ZealousGolfer.com

This morning, US Magazine, a celebrity gossip publication, released a video that included what seems to be Tiger Woods' voice. On the recording, Tiger commands Jaimee Grubbs, a Los Angeles cocktail waitress and the second to come forward this week as a mistress of Tiger, to change her voicemail in order to prevent Elin Woods from learning of their relationship.

Here is the video:

I was still pulling for Tiger before this, but the evidence is piling up. It seems like Grubbs is more than another attention-seeker looking for a brief moment in the sun.

Surprisingly, Tiger has finally responded to these charges. Well, sort of. On TigerWoods.com, Tiger's official website, he posted this morning:

I guess that is kind of a confession. You can see the full blog post here. What follows is a statement by Tiger that he deserves privacy and that the media scrutiny over the past week was in some way unfair. He also notes that Elin did not, in fact, attack Tiger on the night of his accident.

Frankly, I'm not feeling a lot of sympathy for Tiger Woods right now. Even Eliot Spitzer and John Edwards had the guts to confront the issue in the public. As far as respecting Tiger as a person, he definitely has reached a new low in my book.

However, maybe he has a point about how the public has no right to scrutinize every detail of his personal life.

I am not so sure. The issue is that Tiger Woods has chosen to be a highly public figure. Try walking through a mall or airport in the United States and not running into an Accenture advertisement with Tiger overcoming some obstacle. It's tough.

The Tiger Woods franchise has allowed him to make a billion dollars hitting a ball into a hole with a stick because he is highly, highly marketable. Tiger has exploited that opportunity to give himself the most desirable position in the world of sports. This is exactly what he signed up for.

Unfortunately, as we have seen time and time again, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

I have trouble seeing how avoiding the issue will work out in the long run for Tiger. The public wants answers, and if he doesn't give them to us, people will turn to TMZ and the other leaders of the gossip world. His value to major corporations will plummet, and his iconic status will be challenged.