Wither Tiger, An Update

Those with us from inception may remember this original Wither Tiger post that I think holds up

pretty well two years on.  Though it may be difficult for those reading it at the present time to remember that I was discussing a player coming off a five-win season that included the Players and was the No. 1 ranked player in the world.  I know, ancient history....

As noted recently, Lorne Rubenstein, author of A Season in Dornoch and other notables, is most certainly not retired from golf writing.  He's so not retired that he scored quite the get, a long sitdown with former (we kid) professional golfer Tiger Woods.  The session lasted some 2 1/2 hours and there's much of interest in it, and I'll give Tiger props for a level of candor and introspection not previously demonstrated.

That said, there are some obvious howlers mixed in, and I'm guessing that you come here more for those, so do please read the whole thing.  Shall we have at it?

Do you watch golf?

I can’t remember the last time I watched golf. I can’t stand it. Unless one of my friends has a chance to win, then I like watching it. I watched Jason [Day] win the PGA. But it was on mute. It’s always on mute and I have some other game on another TV.

On mute?  That's gonna piss of few folks off no doubt...

How do you feel about the way the media have covered you?

There’s no accountability in what they say. And what they say, it’s like it’s gospel, there’s no source behind it. Nothing like, yeah, I talked to X number of players, I talked to this player, this player, this player. It’s none of that. It’s just, some of the announcers, they don’t even go on the golf course. And they look at a pin sheet from the booth, but they’ve never surveyed the golf course, even though the television coverage doesn’t come on until the afternoon. You have all that time to go walk the golf course, to see some of the early rounds, see what guys are doing, how they’re hitting it, how’s the course playing, is the wind coming up? All those different things that you could do. The only one who does that is Finchy [golf broadcaster and former PGA Tour pro Ian Baker-Finch].

Shack puts in the rebound by noting the omission of good buddy Notah Begay in the carve-out.  But wait, there's more:

How do you handle the speculation about you?

One, you don’t listen to it. And two, in today’s world, you don’t go online.

You mean like you did with the Dan Jenkins faux-interview which you rebutted on Derek Jeter's website?  Never mind.... 

You don’t read what’s written about you? Was there a time when you did?

Not really. And that has served me well. It has served me well. Like my dad said when I was young, Were any of these guys there? If anybody has any kind of perspective on it, it would be the caddy. He saw the shot, he understood what the circumstances were. Other than that, there’s nobody else. So what’s their take on it? Who cares? They weren’t there. They didn’t see how difficult it was, what’s going on.

So then it makes sense for Stevie to write a book, seeing as how he's the only one that saw what you saw?   And this strains credulity:

How would you characterize your relationship with the media over the years?

I have a lot of good friends in the media. Guys I’ve gone out to dinner with on countless occasions. With respect. There’s also a flip side of people that I really don’t care for. Hey, they made their career being negative and being outlandish. They’ve made a career out of it. But that’s their take. They’ve almost created a character, per se.

I guess Steve Elling is in that latter category, 'cause he tweeted this:

 

Steve Elling‏@EllingYelling

Open question to all golf media: If you've gone out to dinner with Tiger Woods "countless times," please raise your hand. I'll wait.

That concludes our review of the howlers he told Lorne, but you should read it for the areas in which he was more forthcoming...at least I'd like to credit him for that,  Here's a quick sampling of those:

Do you have any recovery goals? With past injuries, you have.

Absolutely. But this one, I can’t. There’s no timetable. And that’s a hard mind-set to go through. Because I’ve always been a goal setter. Now I had to rethink it, and say, O.K., my goal is to do nothing today. For a guy who likes to work, that’s a hard concept for me to understand. I’ve learned a little bit of it, I think. I know that, one, I don’t want to have another procedure. And two, even if I don’t come back and I don’t play again, I still want to have a quality of life with my kids. I started to lose that with the other surgeries.

He also tells this vivid tale that I certainly hope is true:

Because you couldn’t do things with them?

I’ll never forget when I really hurt my back and it was close to being done, I was practicing out back at my house. I hit a flop shot over the bunker, and it just hit the nerve. And I was down. I didn’t bring my cell phone. I was out there practicing and I end up on the ground and I couldn’t call anybody and I couldn’t move. Well, thank God my daughter’s a daddy’s girl and she always wants to hang out. She came out and said, “Daddy, what are you doing lying on the ground?” I said, “Sam, thank goodness you’re here. Can you go tell the guys inside to try and get the cart out, to help me back up?” She says, “What’s wrong?” I said, “My back’s not doing very good.” She says, “Again?” I say, “Yes, again, Sam. Can you please go get those guys?”

