Tiger Woods admitted Wednesday his "transgressions" have "let my family down." Meanwhile, Us Weekly has posted a voice mail that he left for Los Angeles cocktail waitress Jaimee Grubbs after discovering that his wife had found out about their alleged affair. In the message, left the day before reports of his alleged infidelity broke, Woods is heard saying: "Hey, it's Tiger. I need you to do me a huge favor. Can you please take your name off your phone? My wife went through my phone and may be calling you. So if you can, please take your name off that. Just have it as a number on the voicemail. You got to do this for me. Huge. Quickly. Bye." The Daily Beast's Lisa DePaulo reports on the four key mistakes made by the one guy you never thought would do this kind of thing.
Us Weekly has come forward with allegations of a second Tiger Woods mistress, complete with voicemail and text messages. Juicy stuff. But the most delicious nugget served up in the scandal so far came from the alleged friends of the overly collagened alleged (first) mistress Rachel Uchitel (who looks suspiciously like Eliot Spitzer’s hooker, but whatever): She called him Bear. Bear! I guess when you’re shtupping a guy named Tiger—or not (Gloria Allred, help me out here)—you gotta be super creative with your little nicknames.
She was on VH1’s Tool Academy, where women humiliate themselves trying to reform their cheating, proudly insipid boyfriends. She’s going to stay quiet about her alleged fling with the most famous athlete in the world?
Let’s be real here. Is anyone really shocked by the fact that Tiger Woods is a tiger?
Or a bear?
• Eric Dezenhall: Could It Get Worse for Tiger? • Jacob Bernstein: The Mysterious Mrs. Woods• Wendy Murphy: Was Tiger a Victim? Yeah, we know. He was the Good Athlete, the one who always sank the winning putt, never turned up in the tabloids and married the nice Swedish nanny with the asymmetrical lips. And then there was all that heartwarming stuff about his father. Which was pretty heartwarming. But did anyone who knows anything about the mating habits of professional athletes really think this particular sports animal—who loved his dad, loved his wife and kids, loved his life—wouldn’t stick his putter in a club girl? Or two?
So now, as alleged Mistress No. 2 emerges (let’s guess: she gets Mark Geragos since Uchitel already grabbed Gloria) and the Florida police start yakking about real charges, there’s enough information out there to write a pretty good four-step manual for future Celebrity Men Behaving Badly, courtesy of all the mistakes made by the one guy you never thought would do this kind of thing. Take notes, Tiger.
1. Fess up from the beginning. People have known this one since Nixon. Yes, you will still have TMZ on your front lawn (or camped out by the broken fire hydrant). But trust us, you can skip at least three days of wild speculation on MSNBC (or in this case, CNN—did anyone else notice that the poor CNN schmucks were the only ones working on Thanksgiving?) if you just say from the very start: “I had a fight with my wife. End of story.” (You don’t even have to mention that she became enraged after seeing the National Enquirer in the checkout line at the supermarket in Florida.)
Or: “I had a fight with my wife and she came after me with my favorite thing in the world besides willing groupies, i.e. my golf club.” Or whatever weapon you like.
2. When you do fess up, don’t insult us. When Tiger finally did issue a statement, it said cryptically: “this will never happen again.” What won’t happen again? You won’t plow into a fire hydrant and a tree at 2:30 in the morning ever again? (Tiger, Tiger, you can hit a hole a half mile away with exact precision. We all know you only plow into trees and fire hydrants if your wife is coming after you with a nine-iron. Get a grip!) Don’t be surprised when the fabloids try to connect the dots you’ve splayed out there.
And get your story straight. No matter what your overpaid idiot publicists tell you, did you really think that anyone would buy the Elin-came-to rescue-me with a golf club story? And smashed in the back windows? Instead of just, you know, opening the door?
3. Get the wife on board from the get-go. Elin, Elin, Elin… that whole early drama about how you were trying to “rescue” him and even had the AP reporting that you gave him mouth-to-mouth in the driveway…. Bad idea. Perez Hilton or somebody will smoke that out. Though we must admit, as celebrity scandals go, you have been excellent. And you are much prettier than that collagen girl. So there’s that.
4. Pick your courses better. This is the most important one of all. Tiger, are you really surprised Jaimee Grubbs (who picks these mistress names, anyway?), the cocktail waitress-turned-reality-TV wannabe, reportedly sold her story for $150,000? And she wasn’t just on any show. She was on VH1’s Tool Academy, where women humiliate themselves trying to reform their cheating, proudly insipid boyfriends. She’s going to stay quiet about her alleged fling with the most famous athlete in the world? You needed to play championship courses; you instead chose a muni.
Try to find some more appropriate tail on the side. It’s easy! Just look at your fellow Nike endorser, Derek Jeter. He only diddles women who are (almost) as famous as him. And he’s not even married and cheating! That’s why you spent yesterday trapped in your own home, with your face bloody, your wife steaming, the media in a frenzy and the police in a press conference. And Jeter was at a swanky party accepting his award as Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year.
Lisa DePaulo is a correspondent for GQ magazine.