Tiger Woods cannot plead privacy now to escape media storm

His house is staked out. He is the number one topic on the internet. Women emerge almost every day to claim to gleeful newspapers that they have played a round with Woods, though not on the golf course.

The golf champion's official website is awash with comments. Some are totally unforgiving. "He is a coward, an idiot, and still does not get it," said one. "You can't earn your living at the public trough and then run and hide and claim privacy issues."

Most of them, unsurprisingly, given that it's his own website, are supportive. A typical example: "It's none of our business I respect Tiger's written statement and I hope their marriage can survive. Tiger needs to continue to protect Elin from the Awful Media."

As so often, the messenger is being blamed for the message. The real villains, it is suggested, are evil journalists.

Although I may be accused of special pleading by defending my fellow journalists, I cannot agree for a moment with such critics, nor do I have sympathy for Woods who complained about "tabloid scrutiny" and, preposterously, argued that he is standing by "an important and deep principle" that public figures should have a "right to some simple, human measure of privacy".

Let's cut through the pomposity with some hard facts. Woods is a public person, not simply by virtue of his golfing prowess but also by having parlayed his sporting fame to his commercial advantage.

He has made millions of dollars from advertising contracts and endorsements that have rested squarely on his wholesome image as a handsome, upright, clean-cut, respectful, hard-working and, until now, entirely scandal-free individual.

Nor can he claim, as others in his position have tried to in the past, that his status as a role model has been thrust upon him. He has openly embraced it.

"I think it's an honour to be a role model," he was once quoted as saying. "If you are given a chance to be a role model, I think you should always take it because you can influence a person's life in a positive light, and that's what I want to do."

He polished his image until it shone, acting as a loving son to his parents and openly grieving for his father at his death, creating a foundation for disadvantaged children, and speaking often in interviews of his devotion to his two children and his wife, Elin.

Despite occasional bouts of tetchiness when playing tournaments, he always appeared at ease off the golf course. He exemplified the Corinthian spirit.

Here was a man of integrity, of iron self-discipline.

As Dave Czesniuk, a Boston-based academic who studies the relationship between sport and society, said in an Associated Press interview: "No one has approached this level of perfection on and off the playing surface, maybe ever, without a single blot or tarnish. The real story here is the meeting of expectations with reality. The guy's a human being and we forget that."

There is, of course, another hugely significant aspect. Woods is a man of colour and was regarded by many Americans as an ambassador for black people.

If this was an additional pressure on him he never showed it. He appeared so comfortable in his own skin and came over in public as a dignified representative of non-white America.

But being a role model, standing on a pedestal erected and burnished by the media, is undoubtedly one of the penalties of fame, and it is a key reason why the line is so hopelessly blurred when trying to decide what should be kept private and what the public has a right to know.

If, as with Woods, your whole persona is a major contributing factor to the fame you command, and you also extract profit by trading on that fame, then it follows that your privacy may well be compromised should you misbehave.

It may not be fair. It may encourage venal behaviour, especially from some journalists who seek to feed public prurience with tittle-tattle. But it is hardly a new phenomenon.

Hollywood stars going back to the dawn of movies have suffered from intrusion into their private lives.

Since then, with the expansion of stardom in an age of celebrity, stars of all kinds -singers, actors, footballers, models, chefs, hairdressers and anyone who appears on television in whatever capacity - have discovered that fame is a double-edged sword.

We may sympathise with Woods' predicament. But he follows in a long line of the famous who discovered, to their cost, that projecting a squeaky-clean image while getting up to hanky-panky in private can be ruinous. Again, these falls from grace have a long history.

It is possible that the claims by the women - such as socialite Rachel Uchitel, cocktail waitress Jaimee Grubbs, nightclub hostess Kalika Moquin, porn star Holly Sampson and, supposedly, four more - may not be entirely true.

On the other hand, the public statement by Woods gives credence to their stories. He would surely not have apologised for "transgressions" (plural) if he had not committed them.

His statement, though designed to win him a measure of sympathy by attacking the media, accomplished just the opposite.

It spurred newspapers to respond with lurid accusations and, in this internet age, it sent cyberspace into overdrive. All hope of him maintaining his privacy was over.

Drawing a line on how much privacy a famous person deserves is an art rather than a science. Ask the Queen, whose lawyers are threatening to use the law to seal off her family from the prying paparazzi.

She has tried, without notable success, to prevent media scrutiny throughout her reign.

Unlike her, Tiger doesn't have several palaces and a host of courtiers at his disposal. He has often been in the rough on the golf course. Now he will be in the rough forever.

Roy Greenslade is Professor of Journalism, City University London.