It’s funny. A little over a week ago, I penned up a quick post about Tiger Woods getting booed, and his seemingly human reaction to it. It was a chink in his armor — a chance to see Mr. Perfect in a situation we rarely, if ever, see.

What a difference a week makes.

By now, we all know about the voicemail. A third girl has now come out of the woodwork. Tiger has apologized to his family via a carefully crafted statement on his Web site. Anyone out there still think it’s unfair to speculate about his accident?

Tiger’s biggest mistake here was not getting out ahead of the story, and telling it in his words. You’d figure a guy that’s mastered the image game better than anyone would know this. It’s PR 101. Come out, tell some of the story but not all of it, apologize for the infidelity, say how deeply sorry you are, and let that be that. We’re America. We forgive. We’re the land of second chances. We love Kobe again. His Colorado transgressions are a thing of the past.

But what Tiger did instead was take the Mark McGwire/Roger Clemens route. And it made him look bad. Real bad.

By not talking to the police, and then issuing a weak statement on his Web site about the matter, it only fueled the celebrity new cycle — put it into overdrive. Once that happens, no matter how guarded you are, no matter how careful you thought you’ve been, stuff’s going to come out. Always does in this day and age. This isn’t the 60’s when Arnold Palmer could run free with ladies to his heart’s content. This is the digital age, where technology leaves your fingerprints everywhere. Voicemails, emails, texts.

Tiger can outsmart and outwork Phil, but if you go toe-to-toe with TMZ when you’re guilty as sin, you’re going to lose every time.

Yet, I can’t blame Tiger for the way he handled it. Sometimes in life, when things aren’t going the way we want, when our world seems to be crumbling around us, we just hope and pray things will go away. We pretend it will all be over when we wake up in the morning. But it never works out that way. Eventually, we have to meet our maker.

Is it fair to Tiger? Fair to his family? Probably not. But when you’re a billion-dollar athlete with sponsorships and charities and you’re a married man, this is the life you sign up for, this is how it goes until you step in and hemorrhage the bleeding.

In Tiger’s case, he pulled out the tourniquet too late.