In the past week, professional golfer Tiger Woods’ squeaky-clean reputation has taken a major hit following his mysterious car crash nearly his home in Florida in the early morning hours of Nov. 27.

After days of speculation about how the crash may have been been instigated after Woods and his wife, Elin, argued over Woods’ having an affair, Woods finally disclosed on his Web site that: “I have let my family down and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart”.

There’s no doubt Woods’ image has been damaged, although it appears that none of his sponsors have decided to part ways…yet. Still, we wanted to see just how much of a hit that Woods’ reputation had taken so we used MAP, our flagship social media analytics service, to get a lay of the land.

Before the accident, the sentiment about Tiger Woods within social media and traditional media was 85% positive:

In the week after the accident, the sentiment has not surprisingly tumbled to 60% positive. What’s particularly interesting is the negative sentiment has jumped to 40% from 15%, while the positive sentiment has dropped to 14% from 49%.

In terms of the key discussion themes, the most dominant is “Grubb” – Jaimie Grubb, the Las Vegas waitress who Woods’ apparently met when his wife was seven months pregnant with their first child. A voice-mail recording of Woods asking Grubb to remove her name from her telephone’s caller ID likely prompted Woods to come clean.

There’s also a strong connection between “Grubb” and “Urchitel” – Rachel Urchitel, a New York hostess who has been speculated to also have had an affair with Woods.