Sports Therapy hotline, can I help you?

Yes, I'd like to talk about Tiger Woods.

Sure. We might as well, everybody else is.

I'm not sure what to think about him.

I've been hearing that a lot this week.

I mean, he seems like he's a good guy and all, and now it turns out he's a liar and he cheats on his wife.

Which part of that bothers you?

What do you mean?

Does it bother you that he "transgressed," as he phrased it on his website, or that he lied about it before this, or that you used to think he was a good guy?

I don't understand the question.

On what basis did you think he was a good guy? Because of his smile? His Foundation? His public appearances, where every word is carefully chosen to give away nothing?

You don't know Tiger Woods. I don't know him. Very, very few people actually know him, which appears to be how he wants it.

So he's not a good guy?

I don't know. I don't think a really good guy would have a snarling pit bull as his caddie, but it's also not in his nature to broadcast every good deed. If he were to give a random kid in his gallery a Super Bowl ticket, he wouldn't do it in front of a TV camera.

We like to think we know an athlete because we see him doing his thing every week, every day, year after year. It's a fiction, one we invent in order to invest so much interest in what a bunch of guys do with a stick and a ball.

But whatever else you want to say about Tiger, you've got to say he's a smart guy. He's got a gorgeous wife, hundreds of millions of dollars - how could he be so stupid? Didn't he ever hear Paul Newman's line, "Why go out for hamburger when you've got steak at home?"

It's very difficult ever to know what's going on in someone else's marriage; it's hard enough to know what's happening in your own. If it's true about people you know well, imagine what a leap it takes to make assumptions about a couple like Tiger and Elin.

Tiger is a celebrity, an athlete, and a man. None of those three groups has the best track record when it comes to fidelity. What's surprisingly stupid is that he didn't seem to realize he was giving power over his life to people outside the inner circle. He thrives on control, yet ran the risk that someone with a killer body and an overabundance of vowels would trade their secret for money and what passes for fame. That's just bad course management.

You're pretty flip about adultery.

Or maybe realistic. Athletes screw around. They're young, fit, competitive, and spend a lot of time on the road. It's nothing new; look to the pantheon of all-time greats in any sport and you'll find a surplus of testosterone and a dearth of selectivity. Golf is absolutely not exempt from this.

Sports stars are targets, and have to recognize in the TMZ Age that their reputations are only as good as the cell phones around them. We don't have grainy video of Babe Ruth and three flappers having a grand time in a room above a tavern, but not because he wasn't up there. Also, the press wouldn't report such things back then. Today? Fuggedaboudit.

But isn't he supposed to be a hero, a role model? He gets paid a ton of money to be the public face of his sport and his sponsors. Doesn't he owe them better, and us?

Does he? He's an athlete, an entertainer. Sports are a shadow play, a metaphor for those battles in which individuals demonstrate real courage in overcoming obstacles and opponents. No golf shot is "brave," regardless of what risk it runs, compared to the actions of a soldier in a war zone or a policeman on the beat. Let's stop confusing celebrities and heroes, please.

Is Tiger going to lose his endorsements?

I doubt it. He's going to have to hear a lot of unfunny jokes about his driving, and Gillette might want to rethink "The Best a Man Can Get," but I don't think his image is going to be hurt too badly. He's never put himself forward in a righteous, moralistic fashion. His popularity is based on his greatness, not his goodness.

How do you think this stuff will affect him next year?

Publicly, he'll be even more guarded. In the statement on his website, he notes, "I have been dismayed to realize the full extent of what tabloid scrutiny really means." The tabs won't be going away soon.

On course? Won't affect him a bit. He'll add to that total of majors next year, with the U.S. Open going back to Pebble Beach (where he won by fifteen) and the British to St. Andrews (where he's won the last two). If anything, perhaps we now know the reason he didn't win any this year: when you're driving away from home in the middle of the night, it's probably not your first fight about the subject.

Didn't you say you wouldn't speculate about someone else's marriage?

I strayed. I apologize. I'm human.

Still and all, I feel disillusioned by him.

That's maybe not a bad thing. Tiger Woods is an absolutely magnetic figure, with breathtaking skill and imagination at maneuvering a dimpled ball from tee to hole. We've never seen a golfer like him, and never will again. Enjoy him in his element, on the golf course; what he does there is indelible, and all we can or need to know.

Can I call you again if Derek Jeter ever tests positive for anything?

We're here 24/7. We have to be.