The golf landscape has changed since Tiger Woods drove his Cadillac into a fire-related utility some three months ago, with several facets to the story emerging and developing, none of them edifying but several of them fascinating. Robert Green on the car-crash case of the world's greatest golfer. (Illustrations by Dave F. Smith)

Since he decided to start hitting on inanimate objects as well living ones, his life has altered beyond recognition. As one American sports commentator, Rick Reilly, noted: "Tige rWoods is the first person in history to run his car into a hydrant and set himself on fire." Forget ‘You The Man!' Once he inadvertently went pyromaniac, he became The Guy.

As a golfer, his career has been one of approbation. As a person, it's latterly been opprobrium. He took his sport from the inside back pages to the very front. Now he's all over the middle as well. Clint Eastwood joked: "I have great respect for him as a golfer, especially now that I realise he wasn't thinking about golf when he was out there playing." We thought he spent most of his time on the range or in the gym. In fact, his game wasn't the only thing he was working on. One wonders which he's really claimed more of: major championships (14 and counting) or former majorette material (hard to keep count).

Among those suffering collateral damage was the January 2010 issue of Golf Digest, which came out days after Tiger's hydrant tangle and featured a mocked-up cover of Woods with the President of the United States and the cover line ‘10 Tips Obama Can Take From Tiger'. Inside, one unfortunate journalist wrote: "Tiger never does anything that would make him look ridiculous." (Granted, hindsight is 20/20.) Around the time of the incident, Tiger had more in common with another country's leader, Silvio Berlusconi - trying to deal with some nasty injuries to his mouth, which we'll get to slightly quicker than the police got to see Tiger.

Still, it's an ill wind that blows no one any good. Apparently, sales of a physics book by Dr John Gribbin, an astrophysicist PhD, comparatively sky-rocketed after a copy of the tome was photographed lying amid the wreckage of Tiger's car…

Woods isn't the first famous sportsman to get into trouble after displaying an eager interest in women who are not his wife. He won't be the last. But he is surely the biggest.

Let's start at the beginning, or at least a beginning - his sort-of infamous interview with American GQ in April 1997, the month he won his first major championship so remorselessly at Augusta; the interview that largely led him to forego future one-on-ones with journalists.

"Of course, we can't believe everything alleged, not by a long way. Some elements may be true and others may not. He has to let this work out."

"In the limo," wrote Charles Pierce, "fresh from a terribly wearisome photo shoot that may only help him get laid about 296 times in the next calendar year, if he so chooses, the Redeemer is pondering one of the many mysteries of professional sports. ‘What I can't figure out,' Tiger Woods asks Vincent, the limo driver, ‘is why so many good-looking women hang around baseball and basketball. Is it because, you know, people always say that like, black guys have big d***s?"

Pierce explains one of the attractions of the sports Woods has mentioned is that they put their followers "in greater proximity to the players".

"What about golf then?" asks Woods. Vincent chips in with "the other thing is that there is so much money involved in those two sports that that probably has something to do with it, too." Pierce notes: "Tiger seems very satisfied with the roundness of the answer." Nearly 13 years on, we may have an idea of just how satisfied Tiger was back then. Perhaps smugger than a Cheshire Cat who owned the dairy.

The overall impression was some distance from the way he had previously been depicted by his now late father, Earl, in Sports Illustrated - among other things, he called him "the Chosen One" - which made him sound like the next best thing to the Second Coming. At one point in GQ, Pierce asked of Tiger, who downplayed his father's ostentation: "Can he blaspheme against himself?" Maybe he now has.

Tiger has talked of his "transgressions", albeit so far as we know none of them were transsexuals. By Christmas Day, one US-based website had named 11 of the women with whom he had had such a relationship (if that's the right word; clearly mistress isn't apt either) and suggested there were at least three others. Well, a partridge in a pear tree was never going to be Tiger's thing. Nine ladies dancing, though? Whatever, no one figures that the known tally has necessarily reached the total.

Of course, we can't believe everything alleged by what Vanity Fair dubbed his "harem", not by a long way. Some elements may be true and others may not. Tiger is really in no position to sue any of them right now. If he did recognise one allegation but not the rest, everyone would assume that verified the remainder. He just has to let this work itself out, let the claimants - true or false - emerge and then be forgotten. As for Jaimee Grubbs, who sold to the press details of a voice-mail and texts Woods had sent her and later said: "I hope Tiger can forgive me for doing this and that we can remain good friends" - well, good luck with that.

