PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla.  In his first public appearance after the November head-on collision of his squeaky clean image and an unsavory secret life, Tiger Woods was somber in expressing remorse, stern in scolding the news media for stalking his family and reporting untruths, and spiritual in saying he had drifted from the Buddhist principles he was taught as a child.
In front of about 40 inner-circle people that included his mother, Kultida, but not his wife, Elin, along with a national television audience, Woods made his most direct statement about admitted infidelities in his marriage.
“I had affairs,” he said. “I was unfaithful. I cheated.”
Woods said he had mistakenly believed that his enormous success and celebrity made him entitled “to enjoy all the temptations around me.” He added: “I was wrong. I was foolish. I don’t get to play by different rules.”
While creating the impression that his marriage hung in the balance, Woods vigorously defended his wife and denied reports and speculation that domestic violence had played a role in the episode outside his home in the early-morning hours on Nov. 27 that resulted in Woods’s crashing his sport utility vehicle into a fire hydrant and a neighbor’s tree in the gated community of Isleworth near Orlando.
“Elin never hit me that night or any other night,” he said, as his voice rose and his face hardened. “There has never been an episode of domestic violence in our marriage, ever. Elin has shown enormous grace and poise throughout the ordeal.”
Devoid of his ubiquitous Nike cap, Woods wore a dark sport coat and light-blue shirt with the collar open. He spoke for almost 15 minutes at a lectern in front of a blue curtain. Three wire service reporters were permitted to watch but not ask questions at the T.P.C. Sawgrass clubhouse near the Professional Golf Association’s headquarters. The rest of a news media contingent, which was 300 strong and included journalists from Japan, Australia and Norway, jammed into two ballrooms at the Marriott Sawgrass resort to watch the tightly controlled event.
Acknowledging reports that he had undergone counseling for 45 days, Woods said he would continue the treatment beginning Saturday. He did not reveal the nature of the counseling.
Woods also did not address a return to the PGA Tour until near the end of his statement, saying: “I do plan to return to golf one day, I just don’t know when that day will be. I don’t rule out that it will be this year.”
That hedge was interpreted as a positive sign by the PGA Tour commissioner, Tim Finchem. “The good news today is that he does plan to return and could return this year,” Finchem said in a news conference afterward.
But in raising the possibility of a return sooner rather than later, Woods also treaded on his Tour colleagues merely with the timing of his reappearance, before the third round of a match play tournament in Arizona, sponsored by Accenture  a company that dropped Woods as its spokesman in the wake of his sensational fall from grace.
In a letter to the PGA Tour policy board, a copy of which was obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, Finchem struck a mollifying tone in explaining why the event was held Friday. He wrote that “Tiger’s therapy called for a week’s break at this time” and that “accordingly, there was very little flexibility in the date for the announcement.”
During Finchem’s news conference Friday, when he called Woods an “American hero,” he also said he understood why Woods had chosen such a tightly controlled format as the first step in a lengthy process to heal himself, possibly his marriage and his relationship with the public.
“Candidly, what else do we need to know, at this point?” he said.
But the offer by the Woods camp to have three golf writers attend was rejected by the Golf Writers Association of America because the group did not want its members to be “used as props, standing in the back of the room, lending credibility to a staged presentation,” said Vartan Kupelian, the association’s president.
The three reporters who were inside the T.P.C. Sawgrass clubhouse were from The Associated Press, Reuters and Bloomberg News. They arrived about 10 minutes before Woods appeared to speak to find the audience seated in three rows. “It was like church, very somber,” Doug Ferguson of The A.P. said.
In the back row sat Tour officials. Woods’s mother was in the front, flanked by two Woods employees, Amy Reynolds and Kathy Battaglia. Nearby was his former college roommate at Stanford, Notah Begay III, a golfer on the PGA Tour. Woods spoke in a calm, measured tone, beginning by addressing the unthreatening environment he had insisted on. “Many of you in this room are my friends,” he said. “Many of you in this room know me. Many of you have cheered me or you’ve worked for me or you’ve supported me.”
Tiger Woods while playing golf in 2007 
American golfer Tiger Woods delivered a speech on Friday where he apologized for his recently publicized marital infidelities. Before an audience of the press, family, and friends, Mr. Woods admitted that he did indeed have a sex addiction. He said that he would one day return to golf, although he did not specify when.

In his speech, he said that he had not been assaulted by his wife, Elin Nordegren, on November 27, 2009, as was speculated in the media, and the injuries he sustained were due to a car accident. He said that his wife "deserves praise, not blame."

He scolded the media for the attention they were bringing to his family and friends saying "please leave my wife and kids alone." He was very angry at paparazzo who followed his daughter to school, then releasing the school's name and address.

After his speech, the stock price of companies which sponsored Woods rose on average 3% compared to the S&P 500 which only rose about 0.35%. These companies include Nike, Electronic Arts, and AT&T among others. Also CBS Sports expects to lose over US$200 million in ad revenue due to the drop in viewers.