Developer stays faithful, so The Cliffs isn't out of Woods.

• Position: Western

Tiger Woods' extramarital affairs might have shanked his reputation, but it's developer Jim Anthony who's in the rough. Two years after launching The Cliffs at High Carolina, home sites--priced from $500,000 to $3 million--are selling slower than tickets to a Tigerless tournament. And he's stuck with millions in promotions featuring the golfer, including billboards depicting Woods swinging--with a golf club this time. "See what inspired me!" he says on one.

There's a lesson in all this, says Jeff Goss, president of Asheville-based The Goss Agency Inc., the region's largest advertising and marketing company. "Never use a celebrity to establish a brand. They've got him standing up on the mountaintop, like he's conquered the mountains. It's a little too prideful and arrogant for the situation he's in." The agency previously represented Travelers Rest, S.C.-based The Cliffs Communities Inc., though not the Buncombe County project.

When he launched it in August 2007, several months before the recession hit, Anthony tied The Cliffs at High Carolina to Woods, who designed the course, his first in America. But professional golf-course designers say active golfers usually have little more to do with course design than George Foreman does with grills. "The golfer might say, 'Maybe that dogleg should be to the left, not right,'" designer Tom Fazio ll says. "But that's about all." Neither Woods nor Anthony have revealed Woods' financial arrangements with The Cliffs at High Carolina, but golf publications report Woods got $25 million for a similar role in a course in Dubai.

On billboards, promotional videos and in personal appearances, Woods and Anthony have hawked The Cliffs at High Carolina as family-strong. "With a wife and two kids," Woods says in one video, "your perspective in life changes."...