Running Tiger Woods thread

I'm past the scandal now - Elin has decided to leave him after a college student in their neighborhood came forward. He just finished fourth at the Masters upon his return, and Hank Haney just fired him as a client. It will be interesting to see whether the rest of the book loses steam now. There's still Haney's book, I think, plus the break-up with Steve Williams, to go. I feel like years of injuries and not much golf could become a real slog, though. I suspect it will probably move fairly fast. In Eig's Ali book, the entire Parkinson's chapter of his life, up until his death, went by in a flash.

It's funny. Back when I was still a workaday journalist, I used to daydream about what figures I would like to take on as book subjects. I thought about a Tiger Woods biography and quickly dismissed it, because he seemed too boring as a person to carry a book.

 

Have you admitted that you were wrong yet?

Just teasing.

 

I also didn't think the sample size by 2008 or so, when I was still authoring, was large enough to determine whether his play would support the project.

 

I've learned that you don't write a book about something that can change. Biographies come late in life or after death. I can't imagine the nightmare of coming out with a Tiger book a few days or weeks before he drove into that fire hydrant.

 

Totally agree!
- Joe Posnanski

 

Guess who's back this week?
TW tees it up at Quail Hollow this morning with a great field.

 

Don’t say “back” and “TW” in the same post! Jinx!

 

Why did she keep renting it out to him?

 

As a favor to Mark O'Meara, as I recall, who was a family friend.

 

Maybe she obtained a DNA sample for future use.

 

Overall, I thought the book was a very good summary of everything that's been out there over the years, but I was a little disappointed that it contained so little new information. It also -- by citing sources only in the back of the book -- assigns the same weight to everything, whether it's Hank Haney personally witnessing it and writing about it in The Big Miss, or whether it's a Radar Online piece or New York Post piece.

I'm still fascinated as to how the New York Post got the actual text message that Elin supposedly sent to Uchitel to trick her into responding "I love you too" because it seems like Uchitel, Elin and Tiger would be the only ones who know that information. Uchitel signed a $10 million NDA, Tiger certainly isn't going to offer up that information to the Post. Would Elin? (Shrug). Anyway, that's a major part of the tick-tock detail in this book, and it all comes from that Post story, not independent reporting. The funeral stuff that kicks off the book is also not independent reporting. It's taken directly from Wright Thompson's piece about Tiger.

The most interesting "new" information that was uncovered, and the way I think the book should have began, is the letter he supposedly wrote to his high school girlfriend. If you think about it, that encompasses everything the book is about: controlling parents, the obsession with eliminating distractions, the way Tiger treats women, the way he was rude to people and cut them off over minor slights. Those letters had never been written about before, and are more interesting that trysts with sad, C-level porn stars.