There’s no mulligan for Golf Digest.
The magazine’s January issue is due to hit newsstands next week with a cover that screams: “The Top 10 Tips Obama Can Take From Tiger.”
It features a photo composite that appears to show the president and the embattled golf superstar on a course together.
Golf Digest, which has Woods under an exclusive seven-figure contract as its “playing editor,” wasn’t trying to cash in on Tiger’s newfound notoriety.
Rather, the cover was made weeks ago and the Condé Nast monthly deemed it would be too expensive to pull copies after it had gone to press.
So the mag, which has 1.65 million in paid circulation, is slated to go on sale next Tuesday.
The story was designed to make the point that President Obama should embrace the golfing industry because of all the claimed “benefits to the economy.”
In one unintended economic benefit, the Tiger story is expected to help beleaguered celebrity weeklies — which have tighter deadlines and are expecting a single-copy boom this week.
But Jerry Tarde, the editor-in-chief of Golf Digest, lamented, “We’re a monthly magazine with monthly deadlines.
“The January issue went to press Nov. 14, two weeks before the events of the last week.”