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Yeah, I hear you.. but I read this article and suddenly I'm left thinking "Wow, Tiger did all that for the game DESPITE himself."
The Secret History of Tiger Woods
Yeah, I hear you.. but I read this article and suddenly I'm left thinking "Wow, Tiger did all that for the game DESPITE himself."
I understand and agree to a point. One of the takeaways from the article was that his abnormal childhood didn't provide the socialization and maturity skills to deal with the hardships in a normal way.
In any case, I liked the article. It read like an extension of Haney's book in some ways to me, albeit with a better explanation of Tiger's personality / weirdness.
Wicked Cool Bearded Man
4thegolf+4thefriends
I thought this was a great read. Not a ton of new info, but much new added context
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dhartmann34
Well-known member
Pretty interesting read I thought.
tr561
Member
Anyone noticing a recurring message being pushed by his PR team in these string of recent articles?
Wicked Cool Bearded Man
4thegolf+4thefriends
His PR team? I didn't think this was particularly flattering
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So is everyone catching all the Twitter frenzy over tiger hitting balls at a clinic? Funny timing with this article.
ntanygd760
Well-known member
He is pretty close to being able to play, now if he can play well for 4 rounds in a row while walking is another question. Hopefully we find out soon. Good article though, nothing really new but still enjoyed it.
Breaking 79
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I actually really enjoyed that article. I knew he was in to the special ops thing but I didn't know it was to that extent. It didn't make me feel bad for him, many people have tragedies in their life and found ways to handle it. I really do hope we see him come back and puts his demons behind him. I was a huge fan and still am, I'd like him to go out on his own terms.
Thechosen1
#Thistagwilltravel
It was a good read. I just want him back out there and somehow pull off a major.
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Very interesting and enjoyable read. I'm getting old so it took me more than 15 - 20 minutes though..haha. Hope he is someday able to make a final run at glory to close out his career in a deserving fashion.
BirdieChaser
just me
The comment .. "it makes me like him less of a golfer now " how do you know how he handled his life ?? from whats said in a article from the media which sound like his opinion vs. factual .. your trying to make it out that Tiger is the only person in the history of life that made mistakes he would rather forget and possible did not deal with it in the best way .. well he is far from the only one and honestly it says little about his greatness as a golfer
i guess no where is safe from the Tiger haters club
I wanted enough time to think about this article, in order to really get my thoughts in order a bit but still be pretty unbridled in terms of how I think about Tiger and his particular...issues. This will probably be long, and probably digress a couple times, but I felt like this article was one of the few times someone really tried to explain his relationship with the military and how if affected his golf life in a way that wasn't really influenced by Haney getting pissy about whether his other training was affecting his golf swing, but rather how it was affecting him as a person, and thereby as a golfer.
One: I refer to the military as the family business. It happens to work out that military service goes back generations in my family, and frequently includes work in the intelligence and special operations communities. Don't ask me to get into more detail than that, and suffice it to say people I am close to are also part of the intel community and special operations (I can go so far as to say I'm in the military intelligence corps of the US Army, where I repair computers and equipment specific to the MI Corps.) Let's say hero worship continued well after I had a couple deployments under my belt.
Two: I am a special operations washout. Several years ago I tried out to join a special operations unit. I completed to the assessment, but was not selected. One thing about trying out for those sorts of organizations is there's no scoreboard. You have no idea how well you're doing. No one tells you to step it up, or that they're head of the class, or even doing a good job. I watched dudes quit on day zero because they were informed they would receive no criticism, no encouragement, no assessment, until they completed the course. Even then, if they passed they wouldn't be told what put them over the bar, and if they failed they wouldn't be told why. There's something about this reality that certain personalities simply cannot live with. It makes what we do a little bit too much like real life. And it makes what we do nothing like sports. With all that in mind, I consider it a testament to my fortitude and character that I spent about 6 to 8 months after my non-selection staring at the ceiling for hours before I fell asleep each night parsing out what caused me to not be selected. Unfortunately, life, injuries, more injuries, and more life, took their toll on me before I could screw up the courage to assess again, so the medium speed, some drag Staff Sergeant most of you have met bears not much resemblance to the guy I was when I tried out.
