From the start, the atmosphere at the 2002 US Open at Bethpage Black on Long Island in New York felt more like a Giants football game at the Meadowlands than a golf tournament. The New York fans boisterously shouted, chanted, and cheered at decibel levels that exceeded anything Woods had heard in his entire career. But the loudest ovations weren’t for him—they were reserved for the number-two-ranked golfer in the world, Phil Mickelson. Tiger had never particularly liked Mickelson and went out of his way to badmouth him, routinely referring to him as “Phony Phil.” It was Tiger’s preferred means of exerting control over a competitor while at the same time keeping as much distance as possible between them. Although Mickelson, about to turn thirty-two, had yet to win a major championship, Tiger recognized that he had emerged as a rival worth watching.
Tiger’s disdain for Mickelson went beyond the ropes, though. Mickelson was a perennial fan favorite, with his everyman image, which Tiger, like many regulars on Tour, felt was artificial. Mickelson had a beautiful wife and two young children, and they were frequently around him on the Tour. In the final round at Bethpage, Mickelson had to back away from the fifteenth tee when the “Let’s go Mick-el-son” chants grew too loud. It was Mickelson’s birthday, and on the seventeenth tee, his fans sang “Happy Birthday” to him.
But like a well-oiled machine, Tiger led from start to finish, never allowing Mickelson to get close enough to inspire any hope. While he drew his share of cheers, Tiger didn’t engage the fans as his rival did. Instead, he wore a scowl throughout on his way to capturing his eighth major championship. His dour demeanor prompted Sports Illustrated senior writer Michael Silver to posit afterward: “Has any pro golfer—hell, any great athlete—ever looked so grim while doing his job?”
One problem may have been boredom. It had taken Tiger just twenty-two majors to win eight times. Nicklaus, in contrast, needed thirty-five majors to collect his first eight wins. With his triumph at Bethpage, Tiger had won seven of the last eleven major championships. There was no one to really challenge him. His only source of stimulation came from his obsession with continually getting better, a compulsion at the root of a slow-forming rift between him and Butch Harmon. Personally, they still got along fine. But Tiger had lost interest in Harmon’s philosophy. Essentially, Harmon felt that Tiger had perfected his swing and simply needed to maintain it with subtle refinements—an opinion that was supported by the fact that Tiger was in the midst of a 264-week run as the number-one ranked golfer in the world.
Maintenance, however, was a word Tiger hated. He was a man in constant search of something he couldn’t find. It made him a hard person to be around, much less to like, even for his friends. “He was so consumed with being the greatest golfer ever; he wasn’t a very social guy,” said Charles Barkley. “Golf is just a game. But when your whole life revolves around how you’re doing on a golf course, you’re going to develop a negative attitude to a certain degree, instead of saying, ‘I’ve actually got it pretty good.’ ”
Harmon more or less agreed with Barkley. The difference was that Harmon had to work with Woods, and the brunt of Tiger’s obsession with perfection was felt most acutely by those who worked with him in a professional capacity. They were expected to perform at the same level of perfection that Tiger did. When that didn’t happen, he could be cold and unforgiving. Two months after winning the US Open, Tiger froze out Harmon at the PGA Championship at Hazeltine. A few days earlier, Woods had telephoned Harmon with the news that their partnership was at an end. “You know, I really just want to do this on my own,” he said. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me, how you’ve helped me with my swing. But I’m going to go on my own.”
Harmon was shocked that Woods had mustered the courage to make the call. “Between the ropes, he’s the toughest son of a bitch to compete against I’ve ever seen,” Harmon said in 2017. “But he’s not good at looking you in the eye and saying something.”
A couple of days after the call, Tiger was on the practice tee at the PGA Championship when Harmon showed up. Ignoring him, Tiger kept swinging. Stung, Harmon walked off. Just like that, after nine years together, the relationship was over.
Harmon’s departure marked the start of an unprecedented drought for Tiger. He finished second at the PGA, losing by one stroke. Thirty-four months would pass before he would win another major championship. Injury contributed to the start of the drought. At the end of 2002, Woods flew to Park City, Utah, to undergo arthroscopic surgery to remove benign cysts on his knee and drain some fluid. But during the procedure, doctors Thomas Rosenberg and Vern Cooley determined that his anterior cruciate ligament was significantly compromised. They told him he had about 20 percent of his ACL left. Tiger’s question was simple: “How long will that last?” The answer was complicated. It was only a matter of time before his ACL was gone altogether, which would then require a more significant surgery. In the meantime, he was going to have to modify his approach.
