The following was posted this morning on Tiger’s website, tigerwoods.com (check it out for comments from viewers, which are pouring in). An interesting admission. Now let’s see if the public/media leave him alone or not. Wanna take bets?

I have let my family down and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart. 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.

Although I am a well-known person and have made my career as a professional athlete, I have been dismayed to realize the full extent of what tabloid scrutiny really means. For the last week, my family and I have been hounded to expose intimate details of our personal lives. The stories in particular that physical violence played any role in the car accident were utterly false and malicious. Elin has always done more to support our family and shown more grace than anyone could possibly expect.

But no matter how intense curiosity about public figures can be, there is an important and deep principle at stake which is the right to some simple, human measure of privacy. I realize there are some who don’t share my view on that. But for me, the virtue of privacy is one that must be protected in matters that are intimate and within one’s own family. Personal sins should not require press releases and problems within a family shouldn’t have to mean public confessions.

Whatever regrets I have about letting my family down have been shared with and felt by us alone. I have given this a lot of reflection and thought and I believe that there is a point at which I must stick to that principle even though it’s difficult.

I will strive to be a better person and the husband and father that my family deserves. For all of those who have supported me over the years, I offer my profound apology.

Mulling legal precedents, perhaps?

If you’re convinced that Tiger did the wrong thing by remaining silent, maybe the world’s greatest golfer is smarter (or has better legal representation) than many of us think. My son the law student sent me this link to a legal site that posits some very good reasons for Tiger keeping mum about the accident and especially his wife’s actions. We may never know the full story, but legally speaking that just may be a good thing—at least for Mr. and Mrs. Woods.

But jeez I wish it were the heart of the golf-playing season and we could all find something else to talk about. How about that Italian World Cup team?

Uh-oh… not another errant drive?

Since it’s now impossible to be in the golf business without putting in one’s two cents on the Tiger traffic trauma, here are my thoughts.

1) I think he was up at 2:30am so he could be first on line at Walmart, or maybe Target, where he was going to snap up some Black Friday savings. A coffeemaker, perhaps? Or a Snuggie? Maybe the kids asked for a Wii system…

What gifts do you think he was going to buy, and for whom?

2) Would none of this happened if he’d still been driving a Buick?

I hope this will be my last public thoughts on the matter, but somehow I doubt it.

One of my more interesting assignments of late was interviewing USGA Executive Director David B. Fay. Next week, Fay will be presented with the Distinguished Service Award by the Metropolitan Golf Association (that’s the New York metro area, more than 500 clubs!), and I was asked to write his profile for the association’s Met Golfer magazine, which you can read here (sorry, for now it’s a pdf; when it becomes a weblink, I’ll let you know). I’ve known David for many years, but this was the first time we sat down, just the two of us, and talked. We’re neighbors on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, so I walked to his apartment and “interviewed” him while watching the first game of the Yankees-Twins playoff series. He’s a true New York sports fan, especially the Yankees, so the transcript is filled with shouts, claps, screams, and comments on the action and the team. His thoughts about golf are pretty good, too.

I used to watch for mentions of golf in the non-golf media, looking for signs that this was a good thing or not. Stories of deals done on courses, politicos escaping to hedge-shrouded fairways, celebrities picking up the game. Back in the go-golf late 1980s and ’90s, almost any mention of golf was ultimately a positive, luring potential new players to sporting-good stores, clubs, and (my personal favorite) newsstands.

Now I’m not so sure. After yesterday’s story in the Wall Street Journal about President Obama forsaking basketball for golf (read it here), today’s New York Times has a much more local—but no less squirm-inducing—story about former New York State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and his golf jones. Bruno, “who federal prosecutors say improperly mixed his political and business interests and sought to deceive the public about it,” as the Times describes it, apparently used golf as a way of drumming up his bad business. The story also mentions other well-known slimeballs who loved and used golf, including Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

It’s enough to make you want to take up…basketball?

It just occurred to me—jet-lagged as I still am—that a very significant anniversary recently passed. Of no importance to you perhaps, but life-changing for me so I can’t let it go unnoticed.

In mid-November, 1984, exactly 25 years ago, I began working at Golf Magazine. I’d been in magazine publishing for a number of years, mostly travel books and in-flights, and had taken up golf just a few years earlier, having gone to a Golf Digest school at Pinehurst for a week in order to write about the experience. Having never held a golf club before, I suddenly found myself enraptured by the game. Then, in what now seems the blink of an eye, I was in the business. And now, it’s been 25 years.

The mantra in my household long has been, “Golf has been very very good to me” (apologies to Garrett Morris from “Saturday Night Live” in the days it actually was funny). When I think about where I’ve been, what I’ve done, the people I’ve met, and most significantly the people I worked with…well, let’s just say I’m one lucky SOB.

I will resist the impulse to get sentimental and/or maudlin, but thanks to everyone with whom I’ve shared my life and career over the past quarter-century. But most of all, thanks to George Peper for taking a chance on me.

