Tiger Woods was able to hide his extramarital affairs
for so long because of an unhealthy relationship with his entourage, a
leading sports psychologist says.
Until last week, most of the public saw the legendary golfer as a squeaky-clean happily married athlete.But over the past week it has been revealed he has had up to 11 mistresses.
Cocktail waitress Jaimee Grubbs, who allegedly had a 31-month affair with Woods, yesterday apologised on TV to the golfer's wife, Elin Nordegren.
As one of the world's most recognised sporting superstars, Woods is surrounded by minders who managed to keep this secret life from a prying world.
Macquarie University sports psychologist Dee Anderson has worked with some of Australia's biggest sporting stars, including Cathy Freeman, Ian Thorpe and Andrew Symonds.
She says Woods's inner circle would have known exactly what he was up to, but they would have slaved to protect his image.
"People around them know that it's going on. They are saying nothing or telling them what they want to hear," she told ABC News Online.
"They've all got conflicts of interest in relation to the role they play with athletes and not too many people around athletes are telling them the truth.
"It's not that they actually say 'let's not talk anything about this'. It takes a while for that culture to be created within a small group, but then it does become the norm and groupthink kicks in.
"You begin to protect each other in a very bizarre way and you operate almost outside of what we would term the normal world.
"Unless you stop every now and again and ask yourself, 'Are these people bringing the best out in me? Are they enabling me to pursue what I believe to be the right thing?', then you get the most amazing level of groupthink."
Media machine
Anderson suspects those same minders will now fearlessly guard the public image of Woods, who last week apologised for "personal sins" and "transgressions" but has otherwise remained tight-lipped."They will get their own media machine operating behind the scenes making sure they protect him, whether or not they touch on the reasons this happened in the first place," she said.
"The fact that Tiger hasn't been saying much means that somebody's advised him to become a better person and the people around will be managing his image very professionally."
Anderson believes Tiger will come back from the scandal, but she says the media plays a critical role in whether the public will forgive and forget.
"There's an enormous amount of examples where elite athletes have done pretty catastrophic things in terms of relationships and family that people have just turned around and accepted," she said.
"And people may recognise they are not to judge him, and they might say 'I think the guy's an appalling human being, but I like him as a golfer'. Or they might just think it's life and not really have an opinion either way."
Anderson says elite athletes like Woods operate in a complex number of worlds and they often feel their public life and image is the only thing they can control.
And she says living in such a controlled environment can result in sports people acting out.
"Tiger Woods is an example where the athlete has taken on a persona and a role and lost sight of the values they hold and just gone off the rails," she said.
"It's an adolescent behaviour that kicks in in so many of these athletes when they get in to their 30s because they've operated in such a controlled environment - it's like a release mechanism.
"It's the only thing they can control - take a bit of a risk, do something completely ridiculously out-of-character just to feel normal."