Tiger Woods
Tiger Woods won something. A tournament. First time in two years that’s happened. “The Chevron World Challenge is not an official PGA Tour event, a handful of golfers in the 18-player field are probably not as fully engaged as they might otherwise be, and the tournament benefits Woods’ foundation, which means it is a week in which he is highly motivated, regardless of his well-chronicled winless streak.
After a tense back nine that saw him birdie the last two holes to defeat Zach Johnson on Sunday, nobody should be suggesting that the former No. 1 player in the world is immediately back to previous heights, that he’s going to win the Grand Slam in 2012 or that he is even going to win multiple times following his 36th birthday later this month.
But he had to start somewhere, didn’t he?” ESPN
Yes, he did have to start somewhere, from the bottom. Because his fall from grace was that complete. C’mon let’s revisit it.
by Buzz Bissinger | Vanity Fair | February 2010
When Tiger Woods finally fell from his pedestal—the car crash, the angry wife, the tales of kinky extramarital sex, the link to a controversial sports doctor—it was one of the greatest recorded drops in popularity of any nonpolitical figure. Given Woods’s impenetrable mask of perfection, and the hints of trouble from one strange glimpse behind it, the revelations were inevitable and very, very costly. Annie Leibovitz catches the icon, pre-scandal, in prophetic isolation, while the author finds the clues in the wreckage.
by Mark Seal | Vanity Fair | May 2010
First, a pivotal 1996 confrontation between Tiger Woods’s father, Earl, and his early adviser John Merchant taught the young golfer the limits of trust. Then Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, and a posse of enablers showed him there were no limits—when it came to Vegas parties, high-stakes gambling, and beautiful women. Talking to an angry Merchant and to the mistresses who fed Woods’s massive appetite for extramarital sex, the author dissects the ruin of a champion.
by Lisa Taddeo | New York Magazine | April 2010
The most famous of Woods’s alleged mistresses is Rachel Uchitel, who occupies a position of power in this strobe network of girls and money and celebrity. As VIP concierge and director of VIP hospitality at Tao in Vegas and at Dune in Southampton and at the Griffin, Marquee, Stanton Social, and Pink Elephant in Manhattan, she was the ambassador of client desire.
by Jonathan Mailer | The New York Times | March 2010
But then November and December happened. Woods crashed his car on Thanksgiving weekend, and the collateral damage just kept mounting. Rarely has an athlete tumbled as far and as fast as Tiger Woods. In an era in which stories about athletes behaving badly — gambling, using drugs, carrying weapons — barely stand out in the news, the revelations of Woods’s epic infidelities created a scandal of a whole different order, landing him day after day on the cover of The New York Post (“Tiger Admits: I’m a Cheetah”). In just a few weeks, an image that took more than a decade and untold millions to construct was destroyed. Like all great tabloid tales of falls from grace, this one was anchored in contradiction. The athlete who dominated a sport of discipline, focus and self-control — his father, an ex-military man, once compared him to Gandhi — was a sex junkie. Even as Woods’s sponsors quickly began to drop him, their advertisements lingered awkwardly throughout America: a life-size image of the world’s most famous philanderer greeted airport travelers over Accenture ad copy that read as if it had been written for the occasion: “Go on. Be a Tiger.” And “Opportunity isn’t always obvious.” The Great Undoing inevitably initiated a cottage industry of its own, including “Tail of the Tiger” golf balls with pictures of his supposed mistresses.
How prescient is this next title? It was written in 2003!
by Chris Jones | Esquire | October 2003
Tiger just wants to be left alone. If we’re not careful, he just might get his wish. Revisit an intimate portrait of the golfer’s private life.
by Michael Sokolove | The New York Times | July 2002
But his dominance goes beyond sheer physical excellence. He has an inner calm and concentration, often ascribed to his Buddhist upbringing, that is perfectly suited to a game, 90 percent of which, as Yogi Berra might say, is half mental. It often seems as if his competitors, sensing his imperturbability, look for some way to self-destruct. As an icon, Tiger Woods also has no peer; not now, certainly, and maybe not ever. At 26, he is post-Jordan, postmodern, almost post-human.
Yes.
by Gary Smith | Sports Illustrated | December 1996
Tiger Woods was raised to believe that his destiny is not only to be the greatest golfer ever but also to change the world. Will the pressures of celebrity grind him down first?