Sports

Hey, Tiger: Stop hiding and tell the truth

This is what Tiger Woods has wrought: The world’s first billionaire athlete who’s on a collision course with golf immortality and married to a beautiful blonde with whom he has two healthy children — the perfect life, you could argue — is holed up like a frightened criminal afraid to show his face.

The shame of this is that Woods hasn’t committed a crime.

Sure, he was cited yesterday with careless driving for that curious Friday morning one-car crash outside of his driveway, an episode that’ll cost him less money than the spare change he might find between the cracks of his living room couch.

But the reality is this: The only crime Woods has committed is a crime against himself for not coming forward to publicly explain the bizarre events of Friday morning.

What he’s done by remaining holed up and out of sight is create an air of guilt around himself.

And now, there are publicity-seeking yahoos coming out of every water hazard staking new claims about affairs they supposedly had with Woods.

This is the worst Woods has handled anything in his ultra-public life. He’s triple-bogeyed this situation.

If Woods and his wife, Elin Nordegren, had an argument and he bolted from the house before driving his car into that unassuming hydrant — Woods simply should come out and tell the truth.

He should tell the intrusive world, “Hey, I had a spat with Elin and I stormed out of the house in a rage and messed up by getting behind the wheel.”

The next question undoubtedly would be something like, “What were you arguing about?” And Woods would be completely inbounds by saying that’s no one’s business and moving on.

Had he done that in the first place, this entire incident would quickly fade into a mere footnote in his life.

Woods cannot hide forever.

He was scheduled to meet with the media yesterday in his Chevron World Challenge pre-tournament press conference in Los Angeles, but pulled out of the event that raises millions of dollars for his foundation, citing the injuries he says he suffered in the crash.

By skipping out on his event, Woods undoubtedly believes it’ll calm the storm clouds hovering over his life. After all, the next time he’ll play will likely be the last week of January at Torrey Pines.

This’ll all blow over by then, right? Wrong.

What Woods is naively missing out on is this: The circus never leaves town until the last act has played out, and he’s the headliner.

If Woods thinks the curiosity will calm in the two-month span before he decides to play again, he’s grossly mistaken. It’s quite the opposite. The longer Woods lets this linger, the worse it will be for him, the more aggressive the pursuit of his private life will become.

You can make the argument that Woods doesn’t need to answer to anyone. But he does. Because of who he is, Woods must answer to a court that most of don’t have to answer to: The court of public opinion.

And right now, that court is widely divided about him, with many more precincts checking in on the negative side than ever before.

Only Woods can change that — by showing up and telling the truth.

He can hide inside his palatial home, hide in his massive yacht named “Privacy” or stay underwater somewhere wearing his scuba equipment, but eventually Woods is going to have to come up for air.

The sooner he does it, the healthier it’ll be for him.