"Did You Learn Anything?" Tiger Woods' New Nike Ad Featuring Earl Woods' Voice

Tiger Woods' Father Asks In Nike ad, "Did You Learn Anything?"


Tiger Woods - who brought along his mom when he apologized to the nation for his tomcatting ways - Wednesday night turned to his dead dad to polish his image.

On the eve of his return to competitive golf, Woods starred in an eerie new Nike ad invoking the haunting voice of his father.

The 30-second spot began airing last night on ESPN and the Golf Channel and is expected to be repeated Thursday as the girl-crazy golfer tees up for his first round at the Masters.

In the stark, black-and-white commercial, a camera zooms in on Woods' solemn face as he stands on a golf course wearing the famous Nike swoosh on his hat and dark pullover sweater vest.

Woods doesn't say a word in the ad, but in a voice-over his father, Earl, who died of prostate cancer in 2006, asks his troubled son, "Did you learn anything?"

While the ad does not specifically address Tiger's serial infidelity, it harkens to his marital woes in the tone of his father's deep husky voice from the grave.

"Tiger, I am more prone to be inquisitive, to promote discussion," Earl Woods says. "I wanna find out what your thinking was. I wanna find out what your feelings are, and, did you learn anything."

Nike officials said the ad will only run until 4 p.m. Wednesday.

"We support Tiger and his family. As he returns to competitive golf, the ad addresses his time away from the game using the powerful words of his father," Nike officials said in a statement.

It was not clear when the recording of Earl Woods was made or in what context.

The ad marks Woods' first return to the airwaves as a pitchman, albeit one missing the charismatic smile that once earned him multimillions from sponsors.

But it wasn't the first time he relied on his folks to help make him look more sympathetic.

His mom, Kutilda Woods, sat stoically in the audience and gave her son a big hug when he gave a teary mea culpa in February for cheating on his wife, Elin Nordegren.

The Nike commercial aired on a day Woods received an unprecedented verbal spanking from the boss of the Masters tourney for his "egregious" conduct.

Masters Chairman Billy Payne blasted Woods' behavior, even as a new tabloid report added a nubile neighbor to the golf great's parade of porn stars and party girls.

"It's not simply the degree of his conduct that is so egregious here," Payne said in his annual pre-Masters talk in Augusta. "Our hero did not live up to the expectations as a role model that we sought for our children."

Payne said Woods' golf game makes him "worthy" of being mentioned in the same breath as Jack Nicklaus or Arnold Palmer.

"But as he now says himself, he forgot in the process to remember that with fame and fortune comes responsibility, not invisibility," he said.

It was a stunning rebuke for Woods, who had been treated with kid gloves by Masters officials bent on getting golf's biggest moneymaker back on the links.

Woods took his medicine from Payne without a murmur.

Nor did Team Tiger respond to a National Enquirer report that Woods had a two-hour romp with 22-year-old neighbor Raychel Coudriet last May on a couch in his office - near a crib for one of the golfer's kids.

"I felt used and violated, like I meant nothing to him but a night of casual sex," Coudriet told her friend afterward, the tab says. "I just wanted to dig a big hole, crawl in and die."


Sources: Nike, NY Daily News, CBS News, Youtube