On Monday, Tiger Woods showed up in Italy to surprise his girlfriend, Lindsay Vonn, as she competed in the women’s World Cup, but generated the most buzz for his missing front tooth. According to his agent, via email, the missing tooth was the result of an unfortunate encounter with a camera. Via the AP:
Woods made a surprise visit to Italy on Monday to watch girlfriend Lindsey Vonn capture her record 63rd World Cup race. The photo that generated all the buzz was Woods missing his front tooth.
The culprit, according to his agent, was a camera.
“During a crush of photographers at the awards podium at the World Cup event in Italy, a media member with a shoulder-mounted video camera pushed and surged toward the stage, turned and hit Tiger Woods in the mouth,” Mark Steinberg of Excel Sports said in an email. “Woods’ tooth was knocked out by the incident.”
I find this explanation exceptionally hard to believe. First of all, I sincerely doubt that Woods was in the same area as reports and in the midst of a huge crowd. He’s Tiger freakin’ Woods. You don’t think he was watching this all in a more exclusive area, or whatever? I do. Secondly, how did no one else see this happen? Because this is all news to race officials, as told to USA Today:
Race secretary general Nicola Colli disputed that Woods was near the awards ceremony when the incident reportedly occurred.
“During the [awards] ceremony, Tiger Woods was in the operations tent, the tent just outside the exit gate,” Colli told USA TODAY Sports. “He was looking on from there and he was not in the finish area.”
Colli added: “He was not in the ceremony area during the ceremony … I don’t have any information regarding the accident.”
This is all very strange. For what it’s worth, (a penny, at most) Vonn is backing his story even though she admitted that she didn’t see it happen.
Also, this is not the first time his team has tried to cover up and/or downplay injuries he has sustained. If you will recall with me his November 2009 accident in the middle of the night when his jilted wife ran after him with a golf club and he smashed his SUV into a fire hydrant. I believe the PR-spin on that was “minor car accident.”
So the question remains – what REALLY happened? Did Vonn catch him cheating on her and knee him in the mouth? Did he re-enact the Happy Gilmore scene with Bob Barker and get his tooth knocked out with a fist?
Did that Perkins waitress finally unleash all her anger? Odds are we’ll never know the truth. But we have to wonder if his agent thought his explanation of the incident would suffice when no one else saw it happen. If you knock out Tiger Woods’ tooth, SOMEONE is going to notice. It’s all in the details, people. Next time, try harder!
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