Tiger's flunkies putting the squeeze on sports writer

Well, trying to at least. In his new book ("One on One: Behind the Scenes with the Greatest In the Game"), John Feinstein devotes an entire chapter to his acrimonious dealing with Woods and his people. Of particular note is the time that they were looking for the sources used in a not-so-flattering piece Feinstein wrote back in the 1990s. From the Golf Digest excerpt:

After I had written a column in Golf Magazine about Tiger blowing off the Buick Challenge and the college dinner and about the scene at Disney, George Peper, the editor of the magazine at the time, had gotten a call from Hughes Norton demanding a meeting with me. I had no problem meeting with Norton and his deputy, a guy named Clarke Jones.

And so Peper, Mike Purkey (who was my editor at the magazine) and I met with Norton and Jones over breakfast at the Masters. There were two highlights to what turned out to be a short meeting. The first was when Jones, apparently the designated bad cop, demanded to know who my sources were on several things I had written. I looked at him and said, "Clarke, if I wanted you to know that, I'd have used their names in the magazine."

"Well, I want to know, right now!"

"Can't have everything you want in life, Clarke."

Norton, the designated good cop, jumped in to say that he really didn't want to see Tiger's anger at me result in him deciding not to sign a contract with Golf as a "playing editor." At that moment Golf and Golf Digest were trying to get Tiger under contract. In fact, Golf had no chance because Golf Digest had a bigger circulation and it had Pete McDaniel--who would write one of Earl Woods' books. But Norton was using Golf to up the ante in his negotiations with Golf Digest.

I knew from talking to Peper that he was holding out hope that his magazine could somehow get Tiger, and I also knew it would be a big deal for Golf.

As soon as Norton started into his "I'd hate to see Tiger being upset with John affect our negotiations with Golf" speech, I stood up.

"Is that what this meeting is about?" I said. "So you can blackmail George?"

I turned to Peper. "Listen, if you need to fire me to get this deal done with Tiger, go ahead. My guess is Digest will hire me tomorrow. So, it's fine, although I don't think for a second they're going to sign with you. In fact, I'll bet the deal's already done. But you do what you have to do.

"Meanwhile, I have things to do. If you want to stay and eat with these two a--holes, go ahead. But I have better things to do than listen to this crap."

I stalked out. In June, Golf Digest announced it had signed a deal to make Tiger Woods a playing editor.

Woods eventually has a one-on-one meeting with Feinstein that goes reasonably well, but does little to remove the Tiger cloak. One of the interesting takeaways is that Woods comes off as a very smart guy and he tends to make his own decisions - not his team of advisers.