Go Tigah!

Richard Sandomir writes in the Times:

“In the midst of Ed Bradley’s worshipful two-part profile of Tiger Woods on “60 Minutes” last Sunday, I wondered if it was an infomercial or if Woods had paid a fee for these adoring 25 minutes. With nothing new to report — and not a single tough question in his arsenal — Bradley chose to join Camp Tiger.

Bradley looked to be enjoying himself too much as he smiled and chuckled along with Woods in various locales, conjuring comparisons to the buddy act of Ahmad Rashad and Michael Jordan, who, like Woods, surrenders so little to journalists but whose consent to be interviewed is deemed an occasion to send a camera crew.

This puffy profile reminded me of a “documentary” about Woods — “Son, Hero, Champion” — that preceded CBS’s fourth-round coverage of the Masters in 1997. It was produced by IMG, the agency that represents Woods, so you know how objective and unconflicted it was. Here’s kind of how it went:

BRADLEY How much was the boat?

WOODS A lot.

BRADLEY And the new house?

WOODS A lot.

By not pressing Woods for what he paid ($38 million for the estate, $20 million for the yacht, figures that have been widely reported), Bradley gave the impression that he did not want to embarrass Woods by quantifying evidence of how he spends his golf winnings on conspicuous consumption.

Yet during a visit to Woods’s new learning center for children near Anaheim, Calif., Bradley declared that Woods had invested more than $5 million in it. That’s a lot, too, and Bradley properly reported it. Bradley’s strategy was to be Woods’s pal, or at least the official tour guide through his extremely well-known career.