A couple of weeks after his post-Thanksgiving crash, stories were circulating that his wife had told police that Woods had been drinking and taking sleeping pills and painkillers in the evening before he left the road. Later, one of the women he has (allegedly) been involved with claimed to have been with him and other men at a "bachelor party" in Las Vegas, where Woods spent the evening gambling, drinking and smoking (probably the worst "transgression" of the lot in some parts of America) as well as the other stuff we now know he was getting up to.

Anyhow, for sure there's no smoke without fire - which is when you really want a hydrant handy - and the overall picture the story presents is unappealing. He seems to have concentrated on not-overly educated (mostly) young women and made them think they were his one and only sideline to his wife, Elin, a ruse that presumably fell apart when the rest of them heard about Rachel Uchitel in the wake of the hydrant hit. If there were perhaps more of those who were simply eligible for work at Hooters than there were expensive hookers, then in part it seems that was because he didn't like to pay too often. Whatever the case, he's paying now.

There's also this. Nor is Woods the first famous sportsman to send sex texts, but I did find it perhaps the most inexplicable element of the whole… er, affair. I thought Tiger was supposed to be bright and in control, and yet there he was disseminating wholly compromising texts to women in whom he had only carnal, as opposed to emotional, interest and for whom he was never going to leave his wife. It defies sensible explanation. It also makes one hope, since he was so fond of using his cell phone, that he was on the appropriate tariff.

It's particularly extraordinary he'd do it given that his self proclaimed chief objective in life is reflected in the name he gave his yacht: Privacy. In answer to the question "What's the biggest thing you've had to sacrifice for your golf? - put by David Owen in an interview for Men's Vogue in 2006 - his answer was one word: "Anonymity." In April 2007, he told Sports Illustrated: "I am a control freak." So how/why did he do this this? He's stupid? He's arrogant? He's God-like - believes he's invulnerable? He liked the element of risk? Or he wanted to be found out at last; he's got what psychologist Jamil Qureshi, who has worked with the European Ryder Cup team, told Peter Dixon of The Times is called "the Paradise Complex"? "It happens when you are doing really well but don't believe you are worthy of it and so go out of your way to destroy it, to tarnish your own image."

Jesper Parnevik, through whom Tiger met Elin, said soon after the story broke: "We probably thought he was a better guy than he is. But when you are the guy he is, the world's best athlete, you should think more before you do stuff and maybe not." Those Nike ads, of course, say ‘Just Do It'.

There has been comment about the implication that Woods was assaulted by his wife, which presumably was the rationale behind him proclaiming in his first statement that she had "acted courageously" - a bizarre phrase to describe a woman seeking to help her husband get out of a stationary vehicle. Only two people know what actually happened but it seems beyond credibility that she might have hit him- as opposed to the car's rear window, for example - with a golf club wielded in anger. That would cause far more damage than a cut lip; something more like a broken jaw. Mind you, the neighbour who made the emergency call to the police might be wishing he'd first pulled out his camcorder or mobile. That prompt use of 911 may have cost him a fortune.

Woods once told CNN: "I don't ever want to be defined as a golfer. I want to be defined by my character as a person." There have been many similar platitudes since - "My family is more important than golf"… "Elin and I are a great team" and so on. Still, what was he going to say? "You'll never guess what I was doing last night!"

What he's been doing since is undergoing a course of treatment at the Pine Grove clinic for sex addiction (I think George Bernard Shaw more appropriately characterised this ‘failing' as the "maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity", although with savage irony he was talking about the attraction of marriage) in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where he was ‘discovered' by the National Enquirer newspaper.

"I thought Tiger was supposed to be bright and in control, and yet there he was disseminating wholly compromising texts to women in whom he had only carnal, as opposed to emotional, interest and for whom he was never going to leave his wife."

