Tiger's New Nike Ad: It's Just Another Fake Apology

The only difference between the current TV Nike commercial featuring Tiger Woods and the disgraced golfer's apologies on network news is probably about a million bucks in Tiger's pocket. It's a TV ad, and Tiger gets paid big bucks to make TV ads. However, this one is strangely different.

In somber black and white, just showing Tiger's familiar face silently trying to look "I'm sorry", a sonorous voiceover speaks for 30 seconds. At such a dramatic moment, it could have been the ghost of Hamlet's father speaking to his son about "murder most foul". No, it was allegedly an old audiotape recording of Woods' deceased father, but the voice didn't say anything about "infidelty most foul."

The exact words were: "Tiger, I am more prone to be inquisitive, to promote discussion. I want to find out what your thinking was. I want to find out what your feelings are. And did you learn anything?" Did Nike somehow go beyond the grave to make the tape, and the late Col. Woods is sending down a heavenly message chastising his prodigal son.

The words can mean anything, because the recording could have been made when Tiger was six, 16 or 26. We can only guess that Nike and Tiger want the public to know ... what else ... Tiger is really sorry he was caught cheating.

What's next? A commercial showing Tiger visiting a Nike shoemaking factory in China or Vietnam. He'll be surrounded by a group of tired, dirty-faced Nike employees, some of them as old as ten. Then, as he stares silently at the camera with his professionally-sad face again, a sonorous voiceover of Bill Clinton will ask Tiger if he learned anything by his catting around.

Maybe then, Tiger will shed a tear or two, and say he loves little children and misses his own, now taken from their doting father by a cruel, golf-club-Cadillac-smashing mother. Only time will tell how this situation plays out. Tiger has been eliminated from the Quail Hollow tournement by missing the cut by a large span. His wife is taking actions that seem to indicate the divorce is going through, so we will see what the next few weeks will bring in this ever changing saga.