Mark O’Meara owned a condo in Park City, and he had escorted Tiger to the surgery. Afterward, O’Meara and Tiger met up with O’Meara’s swing coach, Hank Haney, who owned a condo nearby. The conversation quickly turned to Tiger’s ACL and the challenges it posed. “I’m going to have to change my swing,” he told Haney.
While sitting out the first five tournaments of 2003, Tiger aggressively rehabbed and managed to return to the Tour in mid-February at the Buick Invitational in San Diego. Despite playing in pain, Woods won the tournament. Then, after finishing tied for fifth at the Nissan Open, he took the WGC–Accenture Match Play Championship and the Bay Hill Invitational. Heading into the 2003 Masters, he looked primed for a third-straight green jacket. But, as was his wont, Woods was trading pain—and potentially debilitating injury—for the trophies that mattered most. At the same time, he had redoubled his weight-lifting routine, working out twice a day, morning and night, for as much as ninety minutes at a time. As a result, his upper body, particularly his chest and shoulders, continued to get bigger, which was affecting his swing. With Harmon no longer in the picture, Tiger was determined to figure things out on his own. On the course, he even started giving his caddie the silent treatment. On Sunday at Augusta, just three off the lead to start the round, Tiger ignored Williams’s advice to use the driver on the third hole and ended up flaring his tee shot wide right, forcing him to double-bogey. In response, Tiger didn’t say a word to Williams for the better part of two hours. On the ninth fairway, Williams had finally had enough.
“Pull your head out of your arse and start behaving like an adult,” Williams told him. “If I’d given you the wrong club and it cost you double bogey, then fair enough, but don’t hit a shitty shot and tell me it’s the wrong club.”
Tiger said nothing.
“Get your shit together and stop acting like a child,” Williams told him.
Tiger finished tied for fifteenth.
He ended up smoothing things out with Williams, but in a larger sense, the break with Harmon was indicative of Tiger’s arriving at a point where he was shedding those who had been with him the longest. Back on January 1, 1997, just months after Tiger had turned pro, Nike had assigned Greg Nared (pronounced “Nard”) to be a liaison between Woods and the corporate office. Working under the umbrella of the company’s Athlete Relations program, Nared was officially a business-affairs manager with Nike Golf. Unofficially, he was part of Nike’s so-called guy program—a personal concierge service reserved, at that point, for just two other Nike athletes: Michael Jordan and Ken Griffey Jr. It was Nared’s responsibility, as Tiger’s “guy,” to communicate all business-related issues involving apparel, footwear, equipment, and advertising to Woods and coordinate directly with the product teams. In addition, Nared oversaw all Nike-related appearances and scheduling for Woods, as well as for select other sponsors. It was his job to ensure that Tiger knew where he needed to be and, if push came to shove, to end an interview or photo shoot that was running past its prescribed time limit.
“Greg was the funnel for everything Tiger-related,” said Chris Mike, former director of marketing for Nike Golf. “I couldn’t just pick up the phone and call Mark Steinberg. Greg was the guy.”
Tall, good-looking, and African American, Nared had been a starting point guard at Maryland before joining Nike. In many ways, he had the perfect temperament for his job, which landed him deep inside Woods’s inner circle and, often, on the receiving end of Tiger’s biting sense of humor. Woods was like a hammer and Nared his nail, constantly getting hazed by the star he was responsible for helping. Nared took everything in stride, embracing the pivotal role of navigating Tiger through the uncharted waters of extreme fame and fortune. Not surprisingly, Tiger could be demanding, especially when it came to things like selecting the perfect rainwear; it had to fit just so, and could not restrict his swing. And when there was blowback, Nared was often the recipient. At Nike, athletes of Woods’s wattage were never wrong.
Through it all, Nared absorbed the blows and treated Woods like a brother. Eventually, however, the brotherly bond began to fray, especially after Woods learned the corporate ropes and his patience grew thin when it came to Nike’s response to his input and needs. Within a year, Tiger decided to make a change. He left it to Kel Devlin to break the news to Nared. “It was a nightmare to tell Greg he wasn’t going to be Tiger’s guy anymore and have it not come from Tiger,” said Devlin. “That was part of the job I did that was not fun.”