These two things, collectively, help me to maybe understand what it is to be really close to those illustrious and august companies that make up the most elite of our armed services. And when you're close enough to get burnt by it, to get scuffed up by it, to feel like you might could maybe be part of that world, it's addicting. The idea that you might get to be part of that without the brutal, harsh life that led up to it, seems like all the sugar with none of the sh!t. Tiger Woods, I think, got closer than most. He basically grew up under the wing of a MAC-V SOG officer and his buddies. That's such an incredibly unique thing, and I think the perspective of growing up surrounded by people who could function under pressure with such dispatch under life or death circumstances makes being cold-blooded over a golf shot seem almost silly by comparison. I think it informs a lot of how Tiger could hit completely insane shots in the pitch dark, hit insane shots under the worst of circumstances...his perspective was just radically shifted from the experience of his peers.
So what changed? I think this article rightly points out that the death of his father drastically affected Tiger's focus. I really think Earl was able to take that perspective and put it in golfing terms. People tend to forget, Special Forces (Green Berets) hold teaching indigenous forces as their primary task. Tiger's a golfer, and Earl is a Green Beret. Earl made Tiger a commando of the golf course. I honestly think Earl's death removed the last block that could keep Tiger's focus on golf alone. To Tiger, being a commando and being a golfer where identical in terms of mentality. He says if he hasn't been a golfer he'd have been a SEAL, and SEALs balk at that, but a SEAL can't stand over a ball in a plugged lie in a fairway bunker and picture how it will come out with picture perfect clarity, and Tiger can. It makes total sense that a golfer trained by a special forces operator would have a picture of an imagined outcome with such absolute clarity. There's a part of Tiger that is a well-trained indigenous commando, a sort of Manchurian Candidate of golf. But he lost his handler in 2006, with Earl's death. His worlds, where he was one part world's best golfer, one part special operator, and one part unfaithful family man (all the same parts Earl kept in balance but with far less extremes) blurred together. He functioned on his original orders for two years afterwards, until his knee finally came apart at the seams.
What happened after that? There was no one there to get him focused back on a core that he could function from. Specifically, his golf. The disparate parts of Tiger spiraled out of his control.
I think it's a part everyone who carries the gun for years has to grapple with, whether it's going from operational to a training capacity, or deploying to non-deploying, you have to try to rectify gunner persona to dad persona or husband persona or even just not-special-forces persona. I think all those people Tiger has tried to be for a long time makes it tough to just swing a golf club, smile, and have fun. I think it makes it damn near impossible to swing a golf club, smile, have fun, and still be willing to sink in a dagger on Sunday to seal a win. Once Tiger lost that motivation, he spent months on the couch in 2008, and the idea of playing golf on Sunday got away from him. Everyone reaches that point where they flip a finger to the grind. I went to PLDC with a guy who got tired of being a Ranger. He shopped his resume around until the Ft. Lewis CSM picked him up to be his driver, Ranger tab and all. At some point I put aside the idea that I was Special Forces material, and I decided to be a good, ordinary NCO. Everyone has a breaking point. I think Tiger happened to hit his at a time when the world he built around him didn't include someone who was there to get him back on track. I'm not sure there's necessarily anything wrong with that, but I'm not sure there's much right about it, either.
One: I refer to the military as the family business. It happens to work out that military service goes back generations in my family, and frequently includes work in the intelligence and special operations communities. Don't ask me to get into more detail than that, and suffice it to say people I am close to are also part of the intel community and special operations (I can go so far as to say I'm in the military intelligence corps of the US Army, where I repair computers and equipment specific to the MI Corps.) Let's say hero worship continued well after I had a couple deployments under my belt.