I was reminded today of a mildly auspicious event happening in exactly one month’s time, the opening on December 18 of the Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain north of Tucson, Arizona, in the foothills of the Tortolita Mountains.

Admittedly this event probably wouldn’t mean much to me if I hadn’t toured the hotel—which was nothing more than a construction site and girders—last August. At the property’s expense, I had come out to see the new Jack Nicklaus golf course, which was undergoing its final prep before the PGA Tour arrived to give it their blessing in anticipation of the Accenture Match-Play event a few months later. I was able to play the course—early in the day, thankfully, as it gets pretty damn hot in Tucson in August—and witness the work going on literally underfoot as everyone worried about the upcoming inspection.

As you know by now, the Tour came out, the course received its blessings, the tournament was held, the players complained about Jack’s greens, Geoff Ogilvy won (collecting $1.4 million), and Jack came back a few weeks later to soften the course in anticipation of next season’s event, to be held February 25-March 1.

I liked the course—wide fairways, desert washes, gently rolling landscape, and funky greens. And it didn’t take a genius to realize that the putting surfaces were the only protection it could throw up against the world’s best players. But I thought a little roller-coaster putting action among the cacti would make for good match-play and good television. Because even at something like 7,400 yards, making it the longest course on Tour, it was too wide open and too devoid of hazards—except for the random stray into the desert—to bother those guys. Indeed, they came, they played, they whined, they won. We’ll see how it goes next winter.

Now what I want to see is the hotel, which opens next month. Travel around the country or the world and it’s hard not to like Ritz-Carltons. They know what they’re doing. And while they have only a few golf properties, they’re good ones: Reynolds Plantation in Georgia; Kapalua, Hawaii; Half Moon Bay, California; Lake Las Vegas; plus a few others in this country and overseas.

What I liked about the Dove Mountain hotel is its location, tucked so tightly into a box canyon that you can almost reach out the window and touch the rock walls. There will be three restaurants, a pool with a 235-foot-long water slide, and a spa. Also numerous hiking and equestrian trails that will let visitors get up-close to artifacts and petroglyphs (discovered during construction) of the Hohokam Indians who lived in the hills 2,000 years ago; plans were to protect the remnants while leaving them in their original habitat. Sounded cool to me.

And I want to visit the hotel, shown above (and at this site), in a finished state—with walls and beds and such.

Finally, if you’ve never had the pleasure of being coddled Ritz-Carlton-style, a little story. Yes, I know, I was there as their guest and as a member of the fourth estate, so it was in their best interests to be nice. But this took the cake: As the pro and I approached the ninth green, a welcoming party waited—the general manager, marketing director, a few other suits, and a guy wearing an Augusta National-like white caddie jumpsuit and holding a big insulated box. After putting out, we walked over to chat and were informed that lunch was served: The caddie opened the box to a feast—Double-Doubles and fries from In N Out Burger, undoubtedly the finest fast-food chain anywhere (and a personal obsession of mine, as they had been informed). Say what you will, it was smart, fun, and classy in a lick-your-fingers sorta way.

And proof once again that the way to a man’s heart—or in this case, his pen—is through his stomach.

Course photograph by Jim Mandeville

I made it back from Thailand both exhausted and exhilarated, which is how travel is supposed to be. There is an enormous amount to say, which I’ll do first in the various magazine assignments I have as they, unfortunately, pay a little better than you all do. However, a few observations.

First, Thailand is an adult amusement park. That is both good and bad. Good in that tourism is the country’s leading industry and they are experts at it, from hotels to airlines to restaurants (there is no such thing as bad Thai food!) to golf courses to massage parlors. And by massage parlors I mean legitimate ones where a two-hour full-body Thai massage can cost as little as $12 including tip. Bad, if that’s the right word, in that much of the country’s notoriety has been earned for its sex trade, which is also quite cheap and also a combination of amusing and pathetic. But more than one reliable source told me that prostitution/companionship is an acceptable trade over there, a way for young women to make pretty good money (in a country where the average worker earns about $15 a day), most of which is sent home to parents and children. Of course a lot of that is justification, and also helps explain why the country claims a 60% return rate among tourists. Sad, and weird, but true.

Second, the golf in Thailand was a very pleasant surprise. With all the notoriety of China, Korea, and Vietnam, among other Asian countries, as new golf destinations, it’s worth noting that there are more than 250 courses in Thailand and the game has been played there for more than 80 years. Most of those courses are not very good, and many are military owned and operated (the army, which is in sight almost everywhere you go, seems to love its golf), but the other 60 or so range from fair to outstanding. I played nine, spanning the country from the resort island of Phuket in the south, through Bangkok and the resort towns of Pattaya and Hua Hin in the middle, up to Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, two fascinating old towns in the far north near the Burmese and Laotian borders in the heart of the “Golden Triangle.” Of those nine, four or five were really special, interesting, dramatic, challenging, and fun.

