Paul Lewis: Tiger keeps on stinking

You'd have to say that Tiger Woods has created the biggest stink since Pope Pius XII.

That Pope died in the late 1950s and had put his faith in a crackpot aide, who announced that he had researched the resurrection and would not permit the Pope to be embalmed ahead of the funeral.

Instead, he would surround the body with the same greenery and herbs with which Jesus had been anointed when he died - and which had helped him rise from the dead in such great shape. The only difference was that the Pope was encased in a plastic bag.

There was just one problem - the greenery didn't seem to work like it had for Jesus and the plastic bag acted like, well, a boil in the bag chicken. Mourners were kept so far back from the coffin, they could barely see it, and the smell of incense was as thick as soup.

Woods has created such a bad smell around himself that, if he manages to win the Masters next month, it must surely rate as the greatest sporting comeback of all time.

Pressure? It almost gives the lie to the great Australian cricket allrounder Keith Miller - a World War II fighter pilot - who famously rounded on a questioner inquiring about the pressure he was under.

"I'll tell you what pressure is," Miller retorted. "Pressure is having a Messerschmitt up your arse. Playing cricket is not."

Fair enough. But Miller didn't have the eyes of the world upon him. He hadn't made himself a global laughing stock. He hadn't irritated his fellow sportsmen and, it seems, much of the world's media, by making a supposedly heartfelt apology and giving the impression that he would be gone from golf for some time yet.

The easygoing Ernie Els called Woods selfish for making his apology (to a handpicked audience of supporters; declining awkward questions) on the same day as the Accenture Match Play championship.

Accenture was one of the sponsors who dropped Woods after his sex scandal rose to unprecedented global heights; when it seemed that all the cocktail waitresses in the entire world had, er, tweaked the tiger's tail.

Els and others felt The Apology could have been held on a non-tournament day and not detract from the golf. I'll bet many golfers and officials at Augusta National, the home of the Masters, feel the same way about Tiger's comeback.

The Masters, the most prestigious tournament in all of golf, will now become Tiger Balm. It must be a decided annoyance that Woods has chosen to use the legendary stuffiness of Augusta National to act as a buffer between him and the tabloids and rowdy golf fans who might feel like yelling out fabulously witty remarks like: "Get in the whore ...".

Augusta rules its tournament with an iron fist, as you might expect from a club which doesn't have a woman member over 250 years from the day the first woman cast a vote in the US.

In years long past, the club appeared to make it difficult for blacks to enter the Masters. It was 1975 before that happened and the fact that Augusta National had no black members and the aura of the Old South (the club is in Georgia) meant it was long suspected of racism.

Many will now appreciate the delicious irony of a black man who is said to have slept with lots of white women now using what was reputed to be a bastion of racism (and which doesn't have a female member) to protect himself.

Augusta will ruthlessly eject anyone who tries to disrupt the tournament or who behaves boorishly. It has also been energetically vetting media applications, declining those whom they believe do not cover golf - meaning the tabloids, the celebrity mags and websites have been barred; offering Woods the best protection he could get outside of a goon squad armed with tear gas and Tasers.

It looks like a clever ploy until you think a little deeper, realising that this is still the most mismanaged media mess ever. Right from the tree-fire hydrant crash to the silence which fuelled the rumours to the Tiger Woods jokes and mocking websites to the hideous outpouring of yet another alleged mistress - this has been an ongoing disaster.

We watched the carefully nurtured and patently false image of family man and sports icon come crashing down and, since then, Woods has still done little right. It now appears as if he knew he'd be back at the Masters when he intimated it would be some time before he ventured back on a golf course.

Woods has been caught out in some whoppers and hiding behind Augusta's manicured, golf club stuffiness seems, well, a bit cowardly; inadequate. He's still dodging when dodging won't do.

He's still being mocked too. Last week, the new season of cartoon hit South Park began in the US with a irreverent dig at Woods - pictured making his apology with Eric Cartman, the enfant terrible of the show, standing next to him. Cartman's expression alone was funny.

The action cut to a sex addiction therapy class where the tutor, standing by a whiteboard, says: "Okay, what other destructive behaviours did we engage in which led to our ultimate downfall?"

In the audience are cartoon depictions of, among others, David Letterman, Bill Clinton, Michael Douglas and David Duchovny.

At the back of the room, Tiger Woods puts his hand up. "Having sex with lots of girls ... ?" he offers hesitantly. Letterman says: "Having sex with employees."

Bill Clinton, entering into the spirit of things, says: "Putting cigars in girls' vaginas." The tutor is pleased: "Very good, Billy, putting cigars in girls' vaginas," he repeats loudly as he writes it on the whiteboard.

So the taunting hasn't stopped. Woods needs golf to get his life back on track and it will be fascinating to see if he can resurrect his career. He has the will, the focus and the talent; but a win at Augusta would be amazing.

Time will likely also help him as his scandals fade, although Clinton is clearly still marked by his. If the pressure proves too much for Woods it could be a case, as Clinton might say, of close ... but no cigar.