Tiger 2.0

My main question is, Who the hell did they think was the audience for this piece?

 

I haven't read this particular story, but just as a good rule of thumb for the yung'uns out there:

If you're granted ten minutes and ten minutes only by a subject for a big takeout, it's better to...

1) tell him to go fuck himself and spike the story, or

2) write the story around the subject, as in Frank Sinatra Has a Cold

...than agree to the ten-minute limit. What are you going to get in ten minutes? Nothing, except for the feeling that you're somehow beholden to whatever douchebag just snapped you off in ten minutes.

Again, better to strike out on your own, or not at all.

Unless that subject happens to be Tiger, in which case it's best of all to ring him in the face with a one-iron.

 

ding ding ding ding!

 

The lead says he got 10 minutes, but at the front of the magazine the editor wrote that Look-At-Me-I'm-John-Garrity spent more than six months with Tiger.

It's just a poorly constructed story with way too much attention on the writer.

 

Just read the story, or what I could of it. I know from stalking Tiger myself that he's a nightmare assignment and a terrible interview, so I'm willing to give John Garrity the benefit of the doubt.

But ten minutes, six months, it doesn't matter. If you don't have the story, you don't have the story.

This cover should have gone to Verducci.

 

That would have been incredible.

After reading the editor's note about the piece, about how Tiger has grown into a new phase of his life, losing his father and becoming one himself, etc., I was so hoping to find out what this guy was truly like... what he was like behind all the money and corporate images... what he meant to people in his private life... how he deals with expectations people have of him in his public life... what problems a guy with all the money in the world has and how he deals with them... how he has changed over the years... that sort of stuff...

There were some great first person accounts in there... about how the writer knew Tiger as a kid but could only get 10 minutes now, etc.... but basically every question I had went unanswered because the narrative came from the writer's vantage point and not from the people closest to the subject, the very people who could tell me what I want to know... assuming, of course, access and a willingness to talk

 

Tiger learned at the knee of the Master of Say Nothing, aka Michael Jordan. Smile, shake hands firmly, pretend you don't notice the Nike chaperone, laugh too long at moderately funny joke, pause for serious gaze and earnest meaning-of-life comment, interrupted by Nike chaperone leaping to his feet at the buzzer. Thanks for coming, love the shoes, we'll do lunch!

A guy who says nothing in a year--or 10--isn't giving you much in ten minutes. Not sure why anyone would expect more.

 

Exactly what I thought. Because it was a blatantly obvious write around. Spike it.

As in my dad called and asked me about it, as if to say, "Shit, son, if this guy can write for Sports Illustrated, what are you still doing at a newspaper?"

 

Bingo on all fronts.

I was actually in Kauai and talked to Garrity about this story. He was ambivalent about it for obvious reasons, but ... business is business.

He had an assignment on a subject who owns a head it is impossible to get inside of anymore -- courtesy of IMG and Charles Pierce. If you've got x thousand words to write on a subject who denies you A) time and B) access to his head, you've got to try any angle imaginable to make it work.

Not to call Garrity's piece a work of art or anything, but we've all been there on some level.

Clutch, you did more than hit the nail on the head. SI is notorious for first-person work, a byproduct IMO of the George Plimpton legacy. Sometimes, it works (as in the case of Verducci, who makes EVERYTHING he writes work).

Sometimes, it doesn't (as in the case of another golf writer there who shall remain nameless, but is notorious for his first-person, look-at-me-play-courses-you'll-never-get-near pieces).

 

For those of ya'll who are interested in our writer's workshop discussions, let me throw this out:

Chris would never bring this up, because it would be bad form to brag about your own story, so let me do it for him. Here is the piece where Jones got zero access with Tiger for a story about Tiger in Esquire. In fact, Tiger was more or less pissed that Jonesy was following him around. What story gives you more insight into who Woods really is? The one where Garrity got 10 minutes and six months to follow him? Or the one where Chris chased him to Europe and had to work around him, and his crazy cocoon of handlers, at every turn?

(And for the record, I would post this story even if I hadn't met Chris, or seen him show off his hairy chest to a stunned bar full of drunks while I told a story about how I once had a giant turd mailed to me in a box. I swear.)

http://www.esquire.com/print-this/ESQ1003-OCT_TIGER

Let me add, too, that I don't think the Garrity story isn't nearly as bad as some of you think. It's fucking hard to write about Tiger. Really hard actually. I think we need to remember that when we're pissing on a piece like this.

But as far as which story gives you insight into who he is, I think it's obvious.

 

Bird, when you say business is business ....

Yup.

From the story.

"... because getting close to Tiger is the reason SI brokered a deal with the PGA of America t put me on Tiger's pro-am team at the PGA Grand Slam of Golf. It's November 2006, and I've just started my audit. 'You guys can talk, get reacquainted,' says ONE OF SI'S TOP AD SALES EXECS. Maybe he'll give you a few minutes on the side."

Guess there are no walls at SI.

 

I don't doubt that El Tigre is a nearly impossible subject to write about. But lets also put Garrity's piece into perspective: I learned more about Tiger in the 10 minutes he spent playing video games with Bill Simmons than I did in this SI cover piece.