off of the golf course, Tiger Woods is human. Our hero has clay feet," said Chamblee, invoking a Biblical reference. The inference was, of course, that even the people in the Bible hit one in the rough now and again, and we forgave them, didn't we?

"These superstar transient lifestyles that so many, including Tiger Woods, lead, come with some trappings. Trappings that most people would struggle with," Chamblee continued. "That does not make it right. That just makes him human. And as a human he has the ability to change his behaviour. And he has a right to do that with some degree of privacy."

You almost expected him to say, as Jay Leno had in his stand-up the previous night, "Besides, that phone message could have been left by any guy named Tiger."

The network did allow Jesper Parnevik to do its dirty work, when they aired both his harsh words from the day before, and his confirmation on Thursday that he meant exactly what he had said.

"I really feel sorry for Elin, since me and my wife were at fault for hooking her up with him," Parnevik said of Nordegren, who had been the Parnevik's nanny when she met Tiger. "We probably thought he was a better guy than he is. I would probably need to apologize to her."

As a press conference was cancelled by the first siren in all of this, Rachel Uchitel, rumours swirled of a huge payoff from the Woods camp to buy her silence. More rumours surfaced of a payoff to Elin.

The rumours will get far better play this weekend than news of what happens at the Sherwood CC, and as the first tournament takes place AP -- After Philandering -- Tiger's responsibility becomes clear.

He has to face the music, face the media, and get all of these cameras out of everyone else's face. In the same way Alex Rodriguez opened Yankees camp last spring with a press conference, so that spring training wouldn't be hijacked by his steroids story, Tiger must take ownership of the mess he has created.

It will dominate golf until he mans up and takes some questions.

Only then can he, and everyone else in the PGA, move on.

Unless, that is, he is simply waiting for the last high heel to drop.