Two: I am a special operations washout. Several years ago I tried out to join a special operations unit. I completed to the assessment, but was not selected. One thing about trying out for those sorts of organizations is there's no scoreboard. You have no idea how well you're doing. No one tells you to step it up, or that they're head of the class, or even doing a good job. I watched dudes quit on day zero because they were informed they would receive no criticism, no encouragement, no assessment, until they completed the course. Even then, if they passed they wouldn't be told what put them over the bar, and if they failed they wouldn't be told why. There's something about this reality that certain personalities simply cannot live with. It makes what we do a little bit too much like real life. And it makes what we do nothing like sports. With all that in mind, I consider it a testament to my fortitude and character that I spent about 6 to 8 months after my non-selection staring at the ceiling for hours before I fell asleep each night parsing out what caused me to not be selected. Unfortunately, life, injuries, more injuries, and more life, took their toll on me before I could screw up the courage to assess again, so the medium speed, some drag Staff Sergeant most of you have met bears not much resemblance to the guy I was when I tried out.
These two things, collectively, help me to maybe understand what it is to be really close to those illustrious and august companies that make up the most elite of our armed services. And when you're close enough to get burnt by it, to get scuffed up by it, to feel like you might could maybe be part of that world, it's addicting. The idea that you might get to be part of that without the brutal, harsh life that led up to it, seems like all the sugar with none of the sh!t. Tiger Woods, I think, got closer than most. He basically grew up under the wing of a MAC-V SOG officer and his buddies. That's such an incredibly unique thing, and I think the perspective of growing up surrounded by people who could function under pressure with such dispatch under life or death circumstances makes being cold-blooded over a golf shot seem almost silly by comparison. I think it informs a lot of how Tiger could hit completely insane shots in the pitch dark, hit insane shots under the worst of circumstances...his perspective was just radically shifted from the experience of his peers.
So what changed? I think this article rightly points out that the death of his father drastically affected Tiger's focus. I really think Earl was able to take that perspective and put it in golfing terms. People tend to forget, Special Forces (Green Berets) hold teaching indigenous forces as their primary task. Tiger's a golfer, and Earl is a Green Beret. Earl made Tiger a commando of the golf course. I honestly think Earl's death removed the last block that could keep Tiger's focus on golf alone. To Tiger, being a commando and being a golfer where identical in terms of mentality. He says if he hasn't been a golfer he'd have been a SEAL, and SEALs balk at that, but a SEAL can't stand over a ball in a plugged lie in a fairway bunker and picture how it will come out with picture perfect clarity, and Tiger can. It makes total sense that a golfer trained by a special forces operator would have a picture of an imagined outcome with such absolute clarity. There's a part of Tiger that is a well-trained indigenous commando, a sort of Manchurian Candidate of golf. But he lost his handler in 2006, with Earl's death. His worlds, where he was one part world's best golfer, one part special operator, and one part unfaithful family man (all the same parts Earl kept in balance but with far less extremes) blurred together. He functioned on his original orders for two years afterwards, until his knee finally came apart at the seams.
What happened after that? There was no one there to get him focused back on a core that he could function from. Specifically, his golf. The disparate parts of Tiger spiraled out of his control.
I think it's a part everyone who carries the gun for years has to grapple with, whether it's going from operational to a training capacity, or deploying to non-deploying, you have to try to rectify gunner persona to dad persona or husband persona or even just not-special-forces persona. I think all those people Tiger has tried to be for a long time makes it tough to just swing a golf club, smile, and have fun. I think it makes it damn near impossible to swing a golf club, smile, have fun, and still be willing to sink in a dagger on Sunday to seal a win. Once Tiger lost that motivation, he spent months on the couch in 2008, and the idea of playing golf on Sunday got away from him. Everyone reaches that point where they flip a finger to the grind. I went to PLDC with a guy who got tired of being a Ranger. He shopped his resume around until the Ft. Lewis CSM picked him up to be his driver, Ranger tab and all. At some point I put aside the idea that I was Special Forces material, and I decided to be a good, ordinary NCO. Everyone has a breaking point. I think Tiger happened to hit his at a time when the world he built around him didn't include someone who was there to get him back on track. I'm not sure there's necessarily anything wrong with that, but I'm not sure there's much right about it, either.
cpljohnst
Go Jackets! Go Sun Devils
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Really enjoyed your thoughts Palladin. Thank you for sharing them!
