DUBAI Is Tiger Woods Dubai Dead?

The news from Dubai keeps getting worse for Tiger Woods. Especially if it's true.

As you know, the work on Woods' much-ballyhooed first golf course, the centerpiece of Tiger Woods Dubai, was suspended last year, when sales of houses in the high-falutin' desert community ground to a halt. If the project's developers had kept to their original construction schedule, the course would have been open already.

Now, in a story titled "Tiger's Golf Course Ventures Beset by Delays," CNN says that "doubts remain over the immediate future of Tiger Woods Dubai" for a variety of reasons, the primary one being that "the real estate market in the emirate has collapsed."

No real news there, folks. We all know that the project's "immediate future" is dicey. And we know that Dubai's housing market is very wobbly, if not completely "collapsed."

So CNN spread a little more doubt on the situation.

According to the news agency, the Middle East's rotten economy and Woods' marital infidelities (now with steamy text messages!) have led "economic and golf industry experts" to wonder if the golf course "will ever be completed."

All of which leads me to ask: Is that the sound of a golf project dying?

Or is it merely a distortion of reality by some commentators in the golf business, full of sound and fury but ultimately signifying nothing?

Heck, I don't know. Can you trust the message if you don't trust the messenger?

To be sure, Dubai Properties Group has dismissed all this nasty talk about the project's possible demise. The company's CEO, Khalid Al Malik, told CNN, "Part of the project is sold, and the other part will go to the market once it's completed, because we believe it's better to do it then."

Al Malik's statement doesn't scan well. I think he means that some of the houses in Tiger Woods Dubai have been sold, which is true, and that the rest of them will go on sale after the golf course is completed.

Does that sound right?

Because if I'm reading him correctly, there's an obvious follow-up question that must be asked: Without the income from the real estate sales, where will the money for the golf construction come from?

I can't answer that question, either. But I should note that Dubai Properties Group is a government-owned entity, and governments always find ways to fund programs they think are important.