These gorgeous homes, some double the size of the $2.4 million spread owned by Eldrick Woods, 34, a professional golfer and billionaire thanks to his never-matched skill at the sport, undulate around the lush contours of the Isleworth Golf and Country Club.
Thanks to a Microsoft product called "Bing Maps," I spent some time yesterday hovering 50 feet or so above Tiger's home on Deacon Circle and Deacon Court, a tiny cul de sac that serves as a turnaround on the narrow lane and provides a driveway entrance to the home that the world's most recognized athlete since Muhammad Ali shares with his 29-year-old wife, Elin Nordegren Woods.
According to the unofficial physical evidence, Woods climbed into his black Escalade alone for reasons that have not been revealed by Tiger, Elin or anybody else in the entourage of speed-dial sycophants surrounding a man who, for about a dozen 4-day weekends a year, holds the golfing world - and millions outside it - in total thrall. I don't think it's a reach to suggest that with Tiger and his African-American/Asian ethnicity on one side and Oprah, the ultimate, self-made, minority woman on the other, a climate of tolerance unprecedented in America helped make possible the election of President Obama.
Just as the mythical Icarus crashed to earth because he got so close to the sun that the wax on his wings melted, Tiger Woods has toppled to earth with an emphatic thud.
Suddenly, thanks to the voyeuristic nature of this privacy-invading society, all the elements of classic country music were crammed into cyberspace in one swell foop of titillation that produced an astounding two million hits to the Orlando Sentinel Web site Saturday.
TMZ had Woods at the Australian Open with a New York City nightclub jock, rock- and screen-star collector, Rachel Uchitel, who immediately denied any romantic involvement with the megastar, then hired a high-profile Los Angeles attorney.
