One week after winning the 2000 PGA Championship, Tiger found himself on the eighteenth fairway at the famed Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio. It was the final round of the WGC-NEC Invitational, and Tiger was running away with the tournament. With just one hole to play, the outcome had long been decided; the only question was whether Tiger could actually find the eighteenth green. Earlier, storms had forced a three-hour stoppage in play, delaying the finish. By the time play continued, a foggy gloaming had set in, obscuring the flag waiting some 167 yards away. Visibility was so poor and the fog hung so low that Woods had to crouch down to the ground to gauge the lie. To reach his goal of finishing twenty-one under par, Tiger would literally have to take a shot in the dark.
He had grown up playing in the twilight with his dad, often finishing his final two or three holes in the dark. But this was Firestone, not the navy course back home. The situation was a perfect metaphor for this stage of Tiger’s career: mere mortals were no longer a challenge; he was competing against the gods now, Mother Nature herself. Woods lived for these moments. They were chances to put his entire artistry on display. With crickets chirping and fans in the gallery holding up flickering lighters, Tiger took dead aim with an 8-iron. A flurry of camera flashes from around the eighteenth hole created a strobe effect as his ball fell from the darkened sky and landed two feet from the hole, igniting a thunderous roar that echoed down the fairway. “How ’bout that?” he said, grinning and slapping hands with Steve Williams. Then walked toward the green, holding his putter in the air as if it were a scepter and he a king.
For folks watching on television, the scene was so surreal that it was tempting to wonder if the shot was a make-believe television stunt. Even the CBS Sports broadcasters couldn’t believe their eyes.
“You can’t do that!” analyst Lanny Wadkins cried out. “That can’t happen!”
“I don’t believe it,” added Jim Nantz.
Moments later, Tiger tapped in his birdie putt to finish at twenty-one under par, the lowest score in tournament history and eleven strokes ahead of his nearest competitors. It was his eighth PGA Tour victory of the year.
Fourteen days later, Tiger was again on the seventy-second hole in fading light—only this time he was clinging to a one-shot lead in the final round of the Canadian Open at Glen Abbey outside Toronto. Thanks to an errant tee shot, he found himself in the middle of a yawning bunker, 213 yards from the flag, trees right, and virtually nothing but a huge body of water standing between him and the green. In Shakespearean terms, if the shot in the dark at Firestone was Hamlet, what happened next—a flushed 6-iron over two hundred yards of water, landing two feet past the pin—was Macbeth, another towering accomplishment.
These shots were so dramatic that they easily overshadowed the aspect of Tiger’s personality that most accounted for his outlier status: his mind. During his epic run of major championship victories and jaw-dropping shots from the latter part of 1999 through the end of 2000, Tiger’s concentration day in and day out was so focused on making shots that it’s difficult to put into words. It’s best illustrated by a sequence that took place at the Canadian Open, just moments before Tiger hit the miraculous 6-iron over water. For his tee shot on eighteen, there was total silence as he began his backswing. Then, right in the middle of his downswing, a fan shouted “Tiger!” In that instant, Tiger brought his 125-mile-per-hour club head speed to a screeching halt, freezing his driver just inches from the ball. No one else in the world could stop his driver so close to the ball. His mental control over his physical abilities was unparalleled.
At this point, it hardly mattered that he walked away with another win and simultaneously held the US, British, and Canadian Open titles. Every week, a fresh form of genius seemed to emerge. Having already sped past the career Grand Slam—at age twenty-four, the youngest in history to do it—he had far surpassed what he’d done in 1999. Everyone on the PGA Tour knew that if Tiger played his best and they played their best, Tiger would win. More important, Tiger knew that they knew it. “He’s limitless,” Mark Steinberg said at the time. “He’s a transcendent athlete, finally being recognized as the greatest on the planet, and he has anywhere from twenty to forty years left.”
