As Always, Woods Controls Room

Whatever else Tiger Woods may have lost since the Thanksgiving revelation of his marital infidelity, he still retains the ability to shape and control his message like few others on the planet.

Woods' first appearance before the public in three months during a Friday statement was as breathless in its single-minded desire to own the moment as it may have been in its sincerity.

From the time he walked into a room at PGA headquarters in Florida and issued a statement to the time 13 1/2 minutes later when he strode out from behind a podium to hug first his mother and others before disappearing, Woods was in command.

Woods' decision to, in effect, go over the press and speak directly to the worldwide public is not new. Increasingly, in recent years, figures like Michael Vick, Alex Rodriguez and Mark McGwire, all in times of trouble, have elected to pass on the traditional news conference format of question and answer before a roomful of reporters.

Rodriguez and McGwire each initially revealed their usage of steroids to single inquisitors, namely Peter Gammons and Bob Costas, while Vick took the approach Woods adopted, namely to read from prepared notes without taking questions.

Where Woods' mea culpa differs was his extraordinary efforts to control how the message got out, from employing a two-camera set-up to attempting to handpick the media audience in the room.

That drew the scorn of the Golf Writers Association of America, which balked at Woods' "invitation,'' in effect a request that would have left the writers as willing participants in his choreography as opposed to impartial chroniclers.

We'll have to see whether this approach works for the next athlete who gets into trouble of some sort, though, to be sure, there's no one with the global pull of Tiger Woods.

To that point, virtually every domestic channel or network with a news-gathering function interrupted morning programming to air the statement, which likely is bothersome to those who bemoan the influence of sports and popular culture on the society.

A lot of the media stars were out, from CBS' Katie Couric to NBC's Matt Lauer to ABC's Robin Roberts and George Stephanopoulos, all demonstrating the luster that Woods still enjoys.

It's worth noting that about nine minutes into the coverage, the isolated camera trained on Woods went out, and we were left to the second camera shot aimed at his left side, as well as eight members of his gallery of family and friends.

Intentional or not, the crowd view had the effect of conveying a level of humanity, if not empathy onto Woods when he could use it most, more so, perhaps than if the iso camera had been working.

Likewise, his occasional flashes of anger, especially when he scolded the press for following his wife and mother and for reporting the location of his 2 1/2-year-old daughter's school, may resonate with the public.

If Woods' scolding of the media does put the brakes or at least slow the intrusion into the unwanted intrusions into the private lives of athletes by the tabloid press, then Friday will have been useful. No one is holding their breath for that, however.