Right now, as he is hunkered down under a thunderstorm of negative publicity, Tiger Woods is probably thinking the same thing that Kobe Bryant was thinking when he was holed up in that Colorado police precinct several years back: “I should have done what Shaq did and paid [her] off.”
Consider Kobe’s example, Tiger: if he just had paid the poor woman off after their sexual tryst, Kobe might have avoided the accusations of rape, the scorching heat of media scrutiny, the millions off dollars in attorneys fees, years of image rehabilitation, the loss of tens of millions in endorsements, the marital strife, and an extended period of being viewed as a social pariah.
Tiger, this all could have been avoided if you had just written Jaimee Grubbs a nice-sized check, replete with a legal document demanding secrecy. I mean, you are worth nearly a billion dollars. A few million, or even several million, missing from the bank account would not have broken you. Your wife would not have noticed the missing funds — most likely because you are a controlling person who probably didn’t allow your wife access to the bank records. Grubbs probably got some type of royalty check for sharing her story with US Weekly, but that would only be a fraction of what you could have offered her. Plus, look at the excruciating headache it would have saved you.
But here’s the problem, Tiger: you have a well-deserved reputation as being cheap. We’re talking Scrooge levels here. Despite making over $100 million a year in endorsements and tens of millions more in golf earnings, more than one media report states that you count your money down to the penny — and give out money as if those pennies weigh as much as boulders. You will develop no sympathy or loyalty with that kind of fist clenching of your pocket change.
Tiger is learning that you never know what you’re going to get when you drag a dollar bill through a trailer park. She’s a cocktail waitress in L.A. That means she’s probably broke and looking for any trick or scheme to fuel her upward mobility. She found it with you.
The other woman identified as having an affair with Woods, the New York socialite Rachel Uchitel, was much higher up the social ladder than our L.A. cocktail waitress and had the prudence and foresight to deny the affair and seek high-powered legal representation. If it proves that Uchitel had an affair with you, she also probably wants her pockets lined up with big bundles of Benjamins, but at least she would have done so discreetly. This is a lesson to never lie down with someone in an illicit affair unless both parties have a lot to lose. The cocktail waitress had nothing to lose.
We are not advocating or condoning Tiger Woods’ infidelity in any way. But in light of his admission on his Web site that he had engaged in “transgressions” and “personal sins” and that he let his “family down,” why didn’t you just pay Grubbs off than go through all this?
–terry shropshire
