Tiger a control freak who loves to take risks
December 31, 2009
EDITOR’S NOTE—Doug Ferguson has been the AP golf writer since 1998 and hascovered 60 of Tiger Woods’ 82 victories around the world.
By DOUG FERGUSON
AP Golf Writer
His rivals used to joke that if you cut Tiger Woods open, all you would findwere some wires and a few nuts and bolts.
Now they know better.
Tom Watson, who won five British Opens himself, watched Woods carve up St.Andrews nearly a decade ago and called him “supernatural.”
The last month proved otherwise.
As another PGA Tour season starts without Woods, one question stands out:
Did anyone really know him?
Recollections point to a player who craved control inside his world of golf,only to test his limits outside of it.
During a trip to New Zealand for his caddie’s wedding, Woods went bungeejumping off a cable car suspended 440 feet over a river valley. On the sametrip, he climbed behind the wheel of a race car and traded paint with thecompetition on a dirt track.
Woods spent a week at Fort Bragg going through Special Forces training withthe Marines and became a master scuba diver, capable of holding his breath forfour minutes at a time while exploring the ocean. It was one of his tales fromunder the sea that first gave his colleagues pause.
Woods was having lunch at Firestone Country Club in 2003, regaling DarrenClarke and Thomas Bjorn with stories about diving and spearfishing. He couldstay on the ocean floor even longer, Woods explained, when he used a regulator.But the scenery was so much better without one.
“You don’t want any bubbles because that scares the fish off,” he said.“The only problem is that when you don’t make any bubbles, the sharks comearound, too.”
Bjorn stiffened, raised a bushy eyebrow and said, “Just be careful downthere. Our future earnings depend on you.”
That story seems appropriate now, since Woods hasn’t surfaced in publicsince Nov. 27, when he ran his SUV over a fire hydrant and into a tree at about2:30 a.m., the opening chapter of an expose of his private life—a second life,really—that few imagined could exist.
He was never without flaws, displaying a nasty temper at times, a foul mouthon occasion, and routinely blowing by autograph seekers. Yet those sins wereforgiven soon enough, or at the very least forgotten, once Woods began conjuringmagic from his clubs. Maybe that’s why he rarely felt a need to apologize.
At his last tournament, the Australian Masters, Woods hit a poor drive onthe 13th at Kingston Heath, then flipped his driver to the ground and watched itbounce sideways into the gallery. The crowd turned into a mosh pit—albeit apolite one—passing the driver toward the front and back into Woods’ grip. Hetook it without explanation or embarrassment, quickly turned away and barelyacknowledged the episode after the round.
“That was my mistake,” was all Woods said.
Then there was the famous tirade on the 18th at Pebble Beach on Saturdaymorning at the 2000 U.S. Open. Wrapping up a second round delayed by fog, Woodshooked his tee shot into the ocean and followed it with a few curses picked upby a boom mike on the tee box—during cartoon hour, no less.
A year later, returning to Pebble Beach for the first time since thathistoric 15-shot victory, Woods reached the 18th tee during a practice round andtried to recall his choice of words. Finally, a reporter recounted them for him,adding, “At least that’s what my kids told me.”
The warm smile was replaced by a cold stare.
“I am who I am,” Woods said.
Tabloid-fueled reports have linked him to almost as many women as he hasmajor championships. One of those women kept a voicemail from Woods and gave itto a celebrity magazine. She said the affair began when Woods’ wife was sevenmonths pregnant with their first child. More sordid testimonials followed. In amatter of weeks, he went from being on top of the world to the butt of jokes onthe late-night talk-show circuit.
Even Disneyland got into the act. During the “Aladdin” show at the resort,a genie explains to Aladdin that he can’t make people fall in love with him.
“Only saying that to you once,” the genie adds. “I had to say it, like,15 times to Tiger Woods.”
