What's Tiger's next move? Advice from a master of disaster
Behind the compound walls, chaos reigns. There's no Machiavellian plot to stonewall the police and manage the media. It's the opposite: bedlam. Agents and attorneys in shouting matches; heated debates over millions of endorsement dollars potentially lost; accusations, name-calling and raw emotion. All the while, an icon in deep denial holes up in the master bedroom, refusing to admit that everything has changed.
Three days after Tiger Woods crashed his Cadillac Escalade into a fire hydrant and tree outside his Orlando home, we don't know what's going on inside his mansion or inside his mind. But when a celebrity's world suddenly implodes in tabloid scandal, the scene typically mirrors the one described above, says Eric Dezenhall, a crisis-management expert who has counseled some of the world's biggest names -- athletes, actors, rock stars -- in their darkest hours. (As a rule, he does not identify his clients).
"I've been inside the ugliest scandals you can imagine, and celebrities in crisis don't make rational decisions," says Dezenhall, author of Damage Control: Why Everything You Know About Crisis Management is Wrong. "It's not a well-oiled machine at work. It's more like a clown car. Everyone in the inner circle has an opinion, but no one knows what to do, especially the celebrity, who is panicking and in denial."
Tiger isn't talking, apart from a brief statement posted Sunday on his web site. As of Monday, Woods had declined repeated Florida Highway Patrol requests to discuss the accident, which has become a tabloid sensation unlike anything Woods has seen in his 13-year professional career. (The New York Times reported that more than 3,200 electronic or print stories were published in the 36 hours after the Friday morning accident.) Monday afternoon, citing injuries from the crash, Woods withdrew from this week's Chevron World Challenge in California, a charity event he's hosted since 2000.
If history is a guide, Tiger will remain mute, leaving the "Do Not Disturb" dangling from his front door. What should he do to better navigate these rocky waters? Here are three pieces of advice for the World No. 1 from a master of disaster.
STOP STONEWALLING THE COPS
The longer he puts off talking to the police, Dezenhall says, the worse it looks. "Tiger's objective is to make this story as boring as possible. If it turns out this is a garden-variety domestic dispute, he'll be fine. If there are photos of him in a French maid's outfit beating up a Girl Scout troop, that's different. Either way, the first thing I would tell Tiger is he can't keep stonewalling the police. He obviously has his reasons for not talking. It may be serving him legally, but it's not helping him with the public. I know from 25 years of experience that it's not the guilt that convicts you in the court of public opinion. It's the suspense. The striptease. The sooner he makes peace with the police, the sooner he can knock this story into remission."
DON'T TALK...YET
To the chorus calling for Woods to hightail it to Oprah's couch, Dezenhall has one word: "Bull----." A few more words: "The media loves to say, 'Tell everything. That's good for you.' No, that's good for the media. Potentially, there are legal reasons why Tiger hasn't talked. He needs to work some things out before he talks. I tell clients to prioritize, in this order: health, family, the law, endorsements, and everything else. We don't know what happened that night, so people calling for Tiger to tell everything, that's potentially damaging. I remember when Martha Stewart got in trouble [with the SEC]. Someone on TV came out with the idiotic cliche, 'Fess up!' No. You can't fess up because anything you say is admissible in court. There's also privacy. He has a right to privacy. The fact that the public wants to know doesn't mean they have a right to know."
PLAY ONE-ON-ONE
While entitled to his private life, to put this scandal in his rear-view mirror the famously tight-lipped Woods will likely have to acknowledge more than he did in his terse Sunday statement. "He'll have to talk in more detail," Dezenhall says. "I would recommend a one-on-one interview in a friendly, civil setting. Not a press conference. He should say whatever needs to be said, and no more." Dezenhall points to radio personality Don Imus, who in 2007 was fired by CBS Radio and dropped by MSNBC after making a racial slur against the Rutgers women's basketball team. "Imus over-apologized. What's the benefit of sitting down with Al Sharpton on national TV and letting him berate you in front of millions? There is none. Characterize the situation once, in as few words as possible, and then shut up."
So far, Woods has handled the whole affair with extreme (and predictable) secrecy. He should rethink the strategy, Dezenhall says. "Tiger has always been secretive, elusive, a little arrogant. That's actually helped him in the past. It's made him more iconic. But it's hurting him here. It looks like stonewalling. Everything is different now. This isn't about birdies and bogeys. It's a police matter. It's TMZ. It's the 24/7 news cycle. It's beyond golf. I've seen it many times -- celebrities in crisis are the last to acknowledge the reality of the situation. They're five steps behind the right move. But Tiger's in a different world now. Everything has changed."