Dating from his days at Stanford, there had long been a cold side to Woods; he never let anyone get too close to him. Harmon and Nared knew him as well as anyone; other than perhaps O’Meara and Steinberg, there was probably no one who spent more one-on-one time with Tiger between 1996 and 2003 than his swing coach and personal aide-de-camp. Taking them off the team was like removing the guardrails from the curves of a high-speed freeway.
Tiger still won five tournaments in 2003, but after March he managed to win only twice. He was essentially a nonfactor in all four major championships. He was out of sync, and he knew it. O’Meara knew it too, but he was searching for the right opportunity to broach the subject of what to do about it. Then, early in 2004, the two of them flew together on Tiger’s Gulfstream G500 to the Middle East for the Dubai Desert Classic, where O’Meara ended a five-year winless streak with a surprising victory. As he walked off the eighteenth green following the final round, Tiger was waiting for him. “I’m as happy for you right now as you are,” he told O’Meara.
Coming from Tiger, that statement had huge significance, and O’Meara knew it; Tiger seldom showed concern for others. Feeling confident, O’Meara decided to finally speak up. “Tiger,” he said during the flight back, “you’ve got to get someone to help you with your game.”
Woods almost seemed relieved. “Who should I get?” he asked.
O’Meara suggested Butch Harmon’s brother, Billy.
Tiger quickly shot that idea down. Too many potential complications in hiring the sibling of his prior coach.
They kicked around a couple of other names, none of which resonated with Woods. Finally, O’Meara suggested his own instructor. “Tiger, I know Hank’s my friend and I’ve been with him for years, but he’s the best teacher in the world,” he said.
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “I’m going to call him tomorrow.”
Hank Haney first met Tiger and Earl Woods in 1993 when they were in Dallas for the Byron Nelson Classic. Tiger was a seventeen-year-old amateur at the time, and he’d been invited to play in the tournament on a sponsor’s exemption. Haney was then a private instructor for Trip Kuehne and his two siblings. Kuehne’s father took Earl and Tiger to meet Haney at his training facility north of Dallas. It was a frosty introduction. Congratulating Tiger on his accomplishments, Haney extended his hand. Tiger limply shook it and said nothing. Earl seemed even less interested in saying hello to Haney.
Three years later, after Tiger moved to Isleworth, Haney started running into him on the practice range. Haney would be there working with O’Meara, and Tiger would often join them for dinner afterward. There were also plenty of times at tournaments when Harmon and Haney were with Tiger and O’Meara during practice rounds. Still, Haney never imagined that one day he would end up coaching the man he considered the greatest golfer who ever lived.
But hours after Tiger and O’Meara returned home from Dubai, O’Meara’s agent, Peter Malik, called Haney and told him he was going to be receiving a phone call. The next day—March 8, 2004—Haney was having dinner with his father in Plano, Texas, when his cell phone rang. He stepped out and took the call.
“Hey, Hank, this is Tiger.”
“Hey, bud,” Haney said.
True to form, Tiger dispensed with any small talk. “Hank, I want to know if you’ll help me with my golf game.”
“Sure, Tiger, of course,” he said, trying to conceal his enthusiasm.
Tiger told him he wanted him in Isleworth on Monday morning. The call lasted a mere three minutes. Thoughts raced through Haney’s head: I’ve won the lottery. I’m going to gain in stature. I’m going to be famous. I’m going to get to try out all my ideas on the ultimate student, and he’s going to prove them so right.
After a few minutes, he went back inside and told his father the news. A lifelong Nicklaus fan, Haney’s father chuckled with pride. “You know,” he said a few minutes later, “that’s going to be a hard job. Are you sure you want to do it?”
A month earlier, Tiger Woods had formed a company in the Cayman Islands for the sole purpose of purchasing a 155-foot yacht. He named his new company Privacy, Ltd., and he named the yacht the same thing. According to court records, Privacy was “intended to be a respite for the Woods Family to relax and escape the rigors of their celebrity.” At that point, the closest thing Tiger had to a family was Elin. They were living together in Isleworth and were engaged to be married. But Tiger treated the engagement like a state secret; the only people who were allowed to know about it were family and a few close friends, all of whom were sworn to secrecy.