In a fevered attempt to leverage Tiger’s success, Steinberg was in the process of reevaluating all existing contracts with Woods’s corporate partners. In 2000, Tiger earned an estimated $54 million from endorsements. To put that in context, the most that Michael Jordan ever made off the court in a single year at that point was $45 million. But Steinberg believed that Tiger was worth still more—much, much more, especially when it came to Nike.
Woods was now the most photographed athlete—perhaps even the most photographed entertainer—in the world. And Nike was the only brand that was visible on Tiger in all of those photographs. Even when he appeared in commercials for other companies, he always wore Nike; from the hat on his head to the shirt on his back to the shoes on his feet, Tiger was a walking billboard for the swoosh. In Steinberg’s mind, that made the endorsement all-encompassing in a way that Woods’s first Nike contract didn’t adequately reward. Steinberg was also well aware that the company was benefiting from what Nike insiders liked to call the halo effect—Tiger’s significant impact on Nike products beyond golf.
The two sides had been negotiating a new deal for eighteen months, and in mid-September of 2000, they finally came to an agreement on a $100 million endorsement contract. It was the richest deal of its kind in the history of sports.
“A lot of people have compared Tiger to Michael Jordan,” said Bob Wood, the president of Nike Golf. “But one thing that makes them different is that the career of a professional golfer is so much longer than the career of a basketball player. The earning power of a professional golfer is far greater over the course of a lifetime. We’re looking forward to extending our relationship with Tiger over the duration of his career, which will extend for the next twenty to twenty-five years and beyond.”
It was clear that Nike had come around to Steinberg’s way of thinking and was going all-in. The company also hoped that Tiger would lead its charge into the hypercompetitive golf-equipment business. Bob Wood knew that the first groups on the golf course early on Saturday mornings, the low handicappers and influencers at their clubs, didn’t talk about their shirt or shoes on the first tee; they talked about their driver and ball. Tiger’s switch to the Tour Accuracy ball at Pebble Beach had given Nike instant credibility among the five million or so hard-core players in the US and millions more around the world. And tens of thousands of pro shops and retail accounts that had previously been reluctant to embrace a “shoe company” with a limited foothold in the sport were now interested in Nike’s ball and equipment.
Just a couple of years earlier, in the fall of 1998, Nike’s nascent golf business had been losing about $30 million a year on about $130 million in sales. Prior to Woods’s record-setting win at the US Open in 2000, less than 15 players in an average 156-man field were playing with solid-construction balls. But after Pebble Beach, virtually everybody on the Tour wanted to try the Nike ball. Tiger had single-handedly broken Titleist’s long-standing stranglehold. Suddenly, Nike found the door to a potential 10, 12, or even 15 percent market share to be wide open.
Similarly, Tiger’s other partners—General Motors, American Express, General Mills—were all willing to bend over backward to keep him happy. Even the Walt Disney Company, which almost never hired celebrities or athletes to endorse its products, was preparing a five-year, $22.5 million offer to entice Tiger to appear in commercials for the company’s theme parks, as well as to endorse merchandise and make appearances on Disney’s ABC and ESPN channels.
Tiger’s halo effect was also clearly evident on the PGA Tour’s negotiations with its network partners and tournament sponsors. When Woods turned pro in 1996, total purses amounted to $68 million per year. By 2001, the number had swelled to $175 million. In 2003, it would jump to $225 million.
But perhaps the biggest indication of Tiger’s ability to draw ratings was the Monday Night Golf matchups that IMG had put together with ABC Sports. The second installment, billed as the “Battle at Bighorn,” pitted Tiger against Sergio García at the luxurious Bighorn Golf Club in Palm Desert, California, near the end of the 2000 season. The head-to-head contest drew a Nielsen rating of 7.6, the highest in the series. Remarkably, nearly eight million viewers tuned in on a Monday night in late August to watch García and Woods compete in prime time. But when García edged Tiger by a single shot to claim the $1 million prize, Woods was so upset that the future of the series was in jeopardy.
