Of Earl’s three children from his first marriage, Tiger had the best relationship with Earl’s daughter, Royce. In the fall of 1994, Royce was thirty-six years old and living in Cupertino, not far from the Stanford campus. A few days before Tiger was due to arrive in Palo Alto, he called her.
“You still want your house?” he said.
She immediately started laughing. Back when he was three years old, Tiger had promised to buy her a house when he became rich. Every couple of years, Royce would jokingly remind him of his commitment. But it had been quite a while since she’d last teased him about it.
“Yeah,” she said jokingly.
“Well, then could you do my laundry for four years?” Tiger asked.
She laughed again.
But he wasn’t joking. Sensitive to the fact that Stanford was an elite school and that he had a certain image to uphold, Tiger wanted someone to launder and iron his clothes. These were things that his mother had always done for him. If Royce was willing to do them, he would buy her a new home when he turned pro.
It was an offer she couldn’t refuse.
Tiger’s first day of classes at Stanford was September 28, 1994. He declared economics as his major, with an emphasis on accounting. But he scarcely had time to meet his professors. He arrived in Palo Alto a few days in advance; checked into his new home—room 8 in Stern Hall; met his roommate, Bjorn Johnson, a long-haired engineering major; picked up his class schedule—calculus, civics, Portuguese cultural perspective, and history from late antiquity to the 1500s; then got on a plane to France. As the winner of the US Amateur, he’d been selected to represent the United States in the World Amateur Team Championship in Versailles. It was the first indication that Tiger was not going to have a traditional college experience.
When the American team arrived at the tournament, the foreign press encircled Tiger as he stepped from the team van. A mob of fans descended on him as well. Cameras clicked and flashed, reporters shouted questions, and fans screamed his name, but the mass of people parted like the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments as Tiger made his way to the clubhouse. During the tournament, record-breaking crowds packed the galleries and followed him from hole to hole. Tiger drew more spectators than all the French golfers combined.
During his nine-day stay in France, Tiger helped his teammates outplay the other four-man teams hailing from forty-four countries. The Americans finished first overall, eleven strokes ahead of second-place finishers Great Britain and Ireland. It marked the first time the Americans had won the tournament in twelve years. Tiger finished with the sixth-best overall individual score in the field. And it was clear that his star power reached across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe: The French sports daily L’Équipe called him “Tiger la Terreur” (Tiger the Terror), and Le Figaro compared him to another child prodigy—Mozart. No American celebrity since Jerry Lewis had been so celebrated by the French media.
Classes had been under way for two weeks when Tiger returned to Stanford on October 10. The Bay Area was swept up in the San Francisco 49ers’ quest for a fifth Super Bowl. The man most responsible for assembling the 49ers’ dynasty was legendary coach Bill Walsh, who had begun his college head-coaching career at Stanford in 1977 before taking over the 49ers in 1979. Then, after retiring from coaching in the NFL, he had returned to lead Stanford’s football program again in 1992.
Tiger had long admired Walsh and his reputation as a “genius” coach, so he went to pay him a visit. Without an appointment, he greeted Walsh’s secretary and entered the coach’s office. Walsh was thrilled to see him.
Walsh and Woods were both very private individuals with cerebral approaches to their respective sports. Introverts to the extreme, they were more at ease by themselves than in the company of others. Both also had trouble making friends. But that day in Walsh’s office, they instantly connected. They were both perfectionists, with similar organizational qualities. Walsh was as interested in learning from Tiger as Tiger was in learning from him.
Walsh encouraged Tiger to drop in anytime—no appointment necessary. Tiger took advantage of the offer, and they started meeting regularly for lengthy conversations. Before long, Walsh did something with Woods that he had never done with any of his football players: He gave Tiger his own personal key to the weight room. No other student-athlete on the Stanford campus had such a key. Within a month, Woods was practically living in the weight room. Other members of the golf team purposely avoided weights, but Tiger lifted more than some members of the football team.
From the moment he arrived in Palo Alto, Tiger had been trying to convince Dina Gravell to move to the Bay Area and attend San Jose State. She was still very much in love with him and wanted to be near him, but she preferred to avoid the whole celebrity scene that continued to grow around him. The last time she had gone to a tournament, she was approached by a reporter, which made her very uncomfortable. Tiger had done his best to shield her, consistently refusing to reveal anything about his girlfriend other than to say she was from his hometown and didn’t much care for golf. He wouldn’t even say her name. Still, Dina didn’t want to leave Vegas. Instead, Tiger convinced her to enter into a pact that they would talk by phone every day. Some days he would call just to tell her he’d had a bad day. Other nights he would talk about the stress he was under at Stanford. But most of the time, he talked about his parents. The situation at home was making it nearly impossible to enjoy his time at school.