As of this writing, the status of the Woods marriage is publicly uncertain. Per some reports in early January, Elin had hired a Los Angeles-based divorce lawyer and/or had already left to live in Sweden. The News of the World reported she had secured a £185 million divorce settlement and had prevented Tiger seeing his two children over the Christmas holidays because he was "not stable enough". Also, perhaps inevitably, it had got the number of women ‘claimants' up to 18. (Well, it is in part a golf story.) Elsewhere, however, later in January she was reported to have been visiting him in Hattiesburg, thereby hinting at the chance of a rapprochement. Take your pick. We'll know soon enough. It's their decision, not ours.

In the black community, there has been some despair that all the women Woods has been connected with are white. His behaviour fits a loathsome stereotype: ‘See, if you're rich, you don't have to be with black women - you can get white ones.' But despite his skin pigmentation, Woods probably doesn't regard himself as black. Back before he'd won that first Masters, before he'd shared a limo with Charles Pierce, he referred to himself as being "Cablinasian". He's one quarter black, one quarter Chinese, one quarter Thai, one eighth Caucasian and one eighth American Indian. His mother, Kultida, called him "the Universal Child" - which certainly isn't the go-to epithet these days.

A person close to his surviving parent told me shortly after all hell broke loose: "Tiger has ruined the lives of many people. For example, his mother was so looking forward to seeing those two grandchildren grow up. Now she may hardly see them again." If his treatment leads to a reconciliation with Elin, at least that's sorted.

Tiger's daughter, Sam, was born in June 2007, son Charlie in February 2009. Trying to find good news amid the mayhem is not easy but it is probably welcome that they are too young to understand all this. As single-minded as Woods evidently, and eminently, has proved himself to be, one cannot believe anything other than he feels hurt and remorse for what he has inflicted on his children. The rebound impact on himself means that, if and when he does return to golf, it may be, as Hugh McIlvanney wrote in the Sunday Times, "possible that in his own mind he has been permanently diminished". Forget Obama. He looks Clintonesque, not only demeaned by his behaviour but by the embarrassing vacillations in his testimony to the world via the press releases issued on his behalf (see ‘The Tiger Tales', below). For example, at first he'd done nothing wrong, then he had perpetrated "transgressions", and later it was an "infidelity" - a self-servingly misleading use of the singular.

Will Woods be able to cope with one inevitable consequence of all this? He will now be a figure of ridicule. He is used to people perhaps disliking him but not laughing at him. The transformation from being a man who intimidates rivals to one who makes them snigger might be more than he can adequately deal with, at least for some time. In his case, the contrast between the two extremes would be more than it would be for any other golfer, maybe any other sportsman. Assuming he does return to the Tour, how long will it be before the gallery convulses when someone roars "In the hole"; it's hard to suppress a giggle when a TV commentator says "Now we go to Tiger on the 15th?"

It's already out there, the relentless assertions that Woods has in fact quit golf so he can work full-time on womanizing. The internet cartoons, the David Letterman jokes - "There is a new book out about the life of Warren Beatty. It says Warren has slept with 12,000 women. They say that barring injuries Tiger may have a shot at that record" - and even David Cameron telling an audience: "Tiger Woods has expressed a keen interest in my all-women shortlists."

The price of all this to Woods has been significant in a financial sense, too - well, if you discount the fact that, according to Forbes magazine, he was already sport's first billionaire. The desertion from his camp by Accenture and AT&T and the reduced commitment by some other sponsors are estimated to have cost him up to $70 million. Another analyst reckoned that Woods' backers had suffered a cumulative $12 billion loss in their share prices between the end of November and the end of December. Other things aside, this does rather nail the lie about all publicity being good publicity. (Oh yes, and if the most sought-after man on the planet, Osama bin Laden excepted, can go missing for weeks on end, also write off that one about the world being a small place these days.)

All this leads us on to IMG, his management company. (Tiger's, not Osama's.) Previously, the main job of the IMG press relations people was pretty much to say: "Sorry, you can't have an interview with Tiger." That's changed now. This has been a PR disaster.

