Players react to Tiger's week: Local Knowledge: Golf Digest

Players react to Tiger's week

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 Comments

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. - Padraig Harrington is, by his own admission much more trusting of the media than most of his fellow tour professionals. Since he was a teenager, he has been open with writers and the writers have been fair to him, says the easygoing Irishman. On Tuesday at the Chevron World Challenge - the Tiger Woods-hosted event absent Tiger this year - Harrington put recent events of the world's No. 1 golfer into a perspective that was, well, fair and balanced.

"I have not spoken with Tiger, I don't think too many people have," Harrington said. "'Like everyone, I've been reading the Internet. I've learned a few new Websites this week," he said with a wry smile. " Then he stepped back and explained how he has taken what he has read and filtered them through what he has experienced.

"It's amazing how rumors can build," Harrington said. "I've been on the other end of that. Usually, it's a long way away from the truth. Probably 25 percent is true and 75 percent is made up. He was in a car crash and he was injured. That's all we know [for sure]."

That's pretty much was what Florida police said earlier Tuesday when they charged Woods with careless driving, fined him $164 and said the investigation was over. Harrington's point - that we have to separate facts from speculation - was echoed by Lee Westwood.

"I only know what you know, probably less than you know," Westwood said when asked what he thought of the stories emerging from Isleworth. "The rest is speculation and I don't want to go there. Other than that, no comment."

-- Ron Sirak