A Return to Glory
How Tiger got back to the top after infidelity, injuries, and addiction.
“Hey, it’s Tiger. I need you to do me a huge favor. Can you please take my name off your phone? My wife went through my phone and may be calling you. So if you can, please take your name off that. Just have it as a number on the voicemail. You got to do this for me. Huge. Quickly. Bye.”
On November 24th, one day before Tiger Woods infidelity would be released to the world, Tiger Woods called Rachel Uchitel, a New York nightclub manager. The National Enquirer would publish an article highlighting Woods’s affair with Uchitel, and Tiger’s wife, Elin Nordegren, wanted answers. He put his phone on speaker, and Uchitel insisted that the story held no truth.
But Elin wasn’t satisfied. Later, while he left his phone unattended, she scrolled and clicked on a woman named Jaimee Grubbs. Screaming, she woke up Woods. When Tiger entered, she chucked the phone at him, struck his chest, and scratched his face. Elin chased him out of the house with, ironically enough; a golf club. Woods hopped in the Escalade, and she hopped in the golf cart. Woods sped out of the driveway as fast as he could, tagged a fire hydrant, some hedges, and finally careened into tree.
Apparently, he had slept 120 women, even the daughter of a couple that lived next door to them, who he met when she was only 14 years old. An
In February of 2010, Tiger decided to speak to the media for the first time in 3 months. He took it on the chin, and apologized to the world.
“Elin has shown enormous grace and poise throughout this ordeal. Elin deserves praise, not blame. The issue involved here was my repeated irresponsible behavior. I was unfaithful. I had affairs. I cheated. What I did was not acceptable. And I am the only person to blame. I stopped living by the core values that I was taught to believe in.”
One of the things people don’t realize his Tiger’s father, who died in 2006, cheated on his wife. This was a grudge Tiger forever held against him.
Tiger Woods had a problem. He always wanted more. He was never content with where he was. Before his first PGA Tour Start at 20 years old, Tiger had an interview with Curtis Strange. Tiger told Curtis he would be pretty happy to end up with a win.
“I’ve always figured that, why go to a tournament if you’re not going there to try and win. There’s really no point. 2nd sucks. 3rd’s even worse.”
“But on tour that’s not too bad, that’s not too bad sometimes though.”
“I know, but I want to win. That’s just my nature.”
Curtis Strange laughs, “You’ll learn.”
Fast forward to Sunday at the Masters, 2019, 10 years after the cheating scandal, Tiger Woods had been to hell and back. He went through many years of back problems, relationships, and even a DUI arrest. But now he was back, standing at the 1st tee box at Augusta National, in the final group of another major. He donned his classic Sunday red, an outfit he became famous for in the earlier years of his career, something we had become accustomed to seeing on Sunday.
“On the tee, from Cypress, California, Tiger Woods.”
The crowd roared as Tiger stepped up to the ball, fairway wood in hand. He slapped one up the fairway, 175 yards away from the hole. As he walked off the tee box, the strange aura that followed Tiger returned. He felt, inevitable, just as he did in the prime of his career.
3 birdies, 3 bogeys through 10 holes. While not gaining on the field, he had made it to Amen Corner. A 3 hole stretch where you can be crowned a major champion, or just another choke artist who can’t close it out. Francesco Molinari, who he had lost to a year ago in the British Open, soared an iron into the 12th hole, coming up short of the green. The ball trickled into the drink, and the camera panned to a disappointed Molinari. He got greedy, as did Tony Finau, doing the same as Molinari. Tiger took his chance, and went with a veteran move. Play the ball over the bunker, in the middle of the green, some 35 feet away to scavenge for a par. Tiger moved to the 13th, where he made birdie by flying an iron over Ray’s Creek. He had survived -1 at Amen Corner, tied for the tournament’s lead.
An 8-Iron glided through the ball, launching the tee shot into the air. His artistry looked as easy as tying a shoe. The ball landed, and trickled down below the hole, to around a foot. As Tiger went on to 18, he could barely keep it in the road. He scrambled around and had a putt for par. The ball burned the edge of the hole, just racing by. Tiger tapped in for a bogey.
A sigh and a small fist pump as the ball hit the bottom of the hole. Tiger yelled as he threw up both hands up in the air, his ball in the right and his putter in the left. His walk to the clubhouse felt like something only dreams are made of, with almost a quarter of the field of players in the tournament right there to congratulate him, along with his family.
Tiger learned a lot over the course of his life since that interview with Curtis Strange. He was ostracized from the golf society for the color of his skin, proved he belonged in the sport, cheated on his wife, had 3 operations on his back, and was caught driving under the influence.
But he was persevered.
A mentality that led him back to, as Jim Nantz would say, “a return to glory”.