THE TIGER TALES // THOSE THREE PRESS RELEASES AS THEY HAPPENED
NOVEMBER 29 "The only person responsible for the accident is me. The many false, unfounded and malicious rumours that are currently circulating about my family and me are irresponsible. My wife, Elin, acted courageously when she saw I was hurt and in trouble. She was the first person to help me. Any other assertion is absolutely false. This incident has been stressful and very difficult for Elin, our family and me. I appreciate all the concern and well wishes that we have received. But I would also ask for some understanding that my family and I deserve some privacy no matter how intrusive some people can be."		DECEMBER 2 "I have let my family down and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart. I have not been true to my values and the behaviour my family deserves. I am not without faults and I am far short of perfect… I have been dismayed to realise the full extent of what tabloid scrutiny really means… The stories in particular that physical violence [by Elin] played any role in the car accident were utterly false and malicious…for me, the virtue of privacy is one that must be protected in matters that are intimate and within one's own family. Personal sins should not require press releases and problems within a family shouldn't have to mean public confessions… I will strive to be a better person and the husband and father that my family deserves. For all of those who have supported me over the years, I offer my profound apology."		DECEMBER 11 "I am deeply aware of the disappointment and hurt that my infidelity has caused to so many people, most of all my wife and children. I want to say again to everyone that I am profoundly sorry and that I ask forgiveness. It may not be possible to repair the damage I've done but I want to do my best to try… I would like to ask everyone, including my fans, the good people at my foundation, business partners, the PGATour and my fellow competitors, for their understanding. What's most important now is that my family has the time, privacy and safe haven we will need for personal healing. After much soul searching, I have decided to take an indefinite break from professional golf. I need to focus my attention of being a better husband, father and person."

Where to begin? There was the time-gap between the hydrant incident and the posting of his first press release on his website. Not seeing the police right away, indeed specifically avoiding them, made him seem like a fugitive from justice, not a man exercising his legal rights. Not saying anything immediately, instead skulking in his home, made him look "guilty" in the way that most defendants do who choose to exercise the right of silence in their own trials. It was as if he thought that if he kept quiet for long enough, itwould all go away. For weeks he was nowhere to be found, causing the Washington Post to liken the situation to a hostage drama.

As for his website, as of mid-February he hadn't posted a blog since October 5 and there were no ‘Dear Tiger' entries after November 24 - two days before Thanksgiving. Go to ‘News' and you were informed "Sorry, we couldn't find any content for this month" and anything prior to 2010 had been eradicated from history.

Woods' manager at IMG is Mark Steinberg. In December, he tried to get the New York Times to pull any reference to Woods from a story about Anthony Galea, a sports-injury specialistwho has treated Woods, among others, and is/was under investigation by the FBI for suspected criminal activity. "Give the kid a break," Steinberg pleaded, to no avail. "The kid" was 33 at the time, 34 now.

Leaving Steinberg out of this, how much of an issue could this become for IMG itself? Surely the wives of other clients are likely to get wary if they start thinking that their man's business manager might be an enabler to extra-marital sex. Steinberg emphatically says "IMG was in no way complicit with the alleged relationships",which I'm sure is the case, although Chubby Chandler of ISM-manager of Ernie Els, Lee Westwood, Rory McIlroy and others - agrees in general. "Yes, there would be wives of at least some players who would be worried about that.'

On the other hand, working for Woods might be one of the toughest jobs going. Tell him your advice is that he amends his behaviour and you might be amending your employment. As Chandler says: "Given the size of Tiger's deals, itwould take a very strongman to walk away if he did know what had been going on." And Phil Hall, a former editor of the News of the World and now head of PHA Media, who has had to deal with some fire-fighting in his time on behalf of the likes of Heather Mills McCartney and latterly John Terry, thinks IMG has perhaps taken an unfair rap in some quarters.

"I don't blame his advisers - I suspect he didn't listen. Often with these people, they ask for PR advice and then ignore it if it isn't what they want to hear."

And let's have at least some perspective here. Many people have said and written things along the lines of "he's betrayed us all," among them earlier this year a crisis-management expert who talked to Golf World (US), a writer interviewed by Vanity Fair and several newspaper and magazine columnists, primarily in America. This accusation is based on the premise that he embraced corporate America and got himself a "perfect wife" (I think they mean young and Swedish) in order to cause us to revere his image and thereby facilitate the rapid growth in his wealth.

Essentially, this is bollocks. Some of us may have bought into the image that not only was he a great golfer but an icon worthy of almost religious veneration, but that was our decision. Granted, the Accentures, AT&Ts and so on cherished the association with a famous athlete of towering renown, enormous talent, extraordinary self-discipline and a happy family life and hoped that we might accordingly be more inclined toward their products. If we bought them on what has turned out to be a false premise, then perhaps we should look at our own decision-making process if we now feel their goods aren't worth having just because their star salesman has been found to have feet of clay. Never heard of caveat emptor? If among the fall-out of this is a decline in the practice of celebrity endorsement - to take one other random example, Michael Owen previously promoting property purchase in Dubai - then he's done us a favour.