While Tiger was away at Stanford, John Merchant started staying in his bedroom whenever he traveled to Southern California to visit Earl. After a couple of stays in the Woods home, it became clear to Merchant that there was a problem between Earl and Kultida. He had been on the road with Earl enough times to see and hear things that led him to believe the marriage was shaky, but he’d figured it was none of his business and hadn’t said a word to Earl about his behavior. But when he was in Earl’s home, Merchant witnessed things that he could no longer ignore. He’d had it with Earl’s foul-mouthed abuse of Kultida, the way he would tell her to “shut the fuck up.”
One night during Tiger’s freshman year, Merchant finally confronted Earl. “I don’t care what you do when I’m not here and the door is closed,” Merchant told him. “That’s none of my business. But if I don’t speak up, my mother will rise up out of her grave and slap the shit out of me if I allow you to continue to verbally abuse your wife as you do in my presence. So stop it, please!”
Merchant figured that if Earl behaved this way in front of him, he no doubt did the same or worse in front of his son; what bothered Merchant most was the effect this would have on Tiger. He knew how much Tiger revered and loved his father, and seeing his father mistreat his mother was bound to do long-term damage.
“Fans of golf and Tiger Woods see only the positive of the father-son relationship and the accomplishments of the son,” Merchant explained. “But Tiger’s greatest fan, without any question, was his mother. She went to all the tournaments. She walked around the fucking golf courses everywhere he played. She wore the hat. Talk about worship—she loved that boy beyond belief. But Earl treated her like dirt, and it pissed me off. It really did.”
The family dysfunction at home weighed heavily on Tiger at college. His parents desperately needed space. They needed separation. But their ability to live apart was restricted by finances: they had virtually no savings, and Earl had retired early to invest all his time in Tiger’s amateur career. Until Tiger turned pro, they were stuck living together in a cycle of acrimony and bitterness fueled by Earl’s abuse of alcohol and his wandering eye.
Tiger’s closest friend on the Stanford golf team was Notah Begay III, a full-blooded Native American who had been the best player on the roster until Woods arrived. Begay had an infectious smile and a great sense of humor. He quickly nicknamed Tiger “Urkel,” ribbing him for his resemblance to Steve Urkel, the geeky kid with big round eyeglasses on the sitcom Family Matters.
Begay had a serious side too. When Stanford was invited to participate in the prestigious Jerry Pate National Intercollegiate tournament at Shoal Creek Golf and Country Club, Begay talked to Tiger about the social implications of playing at the course whose racist membership policy had been the catalyst for a national discussion on race. It had been four years since the club’s founder, Hall W. Thompson, had made his infamous statement about his club’s exclusion of blacks. Begay told Tiger that winning at Shoal Creek would be a slap in the face to those who thought minorities were inferior.
Tiger didn’t see it that way, but he also didn’t feel like explaining himself to Begay—nor did he want to discuss the matter with the press. When the New York Times Magazine asked him if racist policies at certain clubs provided him an added incentive to win at Shoal Creek, Tiger gave a one-word answer: no. It was a direct repudiation of his father’s view. Earl insisted that Shoal Creek’s history did, in fact, give Tiger added incentive. “It provides drive,” Earl told the magazine. “It provides inspiration. It provides motivation. It provides toughness.”
Earl consistently tried to inject a racial angle into Tiger’s golf narrative. Right after Tiger won his first US Amateur, Earl compared him to boxer Joe Louis. “Louis was the catalyst that gave black people pride,” Earl said. “He kept us going despite all the racism. It’s repeating itself now with Tiger. Black people from all over the country tell me how proud they were to watch Tiger perform in the US Amateur.”
But when it came to social activism, Tiger didn’t want to be that guy his father was always talking about. As an eighteen-year-old college freshman, he preferred to avoid controversy. It was tiring to always be compared to his father’s heroes.