Elin had been with Tiger long enough that the burden of fame and Tiger’s obsession with privacy had begun to rub off on her. Naturally inclined to trust others, she had become much more reserved and guarded. But she trusted Tiger implicitly, and she was in awe of his work ethic. On top of the tournaments, he was constantly on the road fulfilling obligations to his sponsors, making appearances, shooting commercials, and attending functions. He had earned over $200 million in endorsement money in the three years since they had started seeing each other, and with that came enormous demands on his time; so Elin never questioned his desire to escape on a yacht. She figured he deserved Privacy.
One of the few people who were invited to spend time on the yacht with Tiger and Elin was Tiger’s dive instructor, Herb Sugden. In addition to teaching Elin to scuba dive, Sugden offered to teach Tiger how to spearfish. But he instantly discovered that Tiger’s hand-eye coordination was so exceptional that all he had to do was hand Woods the spear gun and get out of the way. “I didn’t have to teach him,” Sugden said. “I just showed him once how to do it, and he did it. He’s a better spearfisher than I am. He was phenomenal.”
Tiger liked Sugden and treated him exceptionally well. When he yearned for a greater feeling of adventure, he asked Sugden to teach him cave diving, a much riskier form of scuba diving that entailed going into underground caves that were full of water. At first, Sugden was apprehensive. “At that time, Tiger [was] at the peak of his career, winning everything,” Sugden said. “Cave diving can be dangerous. You’re underground and you’re underwater. The only way to get air is what you got on your back. And the only way you can get out is to come back to the place you went in. You can get lost. It’s a hazardous thing.”
But Tiger was fearless. And just as he had with scuba diving, he soon became a fully certified cave diver as well. It helped that he possessed an unusual ability to hold his breath longer than most humans. Nonetheless, his insurance carrier didn’t like the fact that he was diving in caves. In an attempt to reassure his insurer, Tiger had Sugden meet with them. “I had to go up and tell them how safe cave diving was,” Sugden said.
On Monday morning, March 15, 2004, Tiger was standing in his driveway, swinging a golf club. His custom-made golf cart was parked nearby with his clubs in the back. He was waiting for Hank Haney to arrive for their first practice session. When Haney pulled up in his rental car, Tiger walked over and said hello.
“I’m looking forward to working with you,” Haney said.
Tiger wasted no time before telling Haney how things were going to be done. He had observed Haney plenty of times as he worked with O’Meara, and Tiger made it clear at the outset that he disagreed with some of his methods. It was a not-so-subtle way of saying that Haney was going to have to earn his trust.
Tiger got into his cart and drove Haney toward a secluded area on the range. “I want to get more consistent in every phase,” he said on the way over, “so I have the kind of game that at majors will always get me to the back nine on Sundays with a chance. I don’t want to just have a chance on the weeks when I’m hot. I want to have a chance all the time.”
Haney knew he was dealing with more than a world-famous golfer. He considered Tiger’s mastery of every facet of the game—right down to the equipment he used—downright intimidating. For instance, according to Kel Devlin, Nike had recently shipped a box of prototype titanium drivers to Woods so he could test them. There were six in total. After putting the drivers through their paces, Tiger told Devlin that he preferred the one that was heavier than the others. Devlin informed him that all six drivers were the exact same weight. Tiger argued otherwise, insisting that one weighed more than the others. To prove him wrong, Devlin sent the drivers back to the design wizards at the Nike testing facility in Fort Worth with instructions to weigh them. They found that five drivers were exactly the same weight, but the sixth was two grams heavier. When they pulled the club apart, they discovered that an extra dab of goo had been added to the inside of the head by one of the engineers to help absorb a few floating particles of titanium. The weight of the goo was equivalent to the weight of two one-dollar bills. Yet Tiger noticed the difference in the way the driver felt in his hands.
With stories such as that in mind, Haney understood that it wasn’t wise to consider Tiger his student. He knew Woods was testing him, and he wasn’t about to get off on the wrong foot by arguing with him. As Tiger started to hit balls, they talked about the fact that he wasn’t consistently able to get his upper body to rotate fast enough on his downswing. The other thing they worked on was getting Tiger’s eyes to stay level through his swing. Woods’s intensity on the practice range was beyond anything Haney had ever experienced. He proceeded gently through this first session.