Losing out on a million bucks was one thing—the blow was softened by his guaranteed $1 million appearance fee—but Tiger didn’t like for his status to be threatened. The last thing he wanted was to give García the slightest hope that he could beat him when it counted, on Sunday in a major. So he told IMG’s Barry Frank, the creator of Monday Night Golf, that he was done. Finished. Quitting the series.
Frank had played more than his fair share of hardball at negotiating tables around the world. He knew bullshit when he heard it, and this was no bullshit. Woods was the drawing card. Without him, Monday Night Golf was history.
But Frank hadn’t negotiated record-breaking rights deals without having a flair for the dramatic and knowing how to keep a card or two in his back pocket. He played those cards now with Woods and Team Tiger. What about a change in format? Frank suggested. Mixed teams? Four-ball instead of match play? “That way,” he told Woods, “if you don’t win, it’s not your fault.”
Eventually, Tiger agreed to a new format that ensured none of his rivals would have a chance to beat him one-on-one in prime time. The next year, Tiger and Annika Sörenstam edged David Duval and Karrie Webb in nineteen holes. Then, in 2002, Tiger and Jack Nicklaus defeated García and Lee Trevino 3 & 2. On it went. IMG and ABC profited, and so did Tiger. Over the course of seven years of Monday Night Golf matches, Frank estimated that Tiger earned at least $10 million in prize money and guarantees from the show.
Frank never expected to be loved by Tiger, but he wanted to be liked, and, more than anything, to be respected. In an interview at his home in Connecticut in the summer of 2015, Frank made clear that Woods had never been unkind or rude, and never owed him anything. But at the same time, Frank said they had never shared what he called an intimate moment, such as a celebratory drink or lunch, and Woods had never once offered a single word of thanks for everything Frank had done for him. Sitting on the back deck of his sprawling ranch home, Frank was asked if Woods respected him. A long pause ensued before Frank, who was celebrating his eighty-third birthday, answered.
“No,” he finally said. “I think I was just another Jew doing what he was paid to do. That I owed him more than he owed me.”
It was no surprise that the 2000 season ended with Tiger earning every conceivable honor and award, including being named Sports Illustrated’s coveted Sportsman of the Year for the second time in five years. This time the magazine’s profile was written by Frank Deford, who was considered a legend of sports journalism and was the first sportswriter to be awarded the National Humanities Medal. A colleague once referred to him this way: “Frank Deford with a pen in his hand is like Michael Jordan with a basketball and Tiger Woods with a driver.”
With pen in hand, Deford made this observation about Woods at the end of his brilliant year: “Tiger is such an extraordinary champion and so widely admired that we have granted him a sort of spiritual amnesty. His persona is still insulated by his deeds, his misjudgments by his youth. Sometime soon, though, we will weary of the tedium of his persistent success and start peering more deeply into that heavenly smile and those steely eyes. Won’t we?”
At that time, the only person peering deeply into Tiger’s steely eyes was Joanna Jagoda. Earlier in the year, rumors had circulated that they were getting engaged, a prospect Woods quickly shot down when a golf writer raised it. “It’s not true,” Tiger said. “I’m here to tell you that right now. Let’s put an end to this crap right now.”
Jagoda remained at Tiger’s side as he won his three major championships during the summer. But in the fall of 2000, she went her own way, enrolling in law school at Pepperdine and quietly disappearing from Tiger’s life. Months later, it became public knowledge that they had split. After law school, Jagoda went to work for Bear Stearns & Co., Inc., before joining JPMorgan Chase, where she rose to the position of vice president and assistant general counsel.
