Can Tiger Woods Save His Career?

The biggest question in the wake of golfer Tiger Woods’ second major fall from grace — in the form of his Monday DUI — is whether it’s all really over.

Woods was once the number-one golfer in the world. He was a young and determined soul who made golf more accessible and more popular than ever before. He essentially kick-started the sport.

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It’s hard to believe after his unmatched fame and success that his career could be dead in the water, but it’s a possibility considering that his DUI came amid an attempted comeback after highly publicized affairs and a messy divorce over the years. Woods has since explained he was taking multiple prescription medications, presumably for pain associated with his knee surgeries and other ailments. He said he “didn’t realize the mix of medications had affected me so strongly.”

A story today in the New York Post notes that Woods, when approached by the police, did not know what state he was in, according to the police report. He twice said he thought he was in “LA,” and added that he was “on his way down to Orange County,” according to the Post’s story. The police report said, “It should be noted that Orange County California is to the south of LA California.”

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LifeZette spoke with brand management expert Eric Schiffer, the CEO of private equity firm The Patriarch Organization in Los Angeles, about what the future holds for the golf star. (Schiffer is also chairman of ReputationManagementConsultants.com and DigitalMarketing.com.) Can Tiger still make a great comeback — or will he forever be the poster child for how easily success and fortune can slip away from someone who was once on top of the world?

“There are urgent warning signs for Tiger, and somehow, surviving comes down to if he can win again,” Schiffer told LifeZette. “If Tiger is fighting back on the course and winning consistently, and ranked No. 1, then his popularity goes wild — especially if he can stay out of damage control.”

Schiffer added, “America loves a powerful comeback story. And in the age of the media tarring leaders with pools of shame, winning and staying out of treacherous trouble is Tiger’s power-packed amulet.”

Winning on the greens might be difficult for the star, since in recent years Tiger has had to cancel his participation in numerous tournaments due to physical ailments such as back spasms.

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The biggest issue with Woods’ recent trouble, said Schiffer, is bad timing. “If Woods was an average PGA golfer, no one would care. But the haunting story brings a devastating punch because it’s a thrashing body blow to a beaten superstar trying to work his way back up from the ground.”

Schiffer has managed and consulted on careers before — and his advice to Woods would be to purely focus on the thing that made him so successful and influential in the first place: golf. Said Schiffer, “With the increasing pressure and freefall, Tiger needs to find the right coach who can rechannel the power, wisdom, focus and discipline he received from his father. He needs to be hypervigilant and consider the crippling implications before taking any substance that can threaten his faculties.”