By the time he returned home, Haney had an agreement with Tiger to continue working with him. Haney would be earning $50,000 per year—the same amount Tiger had paid Harmon—and would receive a $25,000 bonus each time Tiger won a major championship.
Later that week, Tiger played in the Bay Hill Invitational. After a strong first round, he played poorly, shooting 74, 74, and 73 to finish tied for forty-sixth place. In his press conference afterward, he said that he was very excited about what he had worked on earlier in the week and that 90 percent of his game was good. But what he said publicly was almost always different from what he really felt.
When Haney showed up at Isleworth the next day for his second round of practice sessions, Tiger was already on the range, hitting balls. He didn’t look up when Haney reached the tee. Nor did he respond when Haney pointed out a few things he had noticed in Tiger’s swing during the Bay Hill Invitational. A couple of compliments from Haney didn’t faze Tiger either. Silence was his way of sending a message. It was also his method for assessing weakness.
“I’m not sure what you’re doing here,” Haney finally said. “But I guess you’re trying to knock me off my spot. I know what you need to do to get better. I know what your plan needs to be. So if you’re trying to knock me off my spot, it’s not going to happen.”
Tiger still didn’t acknowledge him, but when Haney suggested some new drills, he immediately executed them with passion and precision. The practice session was solid. The next day’s session was even better. But Tiger stayed in silent mode, providing instant clarity to something Butch Harmon had said to Haney the first time he saw him after being succeeded as Tiger’s coach. “Hank, good luck,” Harmon told him. “It’s a tough team to be on. And it’s harder than it looks.”
The good news heading into the 2004 Masters was that Tiger was still the number one golfer in the world, and he felt no real pressure from his flanks. David Duval had been derailed by injuries. Sergio “Crybaby” García had crumbled under the bright light of expectation (just two wins in seventy-eight Tour starts). Ernie Els appeared to be on his last legs. Vijay Singh was playing well but remained something of an outlier. The only guy Woods continued to think was capable of giving him a real challenge was Mickelson, who had earned his own nickname from Tida: “Fat Boy.” Despite twenty-one victories on Tour, Mickelson had also earned the dreaded Best Player Never to Win a Major label. Tiger felt that if Mickelson won just one major, the floodgates would open.
In previous years, Woods had always been the one talking trash about Mickelson. But by 2004, Mickelson had become pretty good at talking shit himself. A year earlier, he’d done just that, expressing his surprise to Golf Magazine that Tiger had played so well given his “inferior equipment”—a jab at Nike clubs and balls. Woods brushed it off as simply “Phil trying to be funny” and “Phil being Phil.”
When Mickelson arrived at Augusta, he was eager to mix it up with Tiger. That was especially clear when Mickelson birdied five of the last seven holes, including eighteen, in the final round to finally capture his first major championship.
“I had a different feeling playing this week,” Mickelson said afterward. “I didn’t feel the anxiety of it slipping away, or ‘How is the tournament going?’ or ‘Who is doing what?’ It was, ‘Let’s hit some shots.’ ”
Shots were exactly what Woods didn’t hit. After finishing back in the pack, he wasn’t about to stick around and congratulate Mickelson. Instead, he disappeared with his father to the place where Earl had been stationed as a Green Beret—Fort Bragg, North Carolina. They met up with a bunch of Earl’s military buddies. Drawing on his father’s military contacts, Tiger spent a few days doing army special-ops training. Wearing a camouflage uniform with his name above the left pocket, Tiger did four-mile runs in combat boots, participated in hand-to-hand combat exercises, and did drills in wind tunnels. It was risky behavior, considering that he had a significantly compromised ACL, but Tiger’s mind was elsewhere. Back in 1998, Earl had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, which was successfully treated with radiation. But in 2004 the cancer returned, and it was spreading through his body. He was also dealing with diabetes. Sensing that his father’s days were numbered, Tiger wanted to be closer to him. The highlight of the trip was tandem-jumping with the army’s parachute team. Strapped to a soldier, Tiger flung himself out of the jump plane. Exhilarated, Woods grinned as he dropped through the air. On the ground, Earl breathed with the aid of an oxygen tank as he waited in the drop zone. When Tiger landed, his father hugged him with pride.
