Sam Donnellon: Still perception vs. reality for Tiger Woods

THE SALVE FOR fallen gods is to reconnect with a human race they spent years separating from. The recipe, tried and true, is always the same. Speak of taking ownership of your transgressions. Then - often in the next breath - seek to sell off shares.

So it was that Tiger Woods arrived at Aronimink Golf Club yesterday for this week's AT & T National, his 22-minute pretournament news conference already so predictable that it seemed everyone in the room - media included - had rehearsed it beforehand.

This is no one's fault of course, for little has changed since Woods' promising third round at the U.S. Open soured on the final Sunday. He is still, as he said yesterday, "a work in progress" as he seeks to regain his footing as the world's pre-eminent golfer. He is still not far enough removed from his tawdry and publicly exposed extramarital trysts to expect that the session will not include some direct or indirect probing into his current state of mind on the subject.

And he is still, well, Tiger Woods, his well-programmed life both an instrument and an impediment to his emergence from all of this with any greater connection to his public. "I think that my life out here on tour is becoming more normalized," he said at one point, the paradox of such a statement seemingly eluding him. "Getting out here and talking to you guys about the game of golf and why I haven't won a tournament yet this year or why I hit that shot or this shot . . .

"It wasn't like that at the beginning of the year. But now that certainly has changed. And for the good."

For the good of golf? Maybe. For him? Hmmmm. Golf, more than most professional sports, rewards image as much if not more than it does performance, and Woods was once off the charts in terms of both. His dominance, his ethnic diversity, made him a marketing machine, building personal wealth that had topped $600 million before he drove his car and career into a tree last November.

Perception crashed into reality that night. Michael Jackson went through something like this, Lenny Dykstra and Mike Tyson, too. But we had big hints beforehand about them. Woods fooled us all, fooled his family, fooled his best friends, fooled himself maybe.

He was way better than us.

Until that night.

AT & T was one of the countless corporations who bailed on him after that. When this event was played in Washington, D.C., last June, his name was part of the banner and he was its enviable host. His foundation still receives money from this tournament. Woods appeared genuine in his gratefulness for that, saying at one point yesterday that "If you're going to have one over the other, you choose it this way because we're trying to help as many kids as we possibly can."

It's his salvation, I suppose, reclaiming his perch through his continued philanthropy. Like the ancient Greeks, we like in our allegories equal parts reprisal and repentance. The problem is that even now, after a stint in a sex-rehab clinic and a brief mention of using Buddhism, the mea culpas come qualified.

Twice yesterday someone sought to understand how the events of the last 6 months had changed Woods. One question dealt with Boys and Girls Club kids invited out for the day, how so many called him their favorite golfer or most coveted autograph.

"How seriously do you take your position as a role model now in light of the events from the past year?" Woods was asked.

"No, I certainly have made mistakes, no doubt about that," he said. "I take full ownership of them . . . I think kids can learn from that. You're not always going to go through life perfect. No one does. When you make a mistake, step up to the plate and take ownership of it."

Later, when someone asked him about handling the "distractions outside the ropes," he was equally specious. "It is what it is," he said. "I think everyone has had distractions in their lives."

Not exactly ownership. But it's probably unfair to expect it, too. "Gods don't answer letters," John Updike once wrote about Ted Williams.

They're not too fond of writing them either.

Send e-mail to

donnels@phillynews.com.

For recent columns, go to

http://go.philly.com/donnellon.