Other than being a world-class athlete, Tiger had very little in common with Joe Louis, who enlisted as a private in the army right after the US declared war on Germany. He was the heavyweight champion of the world at that time, and he was beloved by both whites and blacks. When questioned about joining a racially segregated army, Louis said: “Lots of things are wrong with America, but Hitler ain’t going to fix them.” Louis never shied away from using his celebrity platform to discuss racism, but Tiger had no taste for it. “The only time I think about race is when the media ask me,” Tiger told a journalist around that time.
Kultida blamed Earl for putting Tiger at the mercy of unwarranted expectation and scrutiny by constantly placing him on a pedestal. Whenever Earl told the press that Tiger was like this civil rights leader or that athlete who broke color barriers, Kultida referred to the pontifications as “Old Man bullshit.” Tiger was vulnerable, and in her mind, Earl was exacerbating her son’s vulnerability. As far as Kultida was concerned, all of Earl’s talk about Shoal Creek was just more Old Man bullshit.
When the Stanford team arrived at Shoal Creek, civil rights leaders and protesters were outside the gates. But Tiger walled himself off from all the distractions and dominated the tournament, leading Stanford to victory. After sinking his final putt on the eighteenth green to finish two strokes ahead of the field, he encountered Hall Thompson.
“You’re a great player,” Thompson said. “I’m proud of you. You’re superb.”
Tiger didn’t have much to say to Thompson. Afterward, when the press asked him about the significance of winning at Shoal Creek, Tiger ignored the implication of the question and talked about the course.
“It’s absolutely awesome,” he said. “This course was [built] before Nicklaus went crazy with his designs. It’s pretty flat and straightforward, and not so diabolical around the greens, except at eighteen. That’s the way I like it.”
When a reporter pressed him about the social significance of winning at Shoal Creek, Tiger brushed him off. “The significance to me is our team won,” he said. “And I also happen to be the individual champion.”
Though Tiger would bask in his victory, he was finding that he could not keep a low profile, even though he wanted to. Back at Stanford, at 11:45 one night, Tiger called 911 and reported that he’d been robbed at knifepoint about thirty minutes earlier in a parking lot across the street from his dorm. He was alone in his room when Deputy Ken Bates from the Stanford Police Department arrived to take his statement. Tiger told him that he had spent the evening in San Francisco attending a celebrity dinner with Jerry Rice and other members of the San Francisco 49ers. Then he’d driven back to campus and had just exited his vehicle and remotely activated his car alarm when an individual grabbed him from behind, put a knife to his throat, and said, “Tiger, give me all you got.” According to Woods, he wasn’t carrying a wallet, but his attacker removed from around his neck a gold chain worth $5,000 that had been given to him by his mother. He also demanded Tiger’s Casio wristwatch, then punched Tiger in the jaw with the same hand that was holding the knife, knocking him to the ground. His assailant then fled on foot. The only description Tiger could provide was that the attacker was a male about six feet tall, wearing dark clothes and white shoes.
Three more officers and a police sergeant knocked on the door of every dorm room that had windows overlooking the lot where Tiger said he was assaulted. No one had seen anything. Deputy Bates examined Tiger’s jaw and neck, and, according to his report, found no skin redness and no scratches. He also looked inside Tiger’s mouth and found no visible signs of trauma or contusion. Tiger followed the officers to the parking lot. The area was well lit, and Tiger’s vehicle was parked beneath a double-headed street lamp. The lot was located right along a main thoroughfare that had a fair amount of pedestrian, car, and bicycle traffic. At the officers’ request, Tiger pointed out where he had been knocked down. The dried leaves on the asphalt were undisturbed. After conducting a second inspection of Tiger’s jaw and finding no evidence that he’d been struck, Deputy Bates handed Tiger his business card and advised him to call if he remembered anything else regarding the incident. In his report, Bates made no attempt to explain the whereabouts of Tiger’s wallet or the fact that it—and, presumably, his driver’s license—were not on him when he got out of his car after driving home from San Francisco.
Tiger told Bates that he didn’t want anyone to know about the incident. When asked why, Woods said he preferred not to elaborate. Coach Goodman showed up right after the police left. He’d been notified of the incident and wanted to check on Tiger. As soon as the coach left, Tiger called Gravell in Las Vegas. He was crying when she answered the phone.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I just got mugged,” he said.
“Oh, my God! Call the police!”
“I just talked to the police.”
Gravell tried not to get hysterical.
“I’m okay,” Tiger told her. “I’m just really scared. I don’t know if I can do this anymore.”
