‘Tiger, Tiger’ bio: Woods’s life in detail

While reading “Tiger, Tiger,” the latest Tiger Woods biography by best-selling author James Patterson, one is struck by a profound sense of inevitability.

As a child, it seemed inevitable that the golf prodigy who appeared on the Merv Griffin show with Bob Hope and Jimmy Stewart, hitting golf balls at age 2 would become not just a great golfer, but possibly the greatest golfer who ever lived.

As a young man, it seemed inevitable that the violence of Tiger Woods’s swing would damage his body.

And as a husband, father and role model and idol to millions, it seemed inevitable that despite his squeaky-clean image, somehow Tiger Woods’s feet would eventually be revealed to be made of clay.

Patterson’s “Tiger Tiger” treatment of the life of Tiger Woods isn’t the inside story or a behind-the-curtain look at what makes a famous man tick. Instead, it’s a compilation of seemingly everything ever written about him, quoting Woods, his family, his friends, broadcasters. and competitors, and drawn from public sources ranging from the New York Times to Golf Digest to local news broadcasts to 911 transcripts.

As a former newspaper journalist who has rooted through news clippings (when they were actually news stories clipped from the newspaper, folded and stuffed into small manila envelopes), I know that a story written from clips comes with pluses and minuses: Pluses in that, in the absence of an accompanying  correction (usually stapled to the original story), you can be reasonably certain the article was true or mostly true; minuses in that the exercise of looking back through time, no matter the number of lenses used, always has the feeling or remoteness and historical detachment.

‘Tiger, Tiger’ is a journey we all were along for

So it is with Patterson’s “Tiger Tiger” treatment of Woods’s life through the early part of this year, just before the book’s July publication.

Patterson plows through Tiger’s life chronologically – his childhood, his upbringing by his retired Green Beret father, Earl, and his tough-loving mother Kultida, junior golf, three U.S. Junior Amateurs, three U.S. Amateurs, Stanford, and on to the PGA Tour, majors won, major lost, marriage, fatherhood, scandals, divorce, mansions, yachts, Gulfstream jets, injuries and surgeries and more injuries and more surgeries.

The recitation of dates and scores, winning margins, purse amounts and post-round news conferences, is, frankly, grueling at times. Thankfully, the 87 chapters are short, sometimes just three pages long. The result is a book that is a quick read in short spurts but a long read if stretched over days or weeks.

Themes that run through the book include Tiger’s work ethic, his quest to be ever better, love for and grief over, the loss of his father, and after the scandals, a dedication to his children Sam and Charlie.

I was especially struck by the inevitability of Tiger’s injuries. I recall my golf instructor in the late 1990s, just as Tiger burst into the pro golf scene, telling me that, to his trained eye, because of his swing mechanics, Tiger’s body was going to fail him sooner rather than later. Tiger’s constant tinkering with his swing likely contributed to his injuries.

What I learned in the book was the extent to which Tiger sought to undergo Navy SEAL training, and, almost as a passing reference by Patterson, that possibly an underlying cause of his knee problems was being kicked in the knee during a navy training exercise.

Patterson reminded me how much Tiger was absent completely absent from the PGA Tour — including the winner’s circle — from 2010 to February 2021, when his car wreck nearly cost him his leg. In those 11 years, he won 11 times but largely, because of injuries, he went winless in seven of those years. Which makes his 2018 Players Championship and 2019 Masters victory all the more remarkable.

Other reviewers have commented on Patterson’s detachment, especially in recounting Tiger’s scandals – the infidelity, the driving-under-the-influence arrest. Again, that’s a function of looking at events through a collection of prior news stories. The other side of that argument is, what would moral judging by the author have added to the story, anyway? We all know how we felt at the time when we learned of Tiger’s transgressions.

Of great interest to me as a golf writer was Patterson’s habit of including contemporaneous reactions to events in Tiger’s life from his PGA Tour brethren, who express admiration and support, albeit grudgingly, during his scandals.  No fools, they have always known that it was Tiger who unleashed a flood of money onto the PGA Tour.

“Tiger, Tiger, His life, as it’s Never Been Told Before” is a worthy work suitable for the bedside or for short reads on a plane or a train. Tiger fans who never knew the full story of his upbringing will learn from its rich detail. Veteran Tiger observers are sure to learn something they missed since he took the golf world by storm in the 1990s.

But “Tiger, Tiger” suffers from a singular flaw – at least in the veracity of its full title. The story, in fact, has been told before, in the myriad of news stories that James Patterson relies on to tell the tale.

Dan Vukelich is the online editor of Alabama Golf News. Reach him at dan@alabamagolfnews.com

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Featured image: “Tiger, Tiger” book cover; photo of Tiger Woods by Craig Jones/ALLSPORT