Despite those early words uttered by his father, Woods has never said he was anything other than a human being, even if his golf has sometimes seemed other-worldly. We chose to interpret him that way. He never said he was some sort of saint on earth, like the late Pope John Paul II perhaps, or even practically perfect in everyway, like Mary Poppins.

"Some of us may have bought into the image that not only was he a great golfer but an icon worthy of almost religious veneration [but] Woods never said he was anything other than a human being."

Woods has not killed or maimed anyone (hydrants don't count). He has committed no crime. He's not a Bernie Madoff or one of the numerous overreaching bankers the world has recently seemed to spawn - someone whose fraudulent actions or foolish judgement with money that wasn't their own have hurt the lives of tens of thousands of people. Woods has to some extent or other harmed his wife, almost certainly his children, very probably his mother, some friends, far too many women with whom he formed liaisons that lacked anything like decent respect, and himself. He has not hurt the rest of us.

Madonna once asked, rhetorically: "Why do you want to put me on a pedestal? So you can look up my skirt?" We - whoever we are - put Tiger on one. He's fallen off it. But let's not pretend we are among the injured.

Amid all the miss-laying, it could not be said that Tiger mislaid his game. He didn't win a major championship in 2009 but hewon seven tournaments. For the 10th time in the past 13 years, he was voted Male Player of the Year by the Golf Writers' Association of America. Just over half the votes were cast after news broke of the damage he'd done to the hydrant and a few other things.Away from golf specifically, a similar knowledge balance was in play when the Associated Press named him Athlete of the Decade. He got 56 of 142 votes, leaving Lance Armstrong and Roger Federer trailing in his wake. Well, no one was voting for his morals and it's not like he's a racing driver.

But on the course, while he was winning regularly in 2009, as he has been doing for the past decade, he was also whingeing more than before.Also doing more spitting, club throwing, swearing and displaying all-round grumpiness. His gamesmanship on the last day of the USPGA Championship, when he left at least one green before Y. E. Yang had finished the hole and he didn't have the courtesy to let the Korean, the certain champion, have the honour of holing the final putt, was lamentable.

The contrast with his main rival, Phil Mickelson, could not be starker. After a stirring last round played together at the Masters last April, in which Phil shot 67 to Tiger's 68, Woods said bitterly and without class: "I almost won the tournament with a Band-Aid swing." Mickelson, who had to be equally as chastened at not getting the job done, and indeed came closer to thwarting Angel Cabrera than did Woods, displayed a sense of acceptance of fate and sporting perspective by saying: "It was fun, a very emotional day… the crowd made the highs even higher and the lows even lower."

At the WGC-HSBC Champions tournament in Shanghai in November, it was as if Woods was on a bonus if he could get through the week without smiling. Mickelson, as ever, seemed to be seeking out the autograph hunters rather than the other way around. Some felt it was unduly decent of Mickelson to say in late January that he wasn't going to talk about Tiger's marital problems because "Amy [Phil's wife] and I are good friends with both Tiger and Elin" and somewhat ironic that he had to spend some of the rest of that week in San Diego repudiating an allegation that he, too, was a cheat - in his case for putting an old Ping Eye 2 wedge into his bag as a (legitimate) response to the introduction of the new regulations governing grooves on golf clubs.

There will, of course, be many people who want to see Woods come back and fail, to endure a measure of comeuppance. His former coach, Butch Harmon, is not among these, but as he put it: "[He has] to stand there in front of everybody, take his medicine, be humble, be embarrassed, be humiliated and answer the questions."

In Dubai in February, Tom Watson weighed in with: "He must get his personal life in order and when he comes back he has to show some humility to the public." Referring to Woods' tendency to profane language and other unseemly on-course conduct, Watson added: "I feel he has not carried the same stature as the other great players that have come along, like Jack [Nicklaus] or Arnold [Palmer]… I think he needs to clean up his act and show respect for the game that the people before him have shown." Watson agreed with the widespread opinion that the first occasion on which Woods faces the media for his mea culpa (if that is what it is to be) should be away from a golf tournament.