“Now you understand my world,” Earl told him.
Before leaving the base, Tiger sat with his father and listened to Earl’s old army buddies tell stories about him. It was the first time that Tiger had heard about his father’s heroism in combat. The more he heard, the more he longed to live up to Earl’s expectations.
By the time Tiger showed up at the 2004 US Open at Shinnecock Hills, golf writers were openly talking about the fact that he was in another slump. In the previous eighteen tournaments, he’d won just two times. Even Butch Harmon publicly criticized him. “Tiger Woods is not playing well,” Harmon said on television during the tournament. “He’s not working on the right things in his golf swing, although Tiger obviously thinks he is.”
Tiger hated it when anyone criticized him publicly. But it felt like a stab in the back to hear it coming from his former swing coach. He spent the weekend in a foul mood, barely setting foot in the locker room, avoiding everyone, and giving Tour officials the What the fuck do you want? look anytime they approached. Steve Williams played the role of human shield. On the very first hole of the tournament—in which Tiger finished ten-over and tied for seventeenth—Williams kicked a camera belonging to a pesky news photographer. In the final round, he confiscated an unauthorized camera from a fan—an off-duty police officer, as it turned out. Both player and caddie were at wit’s end. The US Open marked the eighth consecutive major championship without a win, the longest such stretch of Tiger’s career.
Afterward, Tiger was behind the wheel of his rental car, headed back to the house he had stayed in. Williams sat in the passenger’s seat. Suddenly, Tiger pulled over to the side of the road and hit his caddie with the verbal equivalent of a 9-iron to the gut.
“Stevie,” he said, “I think I’ve had enough of golf. I’d like to try to be a Navy SEAL.”
Stunned, Williams searched for something rational to say. All he could think of was this: “Don’t you think you might be a bit old for that?”
But Tiger was serious. He had practically worn out a Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Training DVD that covered a six-month training course. He had memorized every exercise, and many of the slogans on the video were ones he had started repeating as his own.
Williams wasn’t the only one who was concerned. Hank Haney had been spending a lot of time at Tiger’s home in Isleworth, where he had observed Woods’s fixation on a video game called SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs. Wearing headphones, he would respond to orders from an animated commander. “Tiger would get totally immersed,” Haney said, “sitting on the edge of the couch, as intense and focused as if he were playing in a major championship.”
The sudden and intense interest in Navy SEAL training coincided with stepped-up workout routines and cardiovascular exercises. Tiger’s quest resulted in additional upper-body muscle mass, which forced him to significantly modify his golf swing yet again.
One consequence of Butch Harmon’s publicly chastising Tiger was that it sped up his bonding process with Haney. Whether intentional or not, Harmon’s comments about Tiger were also swipes at Haney. They were both highly motivated to prove Harmon wrong, and it brought them together. After the 2004 US Open, Tiger fully embraced Haney’s approach to overhauling his swing.
Early in the summer of 2004, the Boys & Girls Clubs honored Denzel Washington with a lifetime achievement award at a black-tie dinner held at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City. The guest list was a virtual Who’s Who of the Hollywood and sports industries. Tiger blew off the dinner, choosing instead to attend the after-party in Denzel’s suite. A couple of days later, he was with Elin at the clubhouse at Isleworth when he ran into a neighbor who had attended the dinner at the Waldorf. She knew Tiger had been invited, and she wondered why he’d skipped it. He explained that he’d gone to the after-party. Elin had no idea what Tiger and their neighbor were talking about. Finally, she looked at Tiger and said, “You were in New York?”
There were a lot of things Tiger didn’t tell Elin, especially when it came to his whereabouts and the women he met on the road. His secret life in Las Vegas and all the temptations that besieged him begged the question: Why get married?
The answer may lie in the fairy-tale life that Woods desired—a heart-stopping wife and adorable children living with him in the six-bedroom mansion on Deacon Circle that he had purchased four years earlier. It was the image that he saw in the marriage between Mark and Alicia O’Meara. For Tiger, Elin Nordegren represented the key piece of that puzzle—blond, beautiful, and adoring. They would live happily ever after, right down the street from the O’Mearas.
