The overwhelming impression I got from this book is that Tiger Woods is a nasty guy. From dumping his high school girlfriend while at college by letter without explanation and refusing to speak to her - to abruptly severing long standing relationships and ‘friendships’ - to his self-centred and dismissive treatment of people he deems less important than him (everyone). Everything revolves Tiger and must take place on his terms or not at all. He seems socially disconnected, pathological and sometimes sociopathic. This is before you even consider his adultery, which is the most gratuitous example of this kind of behaviour. His attitude seems to have been, ‘I’m so good at golf and such an important person I should be allowed to do whatever I want’.
But beyond acknowledging how atrocious his behaviour was, why did he behave like this? And why did, and do, the public love him so much in spite of the highly unattractive side of his personality? Obviously, his exploits on the golf course and dominance of his sport are the most likely explanations. Here, the two questions - why was he so good at golf? why did his life become such a mess? - may share some common ground. Tiger Woods seems to have been raised as a golf machine and not a human. Both mother and father dedicated themselves to him to a startling degree and there seem to have been very few, if any, distractions from the all encompassing pursuit of golfing excellence. While other children learned how to play with each other and socialise, Tiger’s parents were concerned with creating a ruthless, competitive killer. The book reports that his father used to try and distract him while he played to help prepare him for this eventuality in tournaments. In extreme circumstances he would shout racist insults at his son in a tactic designed to build psychological strength. Meanwhile, his tiger mom would tell him to ‘kill’ opponents and ‘take their heart’. All told, this sounds like pretty good preparation for becoming an amazing golfer but also a good recipe for creating a sociopath. Tiger was almost unbelievably mollycoddled growing up but had to submit himself to an equally inconceivable and all encompassing schedule of training. Both parents and Tiger talk extensively throughout his life about how golf was his choice but it rings utterly hollow in light of the facts of his junior golfing career. As such, a young Tiger Woods would have grown up in an environment that valued golf, mental toughness, compliance with a schedule and, above all, performance as measured by a very limited set of narrow factors. Caring for other people was definitely not one of those factors. It is chilling to imagine that Woods played some of best golf while cheating on his wife and young family with multiple other women. This cold hearted lack of emotion might have served him well on tour but in a family context it has a more sinister and unsettling character.
Added to this already considerable burden to perform were the ideas and opinions of his father. Earl Woods regularly told people that Tiger would have a huge socio-political impact because of his status as a black player in the overwhelming white world of golf. When Tiger started playing their were courses that hosted the US Open that would not admit black members. While Tiger actively tried to defuse racial questions, his father seems to have wanted to turn his son into a living ‘fuck you’ to the white sporting establishment that may have curtailed his own baseball career. So, on top of the pressure to be the best golfer and to always win Tiger was also expected to be a symbol of black success in the face of white domination and to change the world. The weirdest expression of his father’s desire for their to be a racial significance to Tiger’s career comes in the form of a story he told about how Tiger was tied to a tree and stoned by his classmates while at school, which the book debunks fairly convincingly. So, Tiger grew up in a maniacally focused, aggressive, hyper virile, super competitive environment, which bore striking resemblance to the military world of the marines his father came from. However, his father quit his job to focus fully on managing his infant son’s career. At one stage, Tiger recalls how his father told him he had a choice of being a marine or being a golfer. Tiger’s obsession with the marines pays testimony to how deeply he had absorbed his father’s philosophy. The pressure to perform, to not let his parents down, to be a symbol of racial change and to change the world must have been unbelievably difficult to deal with.
The book is strong on Tiger’s amazing achievements on the golf course, albeit with a few too many misty eyed descriptions of clutch putts and famous tournament victories. His capacity for practice, his mental and physical toughness and his extreme competitiveness are truly breathtaking. Perhaps what stands out the most is the fact that he won the 2008 US Open only three weeks after being unable to walk and with no cartilage left in his knee. Less spectacular, but equally fascinating, was Tiger’s decision to remodel his swing after winning his first major in 1997. When most people would have been basking in the glory of victory, Tiger had his eyes on far bigger, longer term goals.
Tiger is a personification of modern, competitive, professional sports. Trained since early infancy for a sole purpose, he dispensed with fairplay, sportsmanship and etiquette in favour of a warlike, win at all costs mentality that made everything subservient to his golfing success. However, rather than gaping in awe at the achievements this strategy had yielded, as I would have done before reading this book, I finished the book feeling sad. What kind of life had this created for Tiger? What kind of person had emerged from this regime? Had the extreme micro management of his life ultimately helped or hindered him? Indubitably, he dominated golf in a way that’s never been seen before and made huge amounts of money. Nonetheless, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Tiger grew up in a cold, loveless world focussed on what he could do rather than who he was. This seems to have created an equally cold, loveless man with little capacity for empathy or warmth. The fact that Tiger is still so popular and such a huge star says something about society. It made me think that Tiger is the quintessential example of the corrupt and questionable SportsWorld that Robert Lipsyte describes in his eponymous book. In this world, sports are not played for the development and enjoyment of the athlete as a person located in the context of broader society. Rather he plays for the benefit, more specifically the financial profit, of his parents, his school, his agent and his sponsors. Jack Scott’s 'The Athletic Revolution', which I am currently reading and hope to write about soon, is excellent on this topic. Modern sports, far from encapsulating and teaching the best principles essential for broader life, as is often claimed, teaches the philosophy of unshackled aggression akin to the mindset that predominates in war. In the same way that America, and much of the rest of world, glorify the fundamentally tragic character of war and combat; so too in commercialised sports. Dubious actions and morals are embraced in the pursuit of all-important victory while concepts of fairness, justice and wellbeing are thrown out and laughed at as soft and outdated.
Perhaps the most poignant part of the book is the story of Tiger’s record breaking third straight victory at the US Amatuer championships at the age of 20 in 1996. On the final round, Tiger and Steve Scott are neck in neck. Scott has a putt with Tiger’s ball in the way, Tiger marks it and moves the marker out of his opponent’s line. When he replaces his ball, he forgets to move it back to its original position. Scott points it out to Tiger and saves him from forfeiting the title. Tiger doesn’t even thank him.
Reflecting back on the event and his life afterwards, Scott said, ‘I think I am walking proof that you can win in life without winning’. Scott went on to have an underwhelming tour career and became a club pro. Of course, I can’t judge what a successful life constitutes and even if I could it would vary wildly depending on the individual. However, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I would much rather be Scott, with his kids and his marriage of 18 years, than Tiger, with the chaos of pressure and media attention swirling around him. In spite of the 14 majors and a billion dollars, Tiger’s life as represented in this book reads like a tragedy. I don’t know if Tiger’s upbringing created his problems later in life or if his success lead him astray or if everything is pre-determined genetically; surely the question is too complex to have an easy answer. However, Tiger’s reckless adultery and possible sex and drug addictions do not strike me as the actions of a happy and healthy man.
This was an interesting and well researched book. It was a bit sentimental in places and undoubtedly glorifies his sporting exploits. While it doesn’t question the values and ethics of professional sport explicitly, I feel like it contains all the raw material required to start asking these questions and presents a fascinating case study of a true modern sporting icon. I really feel I got more out of this book because of reading 'SportsWorld' and 'The Athletic Revolution' at around the same time.
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