Tiger Woods to break silence

However, his agent said Woods will not take any questions from a small group of media.
"This is not a press conference," Mark Steinberg said on Wednesday.

It will be Woods' first public appearance since November 27, when he crashed his SUV into a tree outside his Florida home. Woods' only comments since then have been made through his Web site.

Woods is to speak at 1600 GMT on Friday from the clubhouse at the TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, home of the PGA Tour.

"This is all about the next step," Steinberg said. "He's looking forward to it."
Still, there was strict control over the appearance, typical of Woods' career.

Steinberg described the gathering as a "small group of friends, colleagues and close associates," who will listen to Woods apologize as he talks about the past and what he plans to do next.

Steinberg said in an e-mail announcing the public appearance, "While Tiger feels that what happened is fundamentally a matter between he and his wife, he also recognizes that he has hurt and let down a lot of other people who were close to him. He also let down his fans. He wants to begin the process of making amends and that's what he's going to discuss."

The timing is peculiar. It will be held during the Accenture Match Play Championship in Arizona, sure to steal attention away from the first big event of the year. Accenture was the first sponsor to drop Woods when he became embroiled in the sex scandal.
PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem said he did not think Woods' appearance was going to undermine a World Golf Championship event.

"We have tournaments every week," Finchem said. "I think it's going to be a story in and of itself. A lot of people are going to be watching golf this week to see what the world of golf says about it, my guess is. So that will be a good thing."

As far as the PGA Tour's part in the Woods event, Finchem said: "We were asked to make the facility available and to help with the logistics. That's what we're doing."

Steinberg said only that Woods' appearance during the championship was "a matter of timing." Asked if it could have waited until Monday, he said, "No."

Woods made a spectacular fall from his perch atop golf. He was believed to have been the first athlete to gross $1 billion in earnings and endorsements and, at 14 majors, was closing in on golf's record of 18 majors held by Jack Nicklaus.

It all collapsed the in the morning hours after Thanksgiving. Over the last few months, Woods has been on the cover of gossip magazines and the butt of jokes on national talk shows.

In the days before Woods' accident, a National Enquirer story alleged the world's No. 1 golfer had been seeing a New York nightclub hostess. Following the crash, a stream of women came forward to claim they had romantic relationships with Woods. One woman provided Us Weekly magazine a voicemail she said Woods left her three days before the crash, asking her to take his number off the phone.

Woods admitted to "infidelity" in a statement on his Web site in mid-December and has been on an indefinite break from golf ever since.