Flagellation of Presidential proportion

This, we had to remind ourselves, was a golfer, not the leader of the free world. Mary Hanniganwatched on

CRIPES, IT made for uncomfortable viewing, kind of leaving you torn between feeling half-sorry for the auld rake and having divil an ounce of sympathy. He did, though, seem repentant.

“I must take complete responsibility for all my actions . . . (this was) a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible,” he said, looking straight in to our eyes, making it seem like he was talking to us individually, begging each one of us for forgiveness and for a second chance.

He spoke of how much he’d hurt his wife and that nothing mattered more than repairing that relationship. “I am prepared to do whatever it takes to do so,” he said, “nothing is more important to me personally. But it is private, and I intend to reclaim my family life for my family. It’s nobody’s business but ours.”

Hear, hear. But enough about Bill Clinton’s post-Monica address to the nation in 1998, how did Tiger do yesterday?

Well, to be honest, if he’d had a Presidential seal on his lectern, the Stars and Stripes over his shoulder, spoke with an Arkansas drawl and mentioned God instead of Buddha, we’d have said: “Ah Bill, not again.”

What Bill said back then that Tiger didn’t, but probably should have, was: “Our country has been distracted by this matter for too long . . . now it is time – in fact, it is past time – to move on.”

But, it was ordained, there’d be no moving on until Tiger spoke publicly about his private misdeeds; what was needed was not a quiet chat with his wife but a global address to those gazillions, from Ballybunion to Bangalore and Bogota to Boston, waiting to hear if that story about him and the pancake waitress was true. We had a right know, apparently.

Kay Burley was on Sky News’ duty for the main event, having regained her poise from her mishap earlier in the week (“What’s happened to his head? It looks like he’s walked in to a door,” she’d said when she saw a black mark on Joe Biden’s forehead . . . on Ash Wednesday).

For close on three hours Kay asked her colleague Enda Brady what he thought Tiger might say, to the point where an exasperated Enda came close to suggesting he’d declare: “I like hot chicks, okay!”. That line, incidentally, was 150 to 1 in one bookmakers’ list of things Tiger might say. Alas, we lost our fiver.

Show time. Out he came to an eerie silence, looking suitably sombre. This, we had we to remind ourselves, was a golfer, not the leader of the free world.

He ripped up his carefully crafted script, forgot those many hours of practising in front of a team of PR folk, resisted looking directly into the camera for the Big moments, declared he didn’t give a fig about his “business partners”, laughed at the notion that he was a role model and declared: “Listen dudes, my private life is none of your damn business – I hit golf balls for a living, end of.”

Na, he didn’t. There followed “three sorries, two apologies, one failure, one shame – the most extraordinary 15-minute self-flagellation”, as Krishnan Guru-Murthy put it on Channel 4.

True, after the public flogging he’d meted out to himself, Tiger hugged his Ma and limped away, his sponsors high-fiving in the background.

It had the feel of the relaunch of Coca-Cola after their New Coke fiasco, a brand apologising to its customers for letting them down, promising to be good from here on. Surreal and excruciating.

Back in the Sky studio, “PR Guru” Phil Hall warned that “you can over-analyse these situations”. Kay nodded in agreement, before asking Enda, Robert Nisbet (Sky’s man in Florida), sports psychologist Amanda Owens, the London Times golf correspondent John Hopkins, Golf Monthly assistant editor Alex Narey, Graeme McDowell (on the phone) and “Showbiz” writer Martel Maxwell to analyse the situation.

Robert was a bit unimpressed.

“You can tell he’s been in therapy, can’t you? It was like he stood up and said ‘my name is Tiger Woods and I’m a sex addict’.”

Kay chuckled.

Phil didn’t. “Your reporter is being very cynical. I think it was absolutely spellbinding, the most amazing mea culpa I’ve ever seen from any public figure.” (Phil was hired by John Terry recently to handle his “difficulties”, so he knows about these things.)

Over on Channel 4, Buzz Bissinger of the Ballybunion Bugle – kidding, he’s with Vanity Fair – noted that “this is Tiger doing what he’s done all his career – control, control, control”.

But why, asked Krishnan, was this “news” conference even necessary? “Great question,” said Buzz, but he, like the rest of us, didn’t have the answer.

It’s not like Tiger was facing impeachment. Mind you, he is the commander-in-chief of the multi-billion-dollar golf business.