New Tiger Woods Nike Commercial Debuts Today

April 7, 2010 — -- Tiger Woods isn't just making his return to the PGA Tour this week. The scandal-plagued golf champion also is making a major comeback in the advertising world.

ESPN and The Golf Channel are airing a new Nike commercial starring Woods this evening. The commercial will air until late Thursday afternoon, shortly after Woods is scheduled to make a return to the green at the Masters tournament in Augusta, Ga.

The 33-second, black-and-white spot shows Woods, dressed in a hat and vest bearing Nike's swoosh logo, staring somberly as a recording plays of the voice of his father, Earl Woods, who died in 2006.

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

In a statement, Nike said it supports Woods and his family and that the ad, "addresses his time away from the game using the powerful words of his father."

Adweek ad critic Barbara Lippert said the commercial, though "creepy," was powerful and may help repair Woods' tarnished image.

"It makes Tiger look like an angel," she said. "It's really powerfully allowing him wordlessly to rehabilitate himself. ... He doesn't have to face any pesky questions, he doesn't have to sweat, he can just stand there and look into the camera and they'll do it for him.

"No one would question the authority of his father's voice from the grave," she added.

Earl Woods posthumously has appeared in Nike ads with his son before. The month after his death in May 2006, a Nike commercial featured Woods family photos and home movies that showed Earl Woods and a pint-sized Tiger Woods enjoying each others' company on the course and off.

At a press conference this week, Woods said his father's inspiration played a role in his recent rehabilitation treatment. (Woods did not specify what the treatment was for, but it is widely believed that he enrolled in a sex addiction rehab program.)

"It's amazing how he says things that comes back. 'In order to help people, you have to first learn how to help yourself.' That's what he always used to say," Woods said Monday in his first extended press conference with reporters since a sex scandal nearly derailed his career last November.

"I never understood that," Woods said. "When I was in treatment, I wrote that down. I looked at it every day. And learning how to help myself, I can therefore, I can help more people going forward, infinitely more, than I did prior to all this."