Why Tiger should come clean

The world's richest athlete has a dilemma. The public is demanding answers about Tiger Woods's early morning car accident last week, and his refusal to speak has further stirred the rumor mill.

As dilemmas go, it may not be so bad. It doesn't seem that Woods is in danger of losing his lucrative endorsement deals or his future earnings on the PGA tour. Even if he comes out of the controversy with a tarnished reputation, he will still likely be the world's most famous and higest paid athlete.

But after a week of bruising media attention, Woods's publicists must be working overtime doing damage control. First he was booed at Stanford University, his alma mater, during a brief halftime speech at a football game. Then the National Enquirer published a front-page headline accusing the 33-year-old golfer of cheating on his wife. Next he's lying unconscious on the street after running into a fire hydrant and a tree at his next door neighbor's house at 2:30 in the morning.

What's going on with Tiger?

Of course, Tiger is under no obligation to speak to authorities or to the media about this "fender bender"; this is still a "private" matter. But he's only fooling himself if he thinks the rumors will go away by sitting quietly in his home in Windermere.

Woods released a statement on his web site over the weekend that generated more than 3,000 comments from readers and dozens of new media stories.

"As you all know, I had a single-car accident earlier this week, and sustained some injuries," he wrote. "I have some cuts, bruising and right now I'm pretty sore."

Woods took full responsibility for the incident but declined to provide more details. "This situation is my fault, and it's obviously embarrassing to my family and me," he wrote. "I'm human and I'm not perfect. I will certainly make sure this doesn't happen again."

That's all very helpful to his cause, but the next line reveals a bit of naïveté about the media and celebrities. "This is a private matter and I want to keep it that way," Woods insisted. "Although I understand there is curiosity, the many false, unfounded and malicious rumors that are currently circulating about my family and me are irresponsible," he added.

Tiger Woods may be exactly right about the unfounded rumors, but he's exactly wrong if he thinks that telling people not to speculate will stop them from speculating. The media, like nature, abhore a vaccum, and in the absence of concrete information, they will continue to conduct their own investigation, even if the Florida Highway Patrol can't.

In his statement, Woods also disputed the widely popular claim that his wife had beaten him or sought to hurt him. "The only person responsible for the accident is me. My wife, Elin, acted courageously when she saw I was hurt and in trouble," Woods said. "She was the first person to help me. Any other assertion is absolutely false."

That may be true, but it raises more questions than it answers. If his wife heard the car crash and ran outside the door to help, why was she carrying a golf club when she exited the house? Did she know she would have to smash out the back window to remove her husband from the vehicle? Or did she return to the house to get a golf club after she saw the car crash?

Among the other questions . . . If the accident was only "minor," as Woods's team characterized it at first, why was he unconcious for 5 minutes and why was he hospitalized? And how did Woods suffer facial lacerations from an accident that was so minor that the airbags didn't deploy?

Other questions. Why did Woods hire a lawyer if he didn't do anything wrong? Why did his agent tell the police that he would talk to them only to turn them away at the door? And why hasn't he spoken to the police by now, if only to clear his good name?

The way to answer these questions is to come clean and talk to the police. If he didn't do anything wrong, he won't have anything to worry about. But refusing to talk only makes people wonder what, if anything, he (or is his wife) is hiding.

As of this moment, nobody is seriously asserting that Tiger Woods did anything wrong in this traffic accident. The police ruled out alcohol use as a cause. Although they never conducted a breathalyzer test, they said they had no probable cause to suspect alcohol was involved in this incident.

And nobody is saying Woods is a bad person just because he had an accident. Everybody has car accidents. This one didn't hurt anybody, except Tiger Woods himself. But there's more to this story than Woods is telling us.

I'm not a Tiger hater. I'm a huge fan. I love Tiger Woods. I don't care if he calls himself "Cablasian" or married a white woman. That's his right. And even if he went all Sammy Sosa-rogue on us and tried to blend in with the first syllable of his self-described racial classification, that wouldn't take away from the achievements he's made as the world's best golfer, who happens to be a person of color.

I fully support Woods's decision to remain silent, if he's genuinely prepared to accept the consequences. And one consequence will be that wild rumors and accusations will continue to spread about the events surrounding that accident.

But if Woods wants to quell the rumors, there is one simple solution. Come clean, Tiger. It's your best hope.