I was in Puerto Rico, eating monfongos, during the Thanksgiving week when news broke of Tiger Woods’ accident in front of his home near Orlando. It was just as pervasive in the Caribbean as I found it to be upon my return to the Continental U.S.

Since then, musings on what happened and why have been rampant and ugly:

• Was he drunk? It appears he was not.
• Why was he colliding with a fire hydrant and neighbor’s tree at 2:30 a.m.? Seems he argued with his wife, left the house in a rush, and the accident occurred.
• Did his wife take a swing at his car with one of Tiger’s golf clubs as he was taking off? Could be.
• Did he cheat on his wife with the saucy nightclub employee or someone else? Having run a media center at a PGA Tour event, the cougar train is certainly available. And now with his latest “I have let my family down” statement, it would seem that is, in fact, the case.
• Did he break a law? He has been cited for “careless driving” which is committed by 98 percent of soccer moms on cell phones driving enormous SUVs. Woods faces a $164 fine and four points against his driver’s license, which I’m sure is terribly, terribly troubling for someone who pulls in more than $100 million annually.
• Is he really hurt since he pulled out of his own tournament this weekend? For the sake of argument, let’s guess no.
• Is there a deeper secret here that’s not yet come to light? Tiger looks to be a wandering, horny soul. So was Michael Jordan. It happens when the world is handed to you on a plate.
• How are his sponsors reacting and will it impact his endorsements? We’re not hearing much, and more than likely things will stay relatively calm.

And so it goes, with questions to ponder ad nauseum, especially with Tiger’s terribly inauspicious initial statement he offered on his website seeming to have peeved anyone from Joe Sixpack to The Today Show to ESPN reporters.

So where to go from here? I’ve had colleagues say he was committing reputational suicide to not say anything. After all, in the absence of Tiger’s “voice” in this story, the gap has been thus far filled by pure tabloid speculation. Now that he’s in essence said he erred — that he let his family down — I think we’ll see both the American public’s insatiable hunger for gossip, as well as our propensity to forgive as long as those perceived as having committed transgressions demonstrate contrition, come to light.

Until Dec. 2, when he more or less admitted he’d strayed form his wife, there was a very valid notion that he was damaging his personal brand and placing into peril the profitable relationships — he earned $99 million in endorsements alone in 2007 — he enjoys with his many sponsors including Nike, Gatorade, and Gillette.

But keep in mind the endorsers on Team Tiger are large companies that have managed challenging crises’ before. They understand the storm will calm, and it will — after he gets back on the golf course and goes back to being the joyless, boring, best golfer in the world that we know him to be.

I’m inclined to believe that, in spite of not taking the traditional route that most public relations practitioners would prescribe, he will be just fine, his endorsers will remain, and the public will forget rather quickly.

Here’s why:

• Tiger has always been dreadfully private and nearly silent about his life on and off the course. Have you seen the man interviewed? Painful. There’s a reason he named his yacht “Privacy.”
• His inner circle is smaller than a closet full of dwarfs, so he won’t have any hangers-on talking to reporters.
• Yes, the media has been camped out in front of his gate at Isleworth and probably will for the next month, and sure that will irritate the Woods family, but the hoard will get tired and go away….eventually.
• Unlike Kobe Bryant’s salacious rape allegations — resulting in Bryant losing all of his endorsements for a bit over a year — Tiger really hasn’t been charged with a crime that will place him in a televised courtroom. The guy obviously had something not-so-kosher going on, he argued with his wife, and then got into an accident after she was chasing him out of the house.
• And as the rubber meets the road in Tiger’s bank account, as CNNMoney’s David Goldman wrote, Tiger’s sponsors are standing by him.

So in spite of my instincts telling me everything Tiger has done has been wrong per the book of Public Relations 101, again, I think Tiger is doing what works for Tiger and always has.

In his own way, what Tiger is now essentially saying is, ‘I did something wrong and I’m sorry. I’ll fix it.’ This leaves behind the old strategy and is textbook in PR circles in terms of addressing an issue and bridging to a vision of moving forward. And that should suffice in terms of helping him manage his personal brand as well as pacifying his endorsement partners.

Would it have worked for me? No. From the outset I’d have had him walk out in front of a media throng once and only once, and say, very simply, “My wife and I argued as we are experiencing some challenges in our marriage.  I left the house in a hurry, and got in a minor car accident. We are working through things but all is fine otherwise. I look forward to kicking Phil Mickelson’s oddly proportioned backside at this year’s Masters. Thank you.”

But Tiger, no pun intended, is his own animal.  In a few weeks — maybe a month — he’ll play a tournament and people will talk about it a lot. Then he’ll play another tourney and it won’t be discussed at all.

That is, unless we learn something between now and then. Should we speculate on what that could be?

Oh, and just to prove that Chinese television is simply the best, watch their take on the Wood saga: