Much has been made of the Tiger Woods’ scandal, his subsequent departure from and now return to golf, and the various cultural fallouts of the whole overplayed rigmarole. But nothing in the whole scandal has really interested me as much as this strangely mesmerizing ad from Nike, which aired a few times this week on ESPN and the Golf Channel and has since gone viral online (an advertiser’s dream scenario). Here’s the ad:

The 30-second spot features a silent, stoic, ashamed-looking Woods, accompanied by a decontextualized audio clip of his father Earl Woods from beyond the grave. Everything about the ad–the black and white, the slow zoom on Tiger’s face, the what-looks-like-a-golf-course setting, the strange audio clip, the minimalism and even the calculated light flashes at the end–works perfectly to create a strange half minute of arresting ambiguity that leaves people wondering: what was that??