By Lewine Mair
What a crazy mix of fame, shame and pain Tiger Woods has known in his first 50 years – and how well he would seem to have come through it all.
Back in 1997, when the then 21-year-old Tiger won his first Masters, his father called me to one side and said, “Tiger’s up there with God, you know.”
I came to see that Tiger loved that father regardless of his embarrassing ways. To give another example, Earl upset the locals at the 1999 Open Championship at Carnoustie by saying, “[Scotland is] for white people. … It has the sorriest weather. People had better be happy that the Scots lived there instead of the soul brothers – the game of golf would have never been invented.”
The news was duly passed on to Tiger, who cringed ever so slightly before coming up with a bemused, “That’s just my dad.”
“Nothing’s ever given to you. You have to go out there and earn it, and I earned it through the dirt. I’m very proud of that.”
Tiger Woods
That Tiger had his own problems in what remains a predominantly white golfing world was something he addressed during the 2024 Open at Royal Troon. I had asked how much his interest in the history of the game had fueled his play.
“For a person who’s had to struggle at times for admittance to clubhouses or on to golf courses, it’s been very important,” he said. “Nothing’s ever given to you. You have to go out there and earn it, and I earned it through the dirt. I’m very proud of that.”
He added that he had taught his then 15-year-old son, Charlie, to appreciate the past: “He understands the history of the game because I wanted him to understand his heritage. … And to understand how hard I had to work to get to where I was at. I had to earn it every step of the way.”
Those steps included the Wednesday ahead of the 2010 Masters when Billy Payne, the chairman of Augusta National, took it upon himself to admonish Tiger for those much-publicised infidelities which led to his divorce from wife, Elin. When, that same day, Tiger was asked how he felt about Payne’s treatment of him, he had no trouble in answering with a humble, “I felt ashamed of myself.”
It was ahead of a press conference in the week of the 1995 Open at St Andrews that I first met Tiger. We had been introduced a little earlier and, when he arrived for the conference via the back entrance of the press tent, he paused by my seat and asked, ever so quietly, “Can you tell me how you pronounce your name? … I didn’t quite catch it.” I explained that no-one knew how to pronounce it, let alone spell it, and that it was kind of him to ask.
The Tiger conference over, I found myself in the midst of a party of tabloid writers. “What was he saying to you?” they wanted to know.
“It was just something between me and Tiger,” I said by way of a mischievous response.
I can’t remember what was used instead of the word “cool” in Tiger’s youth but he was definitely that.
A story I’ve always loved was of when, in 1995, I went to Stanford University to interview Mhairi McKay, a two-time winner of the British Girls’ championship who had won herself a scholarship to Stanford, where Tiger was doing his two-year stint. Mhairi had been practising her golf when Tiger approached and asked if he could have a shot with her driver.
“Where do you want me to send it?” he asked.
“To the white post at the far end of the range,” suggested Mhairi.
At his first and only attempt, his drive hit the target.
That done, he went whistling on his way.
Some 30 years, 15 majors, and a host of surgeries on his overworked body later, I found myself waiting for Tiger to finish his second round at the ’24 Open at Troon while Tony Finau and Tom Kim were waiting to set out.
Finau still had 10 minutes before his 2:26 p.m. second-round starting time when, all of a sudden, this tall man stopped putting and stood bolt upright.
Kim felt he should be following Finau’s example. First, though, he wanted to know what was going on.
“They’re clapping for Tiger,” said Finau, “and it’s an appreciation of what he’s done. These people never know whether this is going to be the last time they see him over here.”
That apart, there was something else to leave you thinking that Tiger had come full circle with that extraordinary life of his.
It was in December of ’24 when, on the spur of the moment, he picked out his “thrill of a lifetime.”
It wasn’t about that comeback win at the 2019 Masters, which happened 11 years after he had won the U.S. Open at a time when his knee was crying out for surgery. Instead, it was to do with that year’s PNC Championship, an end-of-season family affair.
With his ex-wife Elin in eager pursuit and their daughter, Sam, carrying the clubs for the father-and-son combination, the then 15-year-old Charlie made his first hole-in-one.
