AUGUSTA, Georgia (AFP) — US commentators yesterday raised doubts whether Tiger Woods was really telling the truth about being a changed man after fooling his wife for years about his multiple sexual affairs.

“Should we believe Tiger Now?” headlined a USA Today column yesterday where Christine Brennan noted, “There is no way to know if the Tiger Woods we watched Monday is telling the truth,” while admitting “I want to believe Tiger Woods.”

The golfing superstar won high marks for his answers at a Monday news conference at the Augusta Masters during which he faced 35 minutes of questions from reporters, the first inquest since his adultery scandal broke in November.

But after the revelation of his secret life, “living the life of a lie” as Woods put it in a television interview last month, the bigger question about golf’s number one player is “How can anyone believe anything he says?”

Woods says he is meditating more and returning to core morals and Buddhism.

“I had to really take a hard look at myself,” Woods said Monday. “That’s when I started finding peace and strength.”

Woods has laughed and joked with spectators in practice rounds at Augusta National, but such moves are easy when they are vital to influencing the public reaction that will in large measure decide how Woods will be judged hereafter.

“Woods said he’s a changed man. It’s impossible to know how honest he is when that is the quality he abandoned. He deserves a chance to prove himself. Grace transforms the grotesque,” wrote the Miami Herald.

Without some level of public trust, the man who became the greatest pitchman in sports history for product endorsement deals might find even his life’s dream of 18 major titles a soured achievement.

“I take full responsibility for what I’ve done,” Woods said. “I lied to a lot of people, deceived a lot of people, kept others in the dark and even lied to myself.

“I acted just terribly, poorly, made just incredibly bad decisions that have hurt so many people close to me.”

Deeds, not words, have been the trademark for Woods, his incredible shotmaker skills matched by zealous guarding of his private life. Does Woods regret his misdeeds, or only that he was caught?

One person was quick to pass judgement Monday.

“He is a big fat liar. He is not honest,” said Joslyn James, a pornographic film star who is among more than a dozen women claiming a relationship with Woods. “After the birth of his daughter he was with me 10 days later.”

Only time and actions, perhaps a lifetime of both, are likely to provide a final answer about Woods the man, no matter how Woods the golfer fares in his return.

“We know that he is special,” wrote Matthew DeBord in the online Huffington Post. “But we also know that Tiger Woods is capable of monstrously distorted conduct. There is Jekyll. There is Hyde. There is Tiger.”