There is also an understandable, if possibly misplaced, belief that Tiger's mental edge, the massive psychological advantage he took to the course with him every time he played, will not be manifesting itself in future. "Maybe guys will be less intimidated," said Geoff Ogilvy. This view reasons that he'll be all too human now, and other players will use what has happened to try to get into his head in away theywould never have considered, would never have dared, before.

Among the disciples of this school of thought is Europe's Ryder Cup captain for 2010, Colin Montgomerie. (I should imagine that if one of the ramifications of all his shenanigans is that Woods doesn't play at Celtic Manor in October, he'll be able to handle with that disappointment with some equanimity.) Monty told Sky Sports in January: "I think the mystique has gone. I think the mysterious nature of the guy has gone. He is suddenly, you hate [oh yeah?] to say, more normal now. Let's hope golf isn't damaged by that. There is no question there was an aura about Tiger Woods over this incredible record he has, not just in majors but in other world events. That wall has been split slightly and there are cracks. It gives us more opportunity to find ways of winning these events now [sound of hands rubbing together, smugly] and I am thinking of myself as well as my peers."

But just because Monty is Monty doesn't mean he's right. The aforementioned David Owen also wrote of Woods: "Everything makes him better." He was talking about Woods being single, then getting married, then having children. Each altered state he turned into an edge for himself. And this time? Well, you'd probably be mad to bet your last dollar against him using this as motivation, inspiring him to come back feeling vengeful, seeingwhat has happened as a media campaign against his private life - rather than an exposé of his secret one - and saying to himself: "I'll show them." I wouldn't discount the possibility that he'll manage to regard himself as a wronged party here, and use that mindset to his advantage.

Of course, all this assumes that he will indeed come back. Of course he will. It's what he does. He's a professional golfer.

"You'd probably be mad to bet your last dollar against him using this as motivation, inspiring him to come back feeling vengeful, seeing what has happened as a media campaign against his private life rather than an exposé of his secret one."

All that has occurred, reprehensible as it is, might actually make Woods a more interesting character to observe. His press conferences, which therefore means most of his public utterances, have largely been a tedious lesson in the art of talking for 15 minutes without revealing anything. Say what you like, boring is going to be a hard label to pin on him now.

Among several matters he needs to address are to cut out the spitting, club throwing, swearing and all-round grumpiness. He should open up more, not to specific media outlets but to the public in general, by signing autographs and spending more time talking to his fans via TV or radio interviews. He'll find it harder now to protest he doesn't have time for anything other than working on his game.

"I think part of his problem stems from the fact that he isn't very popular with the media," says Phil Hall. "He doesn't have a lot of goodwill in the bank that means that when things get tough, people tend to take his side because they like him. [Seve Ballesteros in his pomp, anyone?] From now on, he should smile at kids, not scowl when he's asked for an autograph, and make an effort to be entertaining at his press conferences."

Like many athletes, Woods fails to recognise that his Croesus-level wealth is brought about because he's famous, not because he is great at golf. The latter leads to the former, of course, but if his forte were tiddlywinks and he was the greatest finger-flicker in history, he wouldn't be making what he does. He fails to acknowledge that the media is integral to the success of his career.

Hall is not among those who believe he should "get it all out in the open". He'd advise no mea culpa. "If he makes some sort of confessional, the words he says will be thrown back at him for the rest of his life. That's a subject that should stay between himself and his wife. And if they do get reconciled, she will be crucial for him. If she walks the course watching him play, that will reduce the heckling. People will respect her after what she's been through and that will make it easier to get them back supporting him, because they'll be seen as a team."

Hall adds: "Although no amount of PR can deal with this, what he really needs is to come back playing well. Then the other stuff will disappear more readily. If he plays badly, it will be like that's the reason why. When the tabloids were full of allegations about David Beckham and his marriage, it was the fact that he kept on playing so well that made those stories stick around for only a short period of time."

Finally, however, I believe there is this. Even if he does get to pass Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 majors, this seamy story will ensure he is never universally acknowledged as the greatest golfer the game has known. Although if only in that one regard, in terms of how he hoped to be perceived by posterity, I suspect Dr Gribbin's book was in fact lying amid the wreckage of Tiger's career.

March 2010