Wake
Active member
Great read Paladin, and I agree with you. Being around Socom guys alot down here, I could completely see how you could get sucked into wanting that, much less if you were around them as much as he was.
Paladin, I really appreciate your insight and your thoughts. Thanks for taking the time to write that up.
As far as this article and TW... it does seem more and more like Tiger the person is so tied into golf and his father that he simply doesn't know what to do without either. We can look at what he's said and done, and how he's treated people, and point fingers at him, but in reality, the guy was raised to be a golfing machine. No friends, always with his father working on his golf game at the expense of pretty much everything else, and all that shaped him as a person. Not everything is cut and dried when it comes to people, their personalities, and their emotions.
As far as this article and TW... it does seem more and more like Tiger the person is so tied into golf and his father that he simply doesn't know what to do without either. We can look at what he's said and done, and how he's treated people, and point fingers at him, but in reality, the guy was raised to be a golfing machine. No friends, always with his father working on his golf game at the expense of pretty much everything else, and all that shaped him as a person. Not everything is cut and dried when it comes to people, their personalities, and their emotions.
Lions81
Well-known member
Article was a very interesting read. Like a lot of people, I knew he was involved in some "training" with Seals, but had no idea the extent that it went to. Found that pretty shocking. Not to mention he continued to win golf tournaments while going through all of this. I'm not a big fan of Tiger off the golf course, but did enjoy watching the things he could do on it.
Tadashi70
Well-known member
This is what I fave everyday. I keep push my son to turn pro in mine craft. I want to retire....
Seriously, TWs lack of social graces has been well documented since he first turned pro. His comments in GQ were scrutinized. His night club comments before he turned 21. His fathers training regiment for him. Earl made sure his Tiger would be great.
Like or not, what we have witnessed to this point was due to his upbringing. The great and horrible. And we will witness this with other prodigies as we move along. I just hope parents don't follow suit because little Johnny seems to be ok at a sport.
Evok
Don't worry, Be happy!
I agree and it's why i despise those child beauty pageants. The attitude of the kids and parents is simply disgusting.This is what I fave everyday. I keep push my son to turn pro in mine craft. I want to retire....
Seriously, TWs lack of social graces has been well documented since he first turned pro. His comments in GQ were scrutinized. His night club comments before he turned 21. His fathers training regiment for him. Earl made sure his Tiger would be great.
Like or not, what we have witnessed to this point was due to his upbringing. The great and horrible. And we will witness this with other prodigies as we move along. I just hope parents don't follow suit because little Johnny seems to be ok at a sport.
Agent Jay
Grandaddy Alumni
Like others have said, it's hard to be all sad for TW when he's where he is for the talent he has, BUT he's a person too, just like you and I. Loosing any family member is a hard thing and especially your Dad when he was your best friend. I'm lucky to still have my Dad. I can't begin to know what's going through Tiger's mind or how his mind works. This article shows some things I didn't know about him. I knew he had a thing for the military, but I didn't know it was to THAT degree. There's nothing wrong with a hobby and especially nothing wrong with helping anyone part of the military in any fashion when you have the stature of TW. However, it makes me scratch my head when this hobby turns left and puts the way you make a living on the line. We all deal with grief in different ways, some more destructive than others. Tiger didn't go to alcohol or drugs, he went to basically self hurting and other women. Like the article stated, it's obvious he knows his wrongs and faults and has to live with them like we all do. I hope he finds that light at the end of the tunnel, if that light is on the golf course that would be great for us. If not, if that's on the sidelines of his kids soccer games and activities, that's fine, too. HIS happiness in HIS life is more important than us needing to watch him play golf for our entertainment.
