potentially explosive news conference with an alleged mistress was
canceled and more details trickled out about the car accident that
started all the trouble for Tiger Woods.
The news conference in Los Angeles
for Rachel Uchitel, the woman who denied a tabloid report about an
affair with Woods, was canceled about an hour before it was to begin
Thursday.
High-profile attorney Gloria Allred,
who was to make a statement about Uchitel's relationship with golf's
No. 1 player, said it was called off because of "unforeseen
circumstances." Allred said she would have no further comment.
However, Allred's daughter, Lisa
Bloom, said the only conclusion is that her mother struck a deal with
the Woods camp. Bloom, an attorney who worked with her mother for nine
years and now is as a legal analyst for CBS, said Friday on The Early
Show that she has never known Allred to cancel a news conference.
Bloom said that can only mean a
confidential settlement was struck, which she estimated at being worth
"at least a million dollars."
"I know exactly how she operates," Bloom said.
For the first time since last Friday,
when Woods ran his SUV into a fire hydrant and a tree outside his
Florida home, there were no news conferences involving police nor any
statements from Woods on his Web site.
His last one was Wednesday, when he
issued a statement conceding that he had "let my family down." That
followed a report in Us Weekly magazine of a cocktail waitress claiming
to have had a 31-month affair with Woods.
The Associated Press obtained an
audio recording of an interview the Florida Highway Patrol conducted
with Woods' neighbors after the accident. Troopers interviewed Jarius
Adams, who called 911, and his sister, Kimberly Harris.
Harris told troopers that Woods'
mother, Kultida, and mother-in-law, Barbro Holmberg, were at the scene,
but the AP could not confirm that. A voice that strongly resembles
Woods' mother is heard in the background during the 911 call saying
loudly, "What happened?"
A spokeswoman for Holmberg, mother of Elin Nordegren, didn't know if she was in Florida when the accident happened.
"I don't know for sure, but I don't
think so," spokeswoman Ewa Malmborg said. "I have not been informed
about that. She was here again working on Monday again anyway."
In the FHP interview, a trooper asked Harris about the women and if they talked to anyone at the scene.
"The cops came, the Windermere cops
came first, then the security guards came," Harris said. "And then it
appears Mr. Woods' mom, and Tiger's wife's mom came out after the fact.
I don't know if they heard the commotion, I don't if she, his wife,
left and came back. But they walked across the grass and were outside
as well."
Woods' peers, meanwhile, went from talking about him to playing in his $5.75 million golf tournament.
He previously pulled out of the
Chevron World Challenge at Sherwood Country Club, an 18-player event
that pays $1.35 million to the winner. Participants spent most of the
week taking questions on their sport's biggest star, most offering
support and curious about details and some of the allegations.
More criticism came from Jesper
Parnevik of Sweden, who once employed Woods' wife as a nanny and told
reporters Wednesday that he owed her an apology for introducing them.
"I have lost all respect for him,
primarily as a man and a father," Parnevik said in the Swedish
newspaper Aftonbladet on Thursday from the PGA Tour qualifying
tournament in West Palm Beach, Fla. "It doesn't even feel like it
matters what he has done on the golf course. My respect for him as a
person is gone. We have been nice to Tiger before, but now he only has
himself to blame.
"We thought better of him, but he is not the one we thought he was."
Among star athletes Woods considers
a close friend is Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers. They had
dinner in Orlando, Fla., during the NBA finals this year.
When he heard the word "Tiger" in a
question Wednesday, Bryant said, "Man, get off that. I knew there was
going to be one." Then he ended the interview.