Tiger Responds to Those Who Said Hed Never Win Again

Feb 23, 2022

Kevin Van ValkenburgESPN Senior Author
Shut
- Senior Author for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine
- Born and raised in Western Montana
- Spent 11 years as a feature writer for The Baltimore Dominicus

The first pigsty at Riviera Land Club is arguably the nearly famous first tee box on the PGA Tour. It's perched 75 feet above the fairway and it's virtually the size of a modest living room. It might too be the bout's nigh beautiful, particularly early in the forenoon, when the Southern California sun has merely begun to reveal itself from backside the hills, flooding the canyon with rays of orange light.

Tiger Wood stood on that tee box terminal Thursday morning, his artillery sternly crossed and his face up masking any emotion he might take been feeling at half-dozen:forty a.m.

It'due south the same tee box where he made his debut on the PGA Tour thirty years ago -- a skinny, nervous, 16-year-old kid wearing pleated khakis, playing on a sponsor's exemption. It was the first step in a career unlike whatever in golf history. You could tell the entire story of Forest' time on the PGA Bout with those two moments as emotional bookends and leave out very little.

This time, though, Woods wasn't there every bit histrion, but as an observer. He was there to watch Aaron Beverly, a 27-twelvemonth-old from Vallejo, California, hit the tournament'southward opening tee shot. Beverly, the recipient of the Charlie Sifford Memorial Exemption into the Genesis Invitational, a spot in the field handed out by Woods (the tournament host) to an aspiring minority golfer, took a smoothen lash at the ball. As Forest' head turned, he tracked it confronting the blue and orange sky, then a smattering of adulation rippled through the thin crowd as Beverly picked up his tee.

It was a tranquility moment, merely mayhap a fitting 1. When Wood was confined to a hospital bed for iii months later his 2021 car crash, he said what he missed about of all wasn't the competitive blitz of professional golf. He missed the simplest things: the way birds chirp in the early morning, the way grass feels below your feet and the way a golf ball sounds when information technology's hitting perfectly flush by an iron.

He nearly lost all those things, plus much more than.

Despite the passage of fourth dimension, we all the same aren't any closer to understanding why it happened.

I year ago Midweek -- days after hosting the Genesis but non playing in information technology because he was recovering from a 5th dorsum surgery -- Tiger Woods was alone in his car, driving to an early-morning time documentary shoot, when he hit the median of Hawthorne Boulevard virtually Rancho Palos Verdes going somewhere betwixt 82 to 87 mph. The speed limit was 45 mph. He crossed two lanes of oncoming traffic, slammed into a tree and rolled his automobile into a ditch. The injuries he sustained from the blow were and then severe, Forest later on revealed that doctors considered, in the weeks after the crash, amputating his right leg because of the damage to his arteries.

Information technology was a surreal and scary moment for the millions of golf fans who'd watched Woods grow up, watched him play the role of comic book superhero on the grade. It was easy to wonder, once again, if his career had been a Greek tragedy all along.

The narrative of what happened has already been delicately reframed as a improvement story, the accident recast as one last obstacle for Woods to overcome. The questions Woods fielded last week from reporters in Los Angeles were express almost exclusively to golf game. Volition he tee it up at the Masters? Might he return to the PGA Tour sooner than expected? How was he filling his competitive void? How much progress had he been able to make on his game?

"I've got a long way to go," Wood said. "Will I come up dorsum? Yes. Will I come dorsum and play a full schedule? No. I said that [at the Hero World Challenge], that will never happen once again."

Only in one case did the circumstances of his crash come up upward. How fortunate, Wood was asked, did he feel to even exist here?

"I'm very lucky, very lucky," Woods said. "As a lot of you guys know, I didn't know if I was going to have the right leg or not. So, to be able to have my right leg nevertheless here, it's huge. I notwithstanding accept a lot of issues with it, but information technology's mine and I'm very thankful for that."

That is the narrative Woods would adopt, a lucky human spared from something much worse.

Does he owe anyone anything in terms of an caption for what happened?

"Information technology's all in the constabulary report," Woods said the i time he was asked a question about what led to the crash, in a news conference before the Hero World Claiming in December.

It was the kind of deflection Woods has leaned on throughout his career, answering a question by suggesting the answers are already at that place for everyone to see. It is, in fact, the exact line he used in 2010, when he was asked why he smashed his machine into a fire hydrant outside his Orlando, Florida, home at 2:30 a.m. on Thanksgiving weekend in 2009. When police arrived, they found him lying unconscious in the street, bleeding from cuts on his face and lip.