Third, hot. Ohmygod, hot! And humid. There was very little rain, but temperatures were routinely in the upper 90s and the humidity was at least that. Strangely, a few courses are walking-only, others are carts-only. I usually love to walk, but not there. Sorry.

Which leads to fourth, caddies. They are required everywhere and add greatly to each club’s charm: Lovely young ladies, swaddled head to toe for protection from the sun, they almost all speak enough English to be very helpful, are terrific at reading greens, are pretty good at yardages (but never figure in for pin position, only giving distances to the center of greens), will even give a quickie massage to an aching golfer’s back, and are wonderful ambassadors (ambassadresses?) for the country and the game. And like almost everything else in Thailand, they’re a bargain: Fees are usually about $8 a round whether driving the cart or pulling a trolley with the bag. (They never double-carry.) Add to that a tip of another $8 or so and you’re talking a bargain.

I’ll talk about the specific courses in my articles and future posts, and also will include photos when possible. As a teaser, here is a photo from arguably the best course I saw, The Banyan Golf Club in Hua Hin, about three hours west of Bangkok, which was designed by a local Thai architect who moved a remarkably small amount of dirt while carving this course through pineapple plantations. It was a treat.

For more on Thailand golf, and to look into making a golf trip there yourself, check out GolfAsian (their site). A terrific golf-tour operator, they not only know Thailand intimately, they’re experts on the rest of Southeast Asia as well. And like the rest of the country, are terrific at service.

I’m the one on the right.

This is about an hour from Chiang Rai, way up north in Thailand, in the Golden Triangle. Yes, that Golden Triangle. In fact, the Museum of Opium was across the street from the Anantara Resort where we stayed, but it was closed. I really wanted to see it.

The resort maintains a very cool, humane “elephant camp,” where about 30 elephants reside. Guests can ride them and all that, but the animals live in the jungle and are tended to by their mahouts, the guys seen riding on top as their charges wade into the Mekong River to bathe. The elephants seem very tame, comfortable around humans (more so, I’m sure, than the other way around), eating from our hands and spraying us with water on command. I think I heard them laughing, too. An Australian couple at the resort just came down from China where they also have elephant parks, but they described the conditions there as awful. These guys looked to be having a pretty good time of it.

If anyone is interested, learn more at www.helpingelephants.org

Almost nothing in what follows will be about golf, but I just did some things so incredibly cool that no matter what else happens on this trip, I’m happy.

We were driven this morning from Chiang Mai, in the north of Thailand, about four hours north and east, north of Chiang Rai, another 900-year-old city, up into the Golden Triangle. No longer quite the drug haven it used to be (although there is a Museum of Opium across the street from the magnificent Anantara resort we’re staying at), this is the gateway to Burma, which I can see from my window, and Laos is a little bit of a bend and look, but it’s there, too. This also is where there are a few elephant camps, including one run by the Anantara, to feed, ride, and see elephants and where the population is being tended to and conserved.

After arriving, we went to see the elephants, who were almost done with their workday, bathe in the Mekong River. And there we were, face to trunk with about a half-dozen adult elephants, their maghouts on their backs, being led into the river where they sprayed one another with their snouts, rolled over to wash off the dirt, and squealed. Someone took my picture, which I’ll send along at some point. We then walked over to where the younger and smaller (too small to bathe in the Mekong) elephants are trained and run around, and we fed them bananas and got right up to the little (hah!) guys. Really amazing. Very smart creatures, they understand the language, which is a mix of Thai and some tribal language spoken by the natives who train them. Many of the elephants were “saved” from the cities, especially Bangkok, where they are used to wring money from tourists. This is far more humane and they aren’t as likely to wreck cars and such. At the end of the day they go back into the jungle and are chained to trees with 30-foot chains so they can moved about and mingle, but according to the head guy they have no interest in breaking free. It’s a happy life.

After that, I was driven about 1/2 hour away to the Burmese border. Mae Sai is a market town with a regular flow of people back and forth (through immigration, handing over your passport, the whole works) and street markets. All the usual knock-off junk, very little authentic other than some jewelry and wood or stone carvings, the rest a wide selection of the latest ripped-off DVDs, Lacoste shirts, electronics, etc. Many many stalls, the same stuff one after the next. And that’s the Burmese side. The Thai side is only slightly nicer, and a slightly better class of junk, but not much. And people begging, zipping through on motorbikes, and shopping. Spent about an hour on the Burmese side, and there is nothing “Burmese” to see over there, but now I can say I’ve been and my passport boasts a stamp from Myanmar. A good day.

Tomorrow we’re playing golf. There’s one good course, which we’re playing, about an hour away, not sure which direction or what it will be like. Then Wednesday we fly down to Bangkok, Hua Hin, and Pattaya. That portion will be almost all golf, but I’m going to break away for a day and see Bangkok.

That was my day, which is one that will be hard to top for quite some time.