Jagoda has never publicly discussed her relationship with Tiger, or what prompted their breakup. But by all accounts, everyone who was close to Tiger at that time—Mark and Alicia O’Meara, Butch Harmon, Mark Steinberg, and others—adored her. She had, in many ways, the perfect temperament for Woods. In public, she always conducted herself with grace and dignity, interacting affably with everyone from officials and fellow golfers on the PGA Tour to Tiger’s corporate partners. A conservative dresser who smiled easily and had a friendly disposition, she also connected with fans. Privately, she was discreet, avoiding the spotlight and politely declining interview requests.
She also wasn’t afraid to tell Tiger when she thought he was out of line or when he needed to do things that he would have preferred to avoid, such as talking to fans or engaging with the press.
“She was good for Tiger,” said Alicia O’Meara. “If she didn’t agree with something he said, she would politely say, ‘I see it this way.’ He had so many years of everybody telling him yes. When you’re a celebrity, people tell you what you want to hear. She wasn’t that kind of person.”
In one sense, Jagoda was similar to Tiger’s first love, Dina Gravell. Both women truly loved Tiger, but neither of them cared much for the lifestyle that came with his excessive fame. As he had with Gravell, Tiger shared parts of himself with Jagoda and had moments of intimacy, but there were aspects of his life that he kept from her—including the fact that he was getting more and more attention from other women. As a result, he was gaining confidence, and his expectations of who he wanted on his arm were changing.
Once the relationship was over, Tiger never looked back.
Two things coincided with Joanna Jagoda’s departure from Tiger’s side: he failed to win any of the first six tournaments he entered in 2001, and he became a lot surlier, especially toward the press. He was in a particularly foul mood with the media prior to the start of the Bay Hill Invitational in mid-March, if for no other reason than that he was sick and tired of any suggestion of a “slump.” For the most part, the golf press danced around the word, but Tiger knew what everyone was thinking and went out of his way to remind the writers that his scoring average through the first six tournaments in 2001 was actually better than it had been in 2000 when he was winning tournament after tournament. Talk of a slump, he made clear, was just idiotic.
“Does it bug you that we make it a story line, ‘My God, he’s gone six events and he hasn’t won, what’s wrong with the guy?’ ” asked one reporter.
“Well, it’s annoying because of the fact that if you think that way, then you really don’t understand the game of golf,” Tiger said.
In his mind, one of those lacking such understanding was Jimmy Roberts, his former friend and now—in Tiger’s eyes—foe, ever since the unwelcome question about Tiger’s cursing on live television during the US Open in 2000. A week before Tiger got to Bay Hill, Roberts had done a piece for NBC essentially defending Woods, artfully equating Tiger’s “slump” to the Beatles’ not having a number one record for a few months. That Roberts was supporting him made no difference to Tiger; he hated having the word slump applied to him in any context.
So when Roberts asked Woods if, in effect, he was a victim of his own success, Woods gave him essentially the same “you don’t understand the game of golf” answer—only it wasn’t an insult in the isolated confines of a press tent: the exchange took place in front of millions of viewers on national television.
To put it mildly, Roberts was none too pleased. You’re not even listening, he thought. You don’t even get it.
Tiger won at Bay Hill, but he wasn’t about to let go of his animus toward the media—and especially toward Roberts. The next week, at The Players Championship, Woods had another tense exchange with Roberts following an early round. Golf World columnist John Hawkins was standing nearby. “Don’t worry, dude,” Hawkins told Roberts from across a rope line. “You keep on asking those good questions.”
Roberts took one look at Hawkins and told him what he thought of him and the rest of the fawning reporters who had long treated Woods as though he were labeled “Handle with care.”
“Let me ask you something,” he said. “When the fuck are you guys going to start asking him those good questions?”
Hawkins paused and looked down before responding. “Good point,” he said. “Because we’ve all been kissing his ass for years now, and we still don’t get anything interesting.”
On Monday, after taking possession of The Players Championship trophy in the rain-delayed event, Woods once again faced Roberts, this time on the eighteenth green. Expressing congratulations, Roberts attempted a generic question.
