VIA: Golf.com
Tiger Woods will speak to “friends, colleagues and close associates” at a tightly scripted press conference at PGA Tour headquarters at 11 a.m. Friday, according to his agent Mark Steinberg.
The world’s No. 1-ranked golfer has been silent except for statements on his Web site throughout the course of the sex scandal that dominated the headlines in December and January.
“Tiger plans to discuss his past and his future and he plans to apologize for his behavior,” Steinberg told Bloomberg News.
Woods will field no questions at the press conference in Ponte Vedra, Fla., and only wire-service and a select few non-wire reporters will be allowed to sit in during the statement.
He has been out of sight, in part at a Mississippi clinic for sex addiction, according to published reports, since his last statement on his widely reported infidelities some 10 weeks ago.
“I have let my family down and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart,” Woods said in a post on his site on Dec. 2. “I have not been true to my values and the behavior my family deserves. I am not without faults and I am far short of perfect. I am dealing with my behavior and personal failings behind closed doors with my family. Those feelings should be shared by us alone”
That statement appeared the same day US Weekly published reports of Woods’s alleged affair with a cocktail waitress, and ran Woods’s now infamous voice mail on its Web site.
Several other women subsequently came forward to claim relationships with the married father of two.
The Woods story broke in the early morning hours the Friday after Thanksgiving, when Woods was involved in a mysterious one-car accident outside his home at the gated community of Isleworth, in Orlando, Fla.
Steinberg told Bloomberg that Woods has taken steps toward recovery, and feels that “it’s time to make amends and to publicly do that.”
Woods has not played since winning the Australian Masters on Nov. 15, his seventh victory of 2009.
He skipped his own charity tournament, the Chevron World Challenge, as the scandal picked up steam in the press, before announcing he would take a break from the game to try to put his life back together.
Woods’s announcement Wednesday came as the rest of the PGA Tour’s elite began play in the 64-man WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship in Tucson, Ariz. Woods had been an Accenture spokesman until the company dropped him in the wake of the scandal. He also lost his endorsement deal with AT&T.