"Well, it's all in the constabulary study," Woods told ESPN in his get-go interview later the crash.

Beyond that, Forest said, everything that led up to information technology would stay private.

It'southward possible that Wood is right that he owes us cypher. You may believe -- similar many -- that Woods has given us more than enough of himself over the years, that his triumphs and his demons have served equally the fuel for a dozen books, countless tabloid stories and a million hours of tv set, and that is enough. He has thrived in the spotlight of fame, but he has suffered for information technology also, and it is not our place to judge or question what he does away from the golf form. Privacy is more than the name of his yacht; information technology's a modest piece of grace we can extend to someone who has lived in a fishbowl since he was a 2-year-old hit balls next to Bob Hope on "The Mike Douglas Show."

Merely something brought him to a place last year when he was haemorrhage and cleaved, where doctors were mulling amputating ane of the most famous correct legs in sports. Shrugging it off, dismissing whatever got him there and treating it equally one more obstruction for him to overcome as we root for another comeback starts to feel like a form of enabling.

Doesn't Woods' privacy end where the public road begins?

Three times in his developed life, Wood has gotten backside the wheel of a machine and done something that required a law investigation.

In 2009, there was the burn down hydrant. A witness reportedly told police Wood had been drinking booze before in the twenty-four hour period, but the Florida Highway Patrol said booze was not involved in the accident. Woods didn't face any criminal charges, but he was issued a commendation for devil-may-care driving.

In 2017, police institute him comatose behind the bike of his Mercedes at three a.m., with two flat tires and a damaged fender, his auto at balance against the guardrail of a Florida highway, simply with his engine withal running. He told officers he idea he was in California when they woke him up, so he fell back asleep multiple times during the interview. A toxicology report later revealed he had four prescription drugs in his system at the time of the incident, every bit well as THC from marijuana. He was arrested and charged with DUI, merely eventually entered a diversionary plan for first-fourth dimension offenders, one where he was required to have DUI instruction classes and refrain from drugs or alcohol while on probation.

A year ago Wed, he almost lost his leg and maybe his life. Wood was not issued a citation. The law study concluded that Woods was driving at an unsafe speed, only it contained other details that a yr subsequently still oasis't been explained.

The police report states that Forest, observed on traffic cameras prior to the crash, was driving responsibly before the accident, fugitive a cyclist and pedestrians at various points, but that he sat at a greenish calorie-free for 6 seconds at one point on his drive prior to moving through an intersection.

"We did not check his phone for texting, and there was actually no need to do that," James Powers, the captain of the Lomita Sheriff Station that investigated the crash, said at a news conference 6 weeks afterward the crash. "It's not going to change annihilation."

The police study states that Woods never striking the brakes during his crash, and that his accelerator was floored when he hitting the median and and so the tree. It states that the collision would not have occurred if Woods had practical the brakes or steered to correct the management of travel.

Officers constitute an empty, unmarked pill canteen among Forest' belongings, co-ordinate to the report, but no toxicology report was ordered by investigators. No medical professional or police investigator smelled -- or had reason to suspect he'd been impaired by -- alcohol. Woods told an officer at the hospital he'd taken no prescription medication prior to the crash. In that location were no open intoxicants, or paraphernalia, inside the auto.

Woods is right; there is a lot to acquire from the police report. But information technology also raises some questions, ones we'll probable never know the answer to.

We have always wanted so much from Woods. Nosotros've asked him to be a trailblazer and an advocate for social alter when information technology was clear he never felt comfy in those roles. We've asked him (repeatedly) to prop upwards the sport of golf, financially and emotionally, even as his body was breaking down. We rarely bothered to ponder how onerous the task must have felt at times.

When Woods visited the CBS berth Sat, announcer Jim Nantz couldn't resist pressing him (repeatedly) on when he might return to play on bout. Would he play in the Masters? How about the Masters Par 3 Contest, if not the full outcome? Would the Open up Championship at St. Andrews be an easier walk? Would he definitely commit to playing in 2022?

"Hey Jimmy, dull down, Turbo," Woods said, clearly bellyaching. "Slow downwards."

Woods has lived such an outsized life, it'due south easy to forget that he's human. It's important to be sensitive to that, no matter how desperately we might long to come across him play golf once more.

Only respecting his humanity can also mean acknowledging his fallibility. He has endangered others -- and not but in one case -- with his driving. As we get excited about Woods' hereafter and maybe concur onto a thought of him returning to Riviera's purple first tee equally a player, we tin can hold another idea in our hearts: He is non the only person who is lucky that the damage washed was not more than astringent. What comes next is a gift in more than ways than one.