Holes in Tiger Woods' Missing Tooth Story
Tiger's grin was missing something.
-- The hole in Tiger Woods' grin isn't the only one that emerged in the last few days.
The pro golfer's gap-toothed smile at girlfriend Lindsey Vonn's record-breaking win Monday caused a swirl of attention, and now some are raising questions about Woods' explanation.
Woods kept a low profile in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, as Vonn won her 63rd World Cup race by sporting sunglasses and a skeleton-themed face mask. Questions started being asked when he took down the face mask and he appeared to be missing his left front tooth.
Woods' agent, Mark Steinberg, said in a written statement that "a media member with a shoulder-mounted video camera pushed and surged toward the stage, turned and hit Tiger Woods in the mouth. Woods' tooth was knocked out by the incident."
But the story wasn't supported by an event staffer who reportedly was with Woods as he went from the area where he was celebrating with Vonn and her family to the tent where they remained for the rest of the race.
"I was among those who escorted him from the tent to the snowmobile and there was no such incident," Nicola Colli, the secretary general of the race organizing committee, told The Associated Press.
"When he arrived he asked for more security and we rounded up police to look after both him and Lindsey," Colli said.
Besides Colli's seemingly contradictory story, there was no visible swelling, bruising or bleeding in any of the photos of toothless Tiger.
Dr. Joseph Banker, a cosmetic dentist based in New Jersey who does not treat Woods, said that if a cameraman had just forcibly knocked out a healthy tooth, there would have been visible signs.
"It would've been a bloody mess," Banker told ABC News. "There would have been a picture of him holding bloody rag or something like that, because it would have been a mess."
Even so, Vonn stayed on message and posted a smiling photo of the pair (with their lips tightly closed).