Now we just have the words on paper, but he certainly made a believer of Lorne as per this Morning Drive interview.   And the MD crew has a follow-up discussion of the interview here.

As to the picture of Tiger and Elin as "best friends", the reader is on his or her own there...

In other Tiger-related news we have Jaime Diaz reacting to his presser, though likely before the extensive interview with Rubenstein.  The header tells you all you need to know:

Forget the resignation in Tiger's voice when he talks about his future. Instead listen to the relief

The Jaime rules are in full force, to wit that you'd be remiss in not reading the whole thing, in which he makes the case that a complete break from golf may be the tonic that restores Tiger.  We might just find out, since for physical reasons he's doing exactly that.  But it seems far more likely that an extended absence would erode skills, and the question remains whether his body will ever allow him to be Tiger Woods again.

This is Diaz's close, something new to me:

At least some retroactive light resulted from Woods’ words, an instantly more vivid

memory of how incredibly good Woods was. So good, it immediately began an era. Late on Sunday afternoon at the 1997 Masters, with Woods increasing his double-digit lead on the back nine, Ben Crenshaw took in the electric but also eerie atmosphere and captured the meaning. “It’s like a passing,” he said softly. 

On Tuesday, it didn’t take Crenshaw’s elevated sensibility to have the same thought.

The '97 Masters as a passing?  That's more than passing strange, no?  Is he possibly confusing it with the prior year's death march?

Teddy Greenstein in the Chicago Trib goes for the Achilles:

A washed-up Tiger Woods has only himself to blame

He’s walking away as the greatest talent the game has seen -- a 14-time major champion before his 33rd birthday. He also leaves a TMZ-stained legacy of lies and indiscretions. 

Woods’ career tanked around the time his SUV careened into a fire hydrant, an angry wife chasing him out the door. Until that moment, no one reported on his bad qualities -- he’s a lousy tipper, ungenerous with his time, habitually blowing off autograph-seeking kids and oblivious to the early warnings regarding overtraining. 

Hank Haney and Stevie Williams got blistered for writing hyper-critical accounts, but what does it say about Woods that the three people closest to him (swing instructor, caddie, wife) turned away in such public fashion?

And his close:

There’s some sadness today in knowing that “a pretty good run” has all but ended. But mostly there’s a feeling that Woods brought a lot of this emptiness upon himself.

Now Greenstein as well was likely writing before seeing Tiger's long interview, which provides the obvious contrast.  Tiger admits that he brought much of this on himself , and seems to have filled that emptiness with his children....Now, whether that's more credible than his having had dinner with golf writers countless times, therein lies the paradox...

In post-interview reactions, Joel Beall offers six reasons that Tiger isn't done.  Joel makes many valid points, though this one sin't among them:

Tiger is too old to make a comeback

Tiger turns 40 later this month. That number is not a death sentence in golf, as plenty of players have enjoyed success after this milestone. Vijay Singh won 22 times in his 40s. Davis Love III grabbed the Wyndham Championship at age 51 this season. Everyone knows Jack Nicklaus was 46 in his historic Masters victory in 1986, but many forget a 58-year-old Golden Bear was damn close to putting on the green jacket a seventh time in 1998. Throw in Tom Watson's near-miss at Turnberry in 2009, and there's enough evidence to suggest Woods has some time to work with.

The lawyers would characterize that 'graph as an admission against interest.  The fact that in the long history of our game only two players, Veej and The Slammer, had productive careers in their forties is quite telling, especially since neither of those guys had injury issues.  Yes there are some one-offs, and Tiger fits that profile well, but the focus on his age is appropriate.

Curmudgeonly James Corrigan is having none of that, though, starting with the header:

Tiger Woods is now beyond pitiful - golf is taunting him

Woods was often ridiculed for limping into media centres, clutching a form-sheet as

wretched as his medical notes, and insisting he was there “to win”, while vehemently denying anything whatsoever had changed in his outlook. It was the only certainty that was left with Tiger, the red-shirted one who was always such a certainty on those Sunday afternoons. Well, hey, the physique was in tatters but at least the psyche was still intact.

Yet now it has followed his frame and begun to fall apart. When the question came, Woods not only veered off the script of the past six years, he yanked at the steering wheel and sent his career inexorably up that road to retirement. “There is nothing really I can look forward to,” Woods said, his clear discomfort as much to do with the admission as much as his aching back.

Good work there James, now I'm depressed.