It was a big week for Woods. He just came off the golf course after a top-five finish at the US Masters, and the inevitable black-and-white Nike ad aired and spawned the inevitable parodies. So how's Tiger doing?

According to the New York Times Media Decoder blog, better. It says that data from Zeta Interactive, "a company that monitors message boards, blogs and social media posts," the buzz about Woods is moving in the right direction.

Nick Faldo, commentating on the tournament today for CBS said, of the Augusta National course, that "once you're inside the walls of the ground you're in the most wonderful golfing bubble." It's apparently a magical, rose-tinted bubble. Before it was revealed that he had had sexual relations with one out of three women in the world (or whatever) his approval rating was 91 per cent. After the scandal, and before he got back on the course, his reputation stood at 51 per cent positive and 49 per cent negative (fairly astounding anyway). By Friday, into the Masters, he was at 69 per cent positive and 31 per cent negative.

Zeta, said the Times, found that words like "lie/lied/liar," "cheat" and "scandal," had given way by Friday to "win," "performance" and "dominant/dominate." (The last word, in light of his sexts, is fairly ambiguous.)

Woods, in a post-tournament interview that did not mention the word 'affair' once, said that he did not know when he planned to play again. The stats say it should be soon.