I rarely covered pro golf during by 55-year sports journalism career and was only around Tiger Woods once, specifically when he was in the company of Charles Barkley, whom I was profiling. So, Tiger couldn't pick out of a police lineup; police lineup being a logical spring board to talk about Tiger who, as you might've read, was involved in a rollover car crash a couple miles from his home in Jupiter Island, Florida last week.
"De ja vu all over again," as Yogi Bear once said. It is least the fourth incident involving Woods and automobiles, and the primary message that should evolve from this latest Tiger tale is, "We gotta keep this dude off the road." But the major themes of the ongoing Woods saga seem to be how hard can he slide, and is this the price of fame for a man who seemed to have it all?
For those of you who don't consider golf a sport, well, anything I say here about Woods' preeminence will fall on deaf ears. But trust me, at his prime between the years of 1999 and 2010, no one was ever better at his discipline; not Jack Nichols in his sport, not Michael Jordan in his. There are a dozen metrics I could proffer to support this, but Tiger's astonishing feat is that 46 times he took a lead into the final round of a golf tournament, and 44 times he won—96%. Understand that leading a golf tournament going into the final day is not unlike having a lead going into the final lap of a track race; it is very, very hard not to get caught.
At this point in his life, Tiger, who is 50 years old, is worth $1.5 billion according to Forbes. He has two lovely children, and reportedly an amiable relationship with his ex-wife Ellie. I have no doubt some of his former competitors despise him for his take-no-prisoners playing demeanor, but he had grown into a bit of an elder statesman in his sport; someone who thought about the good of the game.
So what the heck happened to Eldritch Tiger Woods?
Our clearest reference point would seem to be child actors—those precocious comets who flash across our screens and then flame out. The comparison I've always made for Tiger is Michael Jackson. Both Michael and Tiger tried to do something that is very, very difficult in our celebrity-starved culture: being famous from an early age. From his forays on the Mike Douglas show when he was little more than a toddler, Tiger became the most famous 4-year-old golfer, the most famous 5-year-old golfer, etc., all the way up until he was, say, 45 years old. And to a degree, he's still the most famous golfer. Same thing for Michael Jackson, who broke out with his family group at age six. Though I can't testify from firsthand experience, that is an enormous burden to carry for that long, and we saw what happened to Michael Jackson. Are we about to see the same thing with Tiger?
Well, I don't have all the answers but here are some facts. In this latest incident, Tiger blew a zero on the breathalizer. He was not only not drunk, he hadn't had anything to drink. But he was acting erratically and refused a blood test, often a red flag for drug use. Tiger has had countless surgeries over the past two decades, including several serious ones to his back and knees. A list of Tiger's medical procedures from the Associated Press numbers more than 20.
The man is in pain. He swung viciously at an inanimate object millions of times, and being seemingly immortal on the course does not make you immune from injury.
For ages now, those closest to Tiger have talked about the absence of a support group in his life; about how he pulled down the shades around him and shut out the world. Shortly after I saw him with Barkley, he cut off communication with Charles. Now, I'm not suggesting that being connected to Barkley will be a guaranteed highway to tranquility, but it is telling that he has, according to most reports, so few friends.
Those friends include President Donald Trump. Tiger's current partner is, in fact, Vanessa Trump, the former wife of Trump Jr. Trump's comment on the latest Tiger mess is to Tweet, "The charges should be dropped from this latest incident so he can get back and compete in the Masters Tournament in 2 weeks." That's the wrong message from the Enabler in Chief. The message should be, "get yourself some help. Reclaim your life."
The way I see it, it's not too late but it's getting there. Tiger, you're clearly on the back 9.