There was another important factor: Elin was the first woman who fully measured up to the lofty expectations of both Earl and Kultida. Tiger had been in love before, and he’d been very close to more than one woman who would have been much more likely to try to rein in his vices and insist that he stay on the straight and narrow. But it soon became clear that he wanted it both ways—the picture-perfect marriage and the freedom to walk on the wild side. In that respect, he was a lot like his father—but with one big difference: unlimited opportunity.
On October 5, 2004, Tiger and Elin exchanged vows in Barbados at the ultraexclusive Sandy Lane Resort. To ensure ultimate privacy, Tiger spent a reported $1.5 million to rent the entire resort for the week, filling the time with fishing, boating, golf, and snorkeling. On the night of the wedding, the island sky was ablaze with a spectacular display of fireworks. Only family and close friends were invited. Tiger spent his nights sitting around with his father and Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley, smoking cigars and talking about glory days. Meanwhile, Kultida beamed. At age twenty-eight, her son was now a man in the fullest sense. Soon, she hoped, there would be a grandchild.
Just before Christmas of 2004, Tiger and Elin went on their first getaway as a married couple, flying to Park City for a week of skiing with the O’Mearas and the Haneys. For years, Tiger had been telling O’Meara he was going to try skiing. Now that he was married to an advanced skier who playfully bragged that she was much better than he was at the sport, Tiger was determined to show her that skiing was a lot simpler than golf. But he had one condition for going on the trip: he didn’t want to be seen with a ski instructor.
O’Meara promised to take care of everything. He talked to his friend Karl Lund, one of the top instructors in Utah. Lund had taught both of O’Meara’s children to ski, and he was very connected at the luxurious Deer Valley Resort. At O’Meara’s request, Lund talked to the resort and made special arrangements for Tiger to receive lessons outside the normal course of business. There would be no reservations and no payment. Lund would simply meet Tiger on the slopes and ski with him for the day.
The mere fact that Tiger was going skiing with his swing coach was a graphic illustration of how much things had changed. When Butch Harmon was his swing coach, he used to bar Woods from shooting jump shots by himself for fear that he might jam a finger. Now Haney and O’Meara were encouraging Tiger to try downhill skiing. It was clear that Tiger had accepted Haney into his inner circle, viewing him as a friend. The feeling was mutual.
The next morning, Tiger showed up on the slopes wearing a bulky knee brace. It had been almost two years to the day since his last knee surgery. His SEAL training exercises and intense weight-lifting regimen had been putting increased stress on his troubled left knee, but he wasn’t going to let that slow him down on the slopes.
At first, he resisted any instruction. “Don’t worry,” he told the group. “I’ll be fine.”
He started out slowly on the bunny slope. With Elin cheering him on, he soon moved off the beginner hill. After a short break for lunch, Tiger decided to try a more advanced run. Haney watched in fear as Tiger rapidly gained speed. Lund and O’Meara were partway down the slope when Woods flew by them. They estimated his speed at close to forty miles per hour, and he was completely out of control. “Holy shit!” Lund said, taking off after him.
Tiger was balanced on his skis just enough to pick up speed and hung on for dear life as he headed straight for some aspen trees. “Turn! Turn!” everyone screamed.
Suddenly, at the last second, Tiger turned just enough to avoid the trees, toppled, and landed flat on his back between two trees. Frightened, Lund skidded to a stop beside him.
Out of breath and feeling exhilarated, Tiger looked up at him.
“Hey,” Lund said, “are you okay with me helping you out with a few things?”
“That’d be great,” Tiger said.
Lund helped him up and dusted him off. Then he started teaching some basics, such as how to turn. “Skiing is basically left turns and right turns,” he said, demonstrating what he meant, and encouraging Tiger to follow. Rights. Lefts. Rights. Lefts. “That’s it,” Lund said. “Up on your toes. Feel it?”
“Why doesn’t this fuckin’ ski turn?” Tiger barked. “This fuckin’ ski doesn’t turn!”
“Just relax,” Lund said. “Stay positive.”
After more than twenty-five simple turns, Tiger had had enough. He wasn’t interested in drills. He wanted speed.
But Lund wouldn’t let him. “Get your shins against the front again,” he said.
Tiger just glared at him. Elin was watching, and he was pissed.
“You know what?” Lund said. “A really loud FUCK YOU would make you feel better right now.”
“Fuck you!” Tiger yelled.
“