I am still trying to figure out this whole Tiger Woods/Dan Jenkins war of words. I mean there are plenty of things I get: Dan has no use for Tiger, Dan loves giving him the needle, Dan is old school…really old school.
Tiger has no use for Dan, never did in fact Tiger has little use for any writer. He seems to view any attempt by a bona fide journalist to get an interview as an intrusion. His press conferences are so bland that many writers don’t even bother to attend knowing that he’ll say nothing truly worth writing about. 
But he is still hounded by more media requests than any golfer and as Alex Miceli tells us Tiger has held more press conferences than any professional golfer.
At the ASAP Sports website – the archival transcript repository for sports interviews –there are 1,312 transcripts online from Woods interviews dating to the 1996 U.S. Open, when Woods still was an amateur. These transcripts are from news conferences, ad hoc or flash interviews generally from a tournament.
By comparison, Phil Mickelson has 993 transcripts on the same website, dating to the 1995 U.S. Open.
By this measure, at least, it is clear that Woods is accessible. Of course, the number of questions in such a setting usually is limited, and Woods’ answers can be less than illuminating.
True, most of Woods answers are bland, scripted and mostly boring.
Many have long wondered why Woods would be so detached and distant when many of his contemporaries are open when put in front of a microphone.
The good Mr. Miceli also supplies us with the reason for Tiger’s perception of the press as a pain in his ass.
It seems that a 1997 story which showed Tiger as a wise cracking, joke telling, 21 year old phenom was a bit too much for Team Tiger to take.
Woods was different then. The media was different then. The game of golf was different then also.
Since then Woods has transformed the game on many levels and the media which at first heralded him then honored him and then finally tore him down still uses him. In fact they still use each other.
Need some ratings or website traffic, run a story on Tiger. When Tiger needs to promote something he’ll use his “friends” in the media.
But I wonder if things for Mr. Woods would have been a bit different if he had had some good, solid advice about the media when he was 21. As it is he was swallowed by Nike and IMG and surrounded by sycophants that resulted in Woods viewing the media as a chore which he had little use for.
Things may have been different all those years ago. But as it is now we have two of the biggest names in their respective professions banging heads. Oh, how things could have been.
Click here for Miceli’s Golfweek article.
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