Running Tiger Woods thread

Every injury is not identical.

 

Thought it was a great story and it's what brought me back to the site for the first time in a long while. Wanted to see the feedback, or debate, and any inside baseball on how it got done. Surprised it doesn't have its own thread on the journalism board.

Amazing reporting and detail and I wondered if Tiger knew some of those people were talking, like Notah, and whether there was an agenda. I was, maybe am, a big Tiger fan and have been since I saw him as a freshman at the Ohio State course for the NCAAs long ago. I came away from reading this thinking he's a fallen, yet flawed hero, which I realize is probably the minority opinion here. For non journalists, as I now am, do you think that was most people's takeaway?

Either way, hard story to stop reading and maybe the first of those long-form ESPN ones I've read to the end.

Agree with your assessment, Alma. Thanks for it.

 

It's a good point about reading to the end. I thought this piece held up really nice.

A lot of longform does not. It's long to justify the time, creative (and actual) sweat and expense put into it, which I kind of think is too bad, since some poems can create centuries of debate and meaning in less than 50 words.

And the longer a piece of journalism gets, the less you tend to appreciate the quality of the writing, because you begin to see the difference between "writing" and necessary words to drive the story along. This is true of even many shorter pieces, but I am struck more by it in longform work. And I've seen it in some of Thompson's work.

But this Tiger piece breezes along really well.

 

Wright's been working on this piece for a long time. He did some epic reporting that didn't even make it into the final cut. I think the great lesson of this story for young writers is that if you have the material, if you have the anecdotes and telling details, you worry about the structure but the writing, the actual sentences, will take care of itself and themselves. Tiger has to be one of the hardest guys to report on, and Wright reported the shit out of him. I read it wondering whether Jordan and Begay will be on the outs now, too, their quotes were that revelatory. But with them, all Wright had to do was tell the story of what he had learned.

A funny aside—when Wright started work on this story, he bet me that he would get Tiger to talk. I was like, No you won't. I'm sure he tried his hardest, but that was a sucker's bet if there ever was one.

I do wonder whether Tiger might talk to him now, though. It sounds as though Tiger reads what's written about him, and if you read something that close to the bone about yourself, I wonder if it makes you curious about the guy who wrote it.

 

Move over, Gay Talese, make room for Wright Thompson. It seems "Tiger Woods Has a Cold" too.

 

Wow, wow, wow !

The writing was great-- awesome, Wright-- the reporting was knock-you-on-your-ass, just stunning.

It was so dense and rich with actual information, interviews and meaningful quotes, that it didn't even seem longform.

I, too, wondered about the tidbits that hit Wright's cutting room floor.

And I wonder about the timing. A guess.... Perhaps it would have come out sooner but... Along the lines of what typefitter mentioned, maybe Wright was obsessing over getting a few more key interviews, including the man himself .... Then Shipnuck comes out with his thing, which, all due respect, was nothing compared to this.... And maybe that article sparked the release of this one, because to sit on something like this any longer might've driven everyone, including the writer himself, insane. Am I warm here ?

What about Lindsey Vonn ? Did I miss a mention of her ? Did she not agree to an interview ? Did Wright ultimately decide her presence in his life was apropos of nothing ?

 

Day late with that one:

 

That's a great question that I hadn't thought if until you wrote it. Not to take anything away from Wright – I thought the story was unbelievably well-reported and -written – but it does seem a little odd to not even mention her in passing. (Apologies in advance if I missed it too.) Weren't they together for several years?

The story made it sound like the only good thing in Tiger's life the last few years is the time he spends with his kids, and that's it – basically everything else sucks. Maybe the Lindsey Vonn relationship was basically a beard, I dunno. But now I'm curious. Then again, when you make cuts from a beast that's this long, maybe a brief Vonn mention accidentally got trimmed too.

Or is there a slightly longer-form version of the story?

 

The saddest part of the whole piece is that Tiger wouldn't be in it. There's nobody in his life with the credibility and sympathy with him to have told him that Thompson was about the best possible journalist in whom to confide as much or as little as he wanted. Wright might occasionally let his prose shade purple, but he'd be fair under torture. All Woods has got in his life who aren't also driven former superstars are his children and a dwindling group of folks drawing paychecks.
IMO, I hope Thompson is still writing 10 years from now, because Tiger at 50 will be an even better story than Tiger at 40. My guess is a sadder one, but maybe not.

 

I really would like to read a sidebar on the guy who owns Tiger's Escalade. Surely some paper in Arkansas is trying to track the guy down as we speak.

 

Pretty good story on Tiger. The image I get is him alone on the couch dissecting line by line, trying to figure out the anonymous quotes and anecdotes.

 

If Tiger shuts out Begay or Jordan he's only hurting himself with more isolation and I think Begay and Jordan realize it and don't care. He's running out of people to close off. Soon it will be him and "Steiny."