It was well after midnight, and Tiger had an exam in the morning, but he kept Gravell on the phone for a long time. He didn’t want to talk about the incident. He wanted to talk about all the pressure he was under. Stanford was a lot harder than high school. The media interest in him was relentless. His parents weren’t getting along. He felt like he had to turn pro to support them. At least two more times he repeated that he didn’t think he could keep going.
“I’m not a kid anymore,” he said.
The next morning, while Tiger was taking a final exam, Kultida picked up the phone and called John Strege at the Orange County Register. He had been covering Tiger longer than anyone, and was on good terms with the family. Kultida often called him just to talk. Strege was under the impression that she was lonely, but it immediately became clear that this call was different. There was a sense of urgency in her voice as she reported that Tiger had been robbed and beaten at Stanford.
Strege was suspicious and couldn’t help thinking, College freshman, might have been drinking, might have been embarrassed. But he wasn’t about to question Kultida. He called the Stanford Police Department and got the chief to confirm that a student had, in fact, reported being robbed at knifepoint the previous night. He also spoke to Earl, who provided more details. The next day, Strege’s story appeared in the Register under the headline “Woods Attacked, Robbed at Knifepoint.” Earl Woods was the only person quoted.
In response to Strege’s story, Stanford took the extraordinary step of going against its policy of not releasing the names of students who are crime victims. On December 2, the university issued a news release: “Golfer Woods Issues Statement on Robbery.” It included Tiger’s only public comments about the incident.
I was not beaten, and I was not injured. I immediately reported the robbery to the police, and I did not seek medical treatment. My jaw was just sore, so I took some aspirin.
People get mugged every day, and mine was just an isolated incident. I just want to move on from this, bury this in the past. I just want to get through my finals, enjoy a great Christmas, and then come back.
Tiger hoped the story would die after he issued a statement, but Earl wasn’t done talking. He told the Los Angeles Times that Tiger had sustained a blow, but that the incident hadn’t affected his feelings toward Stanford. “He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Earl said. By the following day, the incident prompted a headline in the New York Times: “Golfer Woods Is Mugged.”
Desperately in need of an escape, Tiger couldn’t wait to get away for the holidays. But before leaving Stanford, he underwent surgery to remove two cysts on the saphenous vein on his left knee. It marked the first of what would be many surgeries over the course of his career stemming from excessive wear and tear on his body. During this first procedure, the doctor discovered substantial scar tissue. Tiger insisted he’d had a bad knee since childhood. “It’s because of stuff I did as a kid,” he said. “Wiping out on skateboards, crashing on dirt bikes, jumping off things. I banged it up pretty bad.” Interviews with friends and family provide no indication that Tiger skateboarded or rode a dirt bike, much less crashed on them. In any case, the surgery left a long scar behind his knee. Weeks later, the sutures were removed, and he was outfitted with a big brace. When Tiger asked if he was free to play golf while wearing a brace, the doctors advised against it. His response to the doctor’s advice was a preview of things to come.
“I said the heck with it,” Tiger explained, “and went out and played with my dad at the navy course.”
While home for the holidays, instead of taking it easy, Tiger returned to the course he’d been kicked out of a few months earlier. Earl thought it was a bad idea to try playing so soon after the knee surgery, but Tiger talked him into letting him tag along in the golf cart. When Earl wasn’t looking, Tiger teed up a ball, blasting a shot right down the middle of the fairway. Asked how his knee felt, Tiger insisted it felt fine. In truth, he was in agony. The swelling was so bad that he could see skin coming through the brace. Determined to keep playing, he kept restrapping the brace tighter and tighter.
“The pain was excruciating,” Tiger said of the experience. “And I was dying on the inside.”
Yet he managed to shoot 31 on the front nine, which was six under par. At that point, he’d finally had enough.
“You know what, Dad?” he said. “I’m done. I’ll just rest it from here.”
Despite being in agony, he stayed with Earl for the final nine holes, riding along in the golf cart, his knee elevated and packed in ice. He never let on that he was in pain. The mind, he told himself, is a powerful thing.
By April 1995, Tiger was ranked number two in the country among all college golfers and was named a First-Team All-American. By virtue of having won the US Amateur Championship the previous summer, he automatically qualified for the Masters, despite the fact that he was still in college. In the midst of the Stanford golf season, he flew to Augusta.