But he was easy to fall for. Woods proposed to Elin Nordegren at a gamepreserve in South Africa, and married her in Barbados in 2004. Then along cametwo beautiful kids: first a daughter, Sam, and then son Charlie. When the family— dogs included—gathered for a tender family portrait not long after, Woodslooked like the man who had everything.
Will anyone ever look at him the same way again?
Much depends on what happens to the marriage, but the jokes likely won’t enduntil he returns to golf, and no one—perhaps not even Woods—knows when thatwill be. The Masters seems the most logical choice, because it’s both a majorand the game’s most buttoned-down event. Everything from how fans behave to howmany media members get inside the gates is tightly controlled.
But if Woods doesn’t show up in April, then when?
The U.S. Open returns to Pebble Beach in June, and Woods has won there. TheBritish Open returns to St. Andrews in July, and Woods has won there, too—twice, by a combined 13 shots. The Ryder Cup is set for October, but he’s neverbeen fond of team-oriented play.
Golf has always been an individual pursuit for Woods, so much so thatwhenever people question his Ryder Cup record (10-13-2), he responds with aquestion of his own: What was Jack Nicklaus’ record in the Ryder Cup? Anyone?Ah, but everyone knows Nicklaus won 18 professional majors. That’s all thatmatters to Woods.
Despite not winning a major in 2009, few observers would have bet againsthim catching Nicklaus, and soon. Someone who’s won 82 tournaments worldwide and14 majors before turning 34 doesn’t forget how to play, and Woods is entering asweet spot in his career, an age when most players are just coming into theirprime.
Yet he’s never played before fans who figure to be this hostile, and just asintriguing will be the reception from his fellow pros.
Anthony Kim, a promising young pro Woods has worked with, considered thequestion and said with a shrug: “Same guy to me.”
We’ll see. The PGA Tour gets under way Thursday, Jan. 7, with thewinners-only SBS Championship at Kapalua, Hawaii. Woods hasn’t played theresince 2005, so it’s not until he skips the San Diego Open, which starts Jan. 28,that his “leave” begins taking on significance. Then again, he’s grownaccustomed to setting his own rules.
Years ago, after the first wave of “Tigermania,” Woods worked out a dealwith the PGA Tour requiring him to appear for a pre-tournament interview at themedia center only where he was the defending champion. One year at Memorial, thetour erected a podium alongside the putting green to accommodate the media crushthat follows Woods everywhere, inconveniencing all the other pros nearby workingon their game. The media center was no more than 50 yards away. No one from thetour challenged Woods.
When CBS Sports placed a camera on the tee box at the same tournament toanalyze players’ swings, Woods had his caddie place the bag in front of it. Hewas working on his swing and preferred to do it without unsolicited advice.
He has been wary of the media for as long as he has been a pro, yet keenlyaware of what’s in the news. When he returned this year after missing eightmonths due to knee surgery, one of his first questions during a practice roundwas about the state of the newspaper industry.
Woods was discussing the departure of longtime Los Angeles Times’ golfwriter Tom Bonk, someone he’d known and liked for years, when he was asked, “Doyou read the newspaper?”
Woods started to laugh, then slyly said he reads whatever is left at hishotel room door on the road. Yes, he knows exactly what is written about him. Hetried to control that, too, delivering careful, clipped answers to questions,whether they’re posed by the local radio station or Time magazine.
Even his leisure outings seemed stage-managed at times, whether that wascourtside at an Orlando Magic NBA game or on the sidelines of a Miami DolphinsNFL game. The last such appearance was during halftime at the Stanford-Calfootball game, announcing Woods’ induction into Stanford’s athletics hall offame.
As Woods began speaking, he was interrupted by scattered boos from the Calsection. He appeared genuinely rattled, for a moment. And that was before allthose sordid stories began piling up, one after another—enough anyway, to makea person wonder how Woods will react when it comes time to make his return.
Tee it up with Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Golf 10
Comments
Got something to say?
