Tiger Woods explains why he wore skull mask, sticks to story of how he lost his teeth

Tiger Woods wore a creepy skeleton mask at Lindsey Vonn’s event not to cover up some missing teeth but rather “to blend in, cause there’s not a lot of brown dudes at ski races.”

Woods met the media for the first time this year on Tuesday, and the largest portion of his press conference revolved around his teeth and that mask. Woods was photographed at Vonn’s race in Italy in the odd mask that, when it was pulled down, revealed a huge gap in his teeth.

After much speculation, Tiger’s agent released a statement that the 14-time major winner was clocked by a camera and lost his tooth on site at the race. There were no photos or accounts of this incident, and none of the photos of Tiger without his teeth showed any signs of bleeding from the mouth. A race official said “There was no such indecent” and an AP reporter said he did not see anything like that happen.

But Woods narrated, at length, his account of how it happened.

I was looking down and all the camera guys were below me, on their knees or standing or moving all around and trying to get a picture because she’s hugging people, saying congratulations to the other racers because their coming down. Some had already finished and some were in the changing area. And the dude with one of the video cameras on his shoulder was kneeling right in front of me, stood up, turned, and caught me square in the mouth. So he chipped that one, cracked the other one. And then I’m trying to keep this mask on so the blood’s not all over the place. Luckily he hit the one that I had the root canal on - that’s the one that chipped. But the other one had to be fixed as well because it had cracks all through it.

So, uh, that’s it. That’s his story and he’s sticking to it.

Tiger added that he flew back to the States sans teeth and had temporaries put in the next morning. The flight home on the private jet did not sound the most pleasant.

Oh Jesus, the flight home was a joke. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t drink until he fixed them, until he put he temporaries on. I couldn’t have anything touch it, even breathing hurt.

I had to fly home and get it done first thing in the morning.

Woods was asked about how skeptical most people were of the story, and he largely blamed the media and swatted away the question. “You guys, it just the way the media is. It is what it is,” he said brusquely. When asked if the camera man knew he did this, Woods tersely said “He didn’t care” and moved on to the next question.

As for the skeleton mask, Woods said it was inspired by the video game Ghost Recon (you can buy one on Etsy for nine bucks).

There were a few golf questions and inquiries about his return to the Phoenix Open, which has not played in 15 years. But because this was the first time he talked publicly since that intervening incident in Italy, most of the discussion centered around dental matters.