OUR HEARTS ACHE FOR TIGER, BUT OUR MINDS NEED TO HEAR MORE
Lucky to be alive after his grisly SUV crash, Woods isn't deluding himself about a return to competitive golf, yet he refuses to be forthright about why he was driving at least 83 mph in a 45 zone
Assuming the life of Tiger Woods is a movie, what we're experiencing now is a dark epilogue. If there was to be a happy ending, the film would have stopped at Augusta National, in 2019, when he returned from years of crises that assaulted his health and reputation to win the Masters, then hug his kids on the same soil where he once hugged his father.
Instead, dressed not in victory red but in fitting charcoal and black, we find Woods on a November day in the Bahamas, fortunate to be alive and not to have part of his right leg amputated. Where it all sinks in — the shambles of a life both inspirational and tragic — is when he talks of his implausible return to competitive golf with an attempt at humor.
"As far as playing at the tour level, I don't know when that's going to happen. Now, I'll play a round here or there, a little hit and giggle, I can do something like that. The USGA suggested 'Play It Forward,' " he says, referring to the shorter tees. ''I really like that idea now. I don't like the tees on the back. I like 'Play It Forward.' Come on, let's move it up, let's move it up.''
Imagine, the man whose monster drives changed the sport, altered course architecture and forced every serious pro into the gym alongside him … hitting from the easier distances. "To see some of my shots fall out of the sky a lot shorter than they used to is a little eye-opening, but at least I'm able to do it again,'' Woods says. "That's something that for a while there, it didn't look like I was going to.
"I can play a par-3 course. I can hit a few shots. I can chip and putt. But we're talking about going out there and playing against the world's best golfers on the most difficult golf courses under the most difficult conditions. I'm so far from that. … I have a long way to go to get to that point. Now, I haven't decided whether or not I want to get to that point. I've got to get my leg to a point where that decision can be made, and we'll see what happens what I get to that point.''
Since that glorious day in Georgia, a preoccupied world has moved on from mythologizing even all-time athletes. It's more difficult for people to rally around another Woods comeback amid a new "variant of concern'' — Omicron, not "Omnicron'' as President Biden called it — and, closer to the point, when his best-case scenario in competitive golf might be as humble as finishing one round in the distant future. This is not a man overcoming countless back and knee surgeries. This is not a man overcoming sex scandals that exposed him as a marketing fraud.
This is a broken human being, no longer revered, leaving us numb and bewildered and angry after he made his own bed — literally, a hospital bed for three weeks in a facility and three more months at his Florida home. This is a lucky S.O.B. who survived a grisly crash and also could have killed other drivers or pedestrians. We know the terrifying police numbers: He was driving an SUV at speeds exceeding 83 mph in a 45 zone on a stretch of curvy, downhill backroad in southern California. In normal life, as I wrote at the time, those who drive this maniacally on trafficked roads are presumed to be under the influence, mentally ill, channeling a drag racer or on a death wish. In Woods' case, he was less than four years removed from an opioids-and-THC cocktail that led to his DUI arrest in the wee hours on a Florida roadside.
There is still no evidence that Woods even tried to negotiate a curve before the SUV veered into a median, struck a curb, mauled a "Welcome to Rolling Hills Estates'' sign and crossed two oncoming lanes before smashing into a tree that sent the SUV airborne in a semi-pirouette. In fact, the vehicle's data recorder indicates he hit not the brake but the accelerator. It's fair to ask, given his past, if he was under the influence. It's fair to ask why he didn't hit the brake.
So when Woods finally appears for his first news conference since the accident, ahead of a Hero World Challenge event sponsored by his foundation, people understandably want to hear from him. They want answers that didn't come in a 22-page police report. If he's able to talk about his murky golfing future, even in a light-hearted way, he should be able to talk about the crash that stopped the world and why he was so irresponsible and reckless. He does not.
"I'm lucky to be alive and also have a limb,'' says Woods, who turns 46 on Dec. 30. "I don't foresee this leg ever being what it used to be, hence I'll never have the back what it used to be, and the clock's ticking. I'm getting older, I'm not getting any younger. All that combined means a full schedule and a full practice schedule and the recovery that would take to do that ... no, I don't have any desire to do that.''
And he all but dismisses anything but a sporadic attempt to play Tour events, if somehow enabled by the gods. "The knee stuff was one thing. That's one level. Then the back. With this right leg ... it's hard to explain how difficult it is,'' he says. "Being immobile for three months. Just to lay there. I was just looking forward to getting outside. That was a goal of mine. Especially for a person who lived his entire life outside, that was a goal. I transitioned from a wheelchair to crutches and now nothing. It's been a lot of hard work. There's a long way to go.'' A day before, in a Zoom interview with Golf Digest, he was less hopeful, saying, "There was a point in time when, I wouldn't say it was 50/50, but it was damn near there if I was going to walk out of that hospital with one leg. Once I (kept it), I wanted to test and see if I still had my hands. So even in the hospital, I would have (girlfriend) Erica (Herman) and (friend) Rob (McNamara) throw me something. Throw me anything.''
And, in homage, Woods alludes to the miracle comeback of another golfing legend, Ben Hogan, who was seriously injured in 1949 when his car was struck by a Greyhound bus. He returned to play an abbreviated schedule — between four and nine events in a given year, winning an amazing five majors in a three-year period. "I think something that is realistic is playing the Tour one day — never full-time ever again — but pick and choose, just like Mr. Hogan did. Pick and choose a few events a year and you play around that,'' he says. "You practice around that, and you gear yourself up for that. I think that's how I'm going to have to play it from now on. It's an unfortunate reality, but it's my reality. And I understand it, and I accept it.
"I don't have to compete and play against the best players in the world to have a great life. After my back fusion, I had to climb Mount Everest one more time. I had to do it, and I did. This time around, I don't think I'll have the body to climb Mount Everest and that's OK. I can still participate in the game of golf. I can still, if my leg gets OK, I can still click off a tournament here or there. But as far as climbing the mountain again and getting all the way to the top, I don't think that's a realistic expectation of me."
Sadly, horribly, we know that. What we don't know is what happened early that morning in Los Angeles, not far from where Woods grew up, learned the game and became a phenom. After speaking about his ongoing rehab, his realistic golf future, son Charlie and his charity, he is asked what he remembers about the accident.
"All those answers have been answered in the investigation, so you can read about all that there in the police report,'' Woods says tersely.
Is he having flashbacks? "I don't, no. Very lucky in that way,'' he says.
He hasn't read a word written about the crash. He only watches sports on TV. "I didn't want to go down that road,'' Woods says. "A lot of things in my body hurt (while he was in recovery), and whether I was on medication or not, it still hurt. … I didn't want to have my mind go there yet. It wasn't ready.''
That's not enough. "People poke and prod and want to know more about my business,'' he says. "I understand that.''
No, he doesn't understand. As one of the planet's most prominent people, someone who readily absorbs the roars and tributes, he owes it to the masses to explain how he could put himself and others in harm's way with careless, mindless actions. If he doesn't owe us an explanation for his state of mind, legions of kind, worried souls — in and out of the sport — would appreciate an update.
He'd prefer we look at the police report.
By doing so, in his most vulnerable condition, he is wasting a chance to reach out and be human. Our hearts ache for him, but our minds need to hear so much more.
Jay Mariotti, called “the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.