Golf World and Golfweek magazines enlisted Tiger to keep “Masters Diaries” of his experience. He had plenty to write about. From the moment he arrived, the galleries were swelling with African American spectators. Everywhere he went, children and teenagers—white and black, rich and poor—lined up to get his autograph. Despite being physically fatigued and mentally exhausted from a grueling week of exams, he was the only amateur golfer to make the cut, and he finished tied for forty-first place, awing spectators and seasoned pros with his poise and power.
His average driving distance—311.1 yards—was the longest in the field. Davis Love III was second, averaging 306.5 yards. But the moment that made pros and spectators stand up and take notice took place after the third round of the tournament. Tiger was on the practice range beside Davis Love III, who would go on to finish second overall. The longest hitter on the tour in 1994, Love pulled out his driver, and spectators started cheering and yelling. They wanted to see if Love could drive a golf ball over the fifty-foot-high netting at the end of the range, some 260 yards away. The netting was there to prevent balls from landing on a main road that ran adjacent to the course.
Love made two attempts, but both hit the net.
“Should I try?” Tiger said.
Love nodded.
Tiger pulled out his driver, which revved up the spectators. Then he crushed a cannon shot that soared over the net and kept on going. Fans were in a frenzy, and every pro on the range stopped to admire the shot. The moment he hit the ball, it was clear to everyone that golf was going to be a different game from then on.
Tiger had barely returned to Palo Alto for the final term of his freshman year when Coach Goodman asked to see him; there was some trouble with the NCAA. The problem started with those tournament diaries that Tiger had published with Golf World and Golfweek. The NCAA deemed his writings “a promotion of a commercial publication,” which put Tiger in violation of NCAA rules. Stanford also questioned where he got the irons he had used for the final round of the Masters. Tiger’s answer: they belonged to his new instructor, Butch Harmon. Stanford wanted to know why he had used Maxfli golf balls rather than the Titleist balls provided by the university. Tiger’s answer: Greg Norman suggested he try them.
In the end, Stanford suspended Tiger from the team for one day for writing the diaries. He was not reprimanded over the clubs or the balls. Privately, Tiger was furious. As far as he was concerned, he had done nothing wrong, and he didn’t appreciate being interrogated. But he said nothing. Earl, on the other hand, issued a not-so-subtle threat. He hinted to Sports Illustrated that “Tiger might leave school early if such annoying NCAA scrutiny” continued.
Tiger wasn’t used to his parents’ visiting Palo Alto, but they decided to come up for the American Collegiate Invitational a couple of weeks after the Masters. Tiger telephoned Dina in Las Vegas with a simple plea: “Come to Palo Alto. Please?”
Without sharing details, he made it clear that he needed her.
On the same day that 168 people were killed and 680 more were wounded in the Oklahoma City bombing, Dina packed her suitcase with enough clothing for a long weekend trip. The next day, after a short flight, she checked into a hotel room that Tiger had reserved for the two of them in Palo Alto. Television monitors everywhere were tuned to coverage of the search for the terrorists who had detonated a truck full of explosives outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Tiger, however, was preoccupied with his own situation. It was more of the same things he’d been talking about with Dina for months—his parents’ dysfunctional relationship, the pressure he was feeling. As usual, she listened. Then they spent the night together.
The next day, Dina met up with her parents, who had flown up from Southern California at the last minute to see her and Tiger. The first round of the tournament was uneventful. Tiger played well, and Dina watched from afar with Tiger’s stepsister, Royce. Dina had always liked Royce, who went out of her way to treat Dina like a sister. Royce also shared Dina’s aversion to crowds and celebrity.
It had been months since Dina had seen Tiger’s parents. When she approached them at the tournament, they turned away and walked off as if she weren’t there. They didn’t even acknowledge her. That evening she related the incident to Tiger. He downplayed it, insisting they probably just hadn’t seen her.
On the second day of the tournament, Tiger abruptly quit playing on the eleventh hole, complaining of shoulder pain. After huddling with the medical staff, he informed Dina that he was heading to the hospital for an MRI.
“Do you want me to come with you?” she said.
“No, no,” he said. “Go with your parents, and we’ll just meet up later. I’ll call you.”
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you,” he replied, kissing her good-bye.
Five hours passed without a call from Tiger.
Dina was in her parents’ hotel room when the front desk notified her father that an item had been left for him. It was around nine p.m. Intrigued, Dina’s father went downstairs and discovered Dina’s suitcase and an envelope with his daughter’s name on it. He brought them back to the room and handed them to her.
