Golfer Tiger Woods apologizes for his sexual affairs during a press conference at the headquarters of the PGA Tour in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., on Feb. 19, 2010.
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Human failure is inevitable. Mechanical failure is unexpected. What makes Tiger Woods' story so compelling is that it's a case of both. Nowhere was that clearer than in his press conference on Friday.
Woods' brand and golf game were built on his machine-like qualities. He was the guy who delivered the same result over and over. At his sport and in his business dealings, he was flawless, unfailing, programmable. So when his private behavior proved that he had huge, gaping weaknesses, both Woods the human and Woods the moneymaking machine took a big hit. Will his apology on Friday turn that around? The answer seems to be twofold. The man may now be forgivable, but the brand still needs a lot of oiling.
For a guy who has made a career out of maintaining control over his emotions, Woods' apology seemed refreshingly wobbly. The nervous man at the mike was a Tiger Woods many people had never seen before. There was a catch in his voice, and his delivery was tense. The fact that Woods is not a fluent public speaker probably worked in his favor. If sentences like "I'm embarrassed. That I have put you. In this position," sounded a little Terminator-esque, they could be forgiven, given the circumstances. (The setting, with a weird blue "magic show" velvet curtain didn't help the awkwardness either.)
While his wife Elin Nordegren was a no-show -- a situation that crisis professionals never think is optimal -- he quoted her and went out of his way to defend her reputation, bristling at the suggestion that she might have hit him with a golf club. He owned up to all that he had done to her and others in the room. "He had all the key elements of an effective apology," says W. Timothy Coombs, Ph.D., a professor of crisis communication at Eastern Illinois University. "I think it is important he noted his future behavior was the true mark of an apology to his wife, his family [and] to his friends and fans."
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