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Very interesting read. Kinda feel for a guy like that and hope he can get everything back on track. At least for his kids.
Definitely makes me feel good about my childhood.
Definitely makes me feel good about my childhood.
I'm amazed at how many parents place so much importance on sports and give their kids false hope that they may be headed for Division 1 or the pros. In my experience the really good athletes that will play in college are not pushed at all by their parents. The drive is from within. My oldest 2 are at a large high school that excels in many sports but now that my son is a senior his friends parents are finally realizing that their kid is not a special talent. Very few from our school are headed for D1.
One of my best buddies who was just at my house for a long golf weekend never pushed his son in any sports, he just let him play whatever he wanted. He wound up playing 4 sports until high school where he dialed it back to basketball, baseball, and football. He's a junior and just committed to the University of Minnesota on a baseball scholarship and also the starting quarterback for his high school. His parents are constantly telling him that he needs to focus on his studies because he has maybe a 1 in 1000 chance of ever playing even in the minor leagues. This is for a kid that is the #1 ranked shortstop in the state but that is the message that more parents need to learn. Even worse is our neighbor who has been giving their son false hope that he could get into the Naval Academy or Westpoint. He has neither the grades or test scores to do so and he's devastated now that he has been rejected. I tried to tell the parents to not get their hopes up because the acceptance rate is only 6.5% but they wouldn't listen.
Ironically, one of the best athletes from last years class is on a golf scholarship at UC Davis and has decided to redshirt this year and not play at all next year. He's in premed and his class workload is far to great for him to be successful at both. He was home a couple weeks ago and I spoke to him about golf. He said he was pretty burned out on golf and was only planning on playing 25 rounds this year, mostly with his dad when he is home over the summer. He is an amazing talent who picked up the game at 13 and was a +3 by the time he was 17. I believe he was ranked 110th in the country his senior year. He was very excited about his future in medicine and is planning on transferring to Stanford his junior year. He also commented that although he was a good golfer, he knew he didn't have enough passion for the game or probably the talent to make it to the PGA Tour. He also said he would never want to travel 30+ weeks a year like the Tour guys do. Smart kid for only 18 years old.
One of my best buddies who was just at my house for a long golf weekend never pushed his son in any sports, he just let him play whatever he wanted. He wound up playing 4 sports until high school where he dialed it back to basketball, baseball, and football. He's a junior and just committed to the University of Minnesota on a baseball scholarship and also the starting quarterback for his high school. His parents are constantly telling him that he needs to focus on his studies because he has maybe a 1 in 1000 chance of ever playing even in the minor leagues. This is for a kid that is the #1 ranked shortstop in the state but that is the message that more parents need to learn. Even worse is our neighbor who has been giving their son false hope that he could get into the Naval Academy or Westpoint. He has neither the grades or test scores to do so and he's devastated now that he has been rejected. I tried to tell the parents to not get their hopes up because the acceptance rate is only 6.5% but they wouldn't listen.
Ironically, one of the best athletes from last years class is on a golf scholarship at UC Davis and has decided to redshirt this year and not play at all next year. He's in premed and his class workload is far to great for him to be successful at both. He was home a couple weeks ago and I spoke to him about golf. He said he was pretty burned out on golf and was only planning on playing 25 rounds this year, mostly with his dad when he is home over the summer. He is an amazing talent who picked up the game at 13 and was a +3 by the time he was 17. I believe he was ranked 110th in the country his senior year. He was very excited about his future in medicine and is planning on transferring to Stanford his junior year. He also commented that although he was a good golfer, he knew he didn't have enough passion for the game or probably the talent to make it to the PGA Tour. He also said he would never want to travel 30+ weeks a year like the Tour guys do. Smart kid for only 18 years old.