Confused, Dina looked at her father. The suitcase was the one she had brought with her from Las Vegas. How had it gotten there? She’d left it at the hotel across town where she was staying with Tiger. She opened it and discovered that all her belongings had been packed—cosmetics, toiletries, jeans, shoes, bras, underwear. She shook her head. What was going on?
She opened the envelope that had come with the suitcase. It contained a handwritten letter. The familiar handwriting sent a chill down her spine.
Dina,
My shoulder is O.K., it’s just a strained and overused rotator cuff. The reason for writing this letter is to inform you of my absolute anger and disappointment in you. Today, I heard from my parents that you were telling everyone in the gallery who would listen that you were “Tiger’s girlfriend.” Then you have the nerve to tell me in the clubhouse that when a reporter asks who you were, you responded with “just a friend.” My parents, Royce, Louisa, and myself never want to talk or hear from you again. Reflecting back over this relationship I feel used and manipulated by you and your family. I hope the rest of your life runs well for you. I know this is sudden and a surprise, but it, in my opinion, is much warranted.
Sincerely,
Tiger
P.S. Please mail my necklace that I gave you to me when you get back home. Don’t show up at the tournament tomorrow because you are just not welcomed.
Trembling, Dina handed the letter to her mother. None of it made sense. She hadn’t approached anyone in the stands. She’d avoided people. Royce could attest to that. Besides, how would Earl and Kultida have known what she’d done in the stands? They’d avoided her for two days. And what did he mean when he said he couldn’t be in this relationship anymore? They’d been together for almost four years! They were best friends. They shared everything with each other. He was the first person she’d been intimate with. Neither of them had been with anyone else.
Wiping tears from her cheeks, she called Royce.
“I just got this letter from Tiger,” she said. “I don’t understand.”
“He’s gone, Dina,” Royce said softly.
“I just want to talk to him.”
“You’re not going to be able to talk to him.”
“I don’t understand!”
“I’m so sorry. I’m not allowed to talk to you anymore.”
Not allowed? Who said so? What was going on?
Dina hung up and buried her face in her hands. Her mother handed the letter to her husband and wrapped her arms around Dina. Her daughter didn’t deserve to be treated this way. It galled her that Tiger’s parents had accused her daughter of being something other than his best friend.
“You don’t need that in your life,” she told Dina.
Dina just sobbed.
The next day, the team physician told Tiger that his MRI had revealed scarring in his right rotator cuff, which Tiger attributed to a high school baseball injury. “I played baseball and threw my arm out,” Woods said. “I had a tear in my rotator cuff, so I had to stop that.”
Tiger’s medical team accepted his explanation. But it was a curious diagnosis, given that Tiger didn’t play high school baseball. In fact, there’s no evidence that Tiger was a member of any sports team besides the golf team. “As I started junior high,” he later wrote, “Mom and Pop told me I had to choose one sport.” Yet over the years he made multiple references to playing baseball and running track and cross country at Western High. But one Western coach recalled that Woods had wanted to join the track team as a 440 runner, and when he was told it would require six-thirty-a.m. workouts three days a week, he dropped the idea. And Tiger’s coach, Don Crosby, confirmed that Woods definitely did not play any other sports in high school. Meantime, the medical team at Stanford made no mention of whether Tiger’s aggressive new weight-lifting regimen might have played a role in his shoulder injury.
While Tiger met with the medical staff, Dina boarded a plane back to Las Vegas. Woods had just cut off his best friend and first true love and lover, a girl who had befriended him in an accounting class, introduced him to her friends and family, stayed in Cypress after graduating from high school just to be near him, and held in confidence everything that he had ever told her. But Tiger’s parents were done with her. They didn’t want anyone to hold their son back. And Tiger wasn’t going to fight that battle, not even for the love of his life. He didn’t call Dina the next night, or the night after that. Once he had ended the relationship, he never spoke to her again.
Eight months passed. Then one day, Tiger wrote Dina a letter.
I am truly sorry for what I did to you and your family. I regret the actions I took. I know that was not the way it should have ended, for that I am truly sorry. I really hope you have moved on and found someone who will make you happy in every way because you certainly deserve it. I wish you the best in whatever you do. Good luck.
Warmest regards,
Tiger
He never received a response from her. The way he had broken things off was so jarring that Dina felt like her best friend had suddenly died. She was convinced Tiger’s parents had put him up to it.
“I think his parents felt I was going to interfere in his life,” she said. “I would never have done that. I loved him too much for that.”