“Some slump,” Tiger said, completely ignoring what Roberts was saying.
Roberts tried again, but Tiger cut him off. “Means the slump is over,” he said. Moments later, with Roberts in midsentence, Woods walked off, leaving Roberts standing alone on live television.
Weeks later, Roberts approached Tiger privately in hopes of having a man-to-man talk to resolve any misunderstandings. But Woods brushed him off. He wanted nothing to do with Roberts.
“I’ve thought a lot about him over the years, because we’ve had some serious ups and downs,” Roberts said in 2016. “There’s more ‘fuck you’ in Tiger Woods than in any athlete I’ve ever covered. In those days, it felt like a one-way street with him. He demanded respect but wasn’t willing to offer any in return. He burns with hate toward people that he feels have wronged him or are not on his side.”
With the slump talk officially dispatched in the most ignominious manner, the 2001 story line shifted to gentler and more familiar terrain—the Masters. Would Woods be able to make it four majors in a row? If so, would that qualify as a Grand Slam, despite the fact that they were not won in a single calendar year? Woods made it clear that if he held all four major championship trophies at the same time, the media could call it whatever it wanted—Grand Slam, Tiger Slam, or Some Other Slam. That was his answer.
At Augusta, it’s the back nine on Sunday where the tournament often divides. By the eighteenth tee, Woods had pushed Phil Mickelson aside and was one stroke clear of David Duval, who had torn up the course earlier with seven birdies in the first ten holes. On the green in two, Woods was twelve feet from a two-putt par and carving his name deeper into the history of the game. Instead, he dropped the putt for birdie. Then he walked to the side of the green and buried his face in his hands.
“I just started thinking, you know, I don’t have any more shots to play. I’m done—I won the Masters,” he said afterward. “It was just a weird feeling, because when you’re focused so hard on each and every shot, you kind of forget everything else. When I didn’t have any more shots to play, I started to realize what I had done, and I started getting a little emotional.”
With his Masters win, he simultaneously possessed the four most prestigious trophies in golf—the US Open, the British Open, the PGA Championship, and the Masters—and proudly displayed them on the mantel above the fireplace in his home. There had never been a human being on the planet who had won all four tournaments in succession.
Soon after winning his second Masters, Woods was back on the range at Isleworth with O’Meara. While they practiced, Tiger chose to voice one of his favorite complaints—his loss of privacy.
“You whine all the time about wanting privacy,” O’Meara told him. “You gave all that up.”
Woods didn’t want to hear it, but O’Meara wasn’t about to let up on his friend.
“You’re one of the most famous people in the world,” he continued. “People feel like they own a part of you. That’s the price to be paid.”
Woods said nothing.
“Now, I can help you with that,” O’Meara said.
“You can?” Woods asked.
“Walk away,” O’Meara said. “Just walk away. Give it all up. Take your money and run.”
But Woods knew that would mean walking away from the one thing that gave meaning to his life, symbolized by the shiny trophies that decorated his home. At twenty-four, he already had five majors in his pocket, a milestone that Nicklaus didn’t achieve until he was twenty-six. Woods wasn’t about to give up the fame either; as much as he hated being a public figure, he loved what that status afforded him: the hip Nike commercials; the American Express Centurion Black card in his wallet; the Rolex on his wrist; the luxury home in Florida; the bachelor pad in Newport Beach; private planes, limousines, and security guards; his face on Wheaties boxes, billboards, and magazine covers throughout the world. The adulation was intoxicating.
Yet he was inescapably lonely.
After the round, Tiger invited O’Meara over to his place. He wanted to show him the latest addition to his mantel. O’Meara watched as Tiger spent time taking pictures and lining up the glittering symbols just so. In a way, they were his best friends, the objects he’d devoted his life to acquiring.
Joanna Jagoda had treasured the trophies almost as much as Tiger did, but since she was out of the picture, there was no longer anyone special for him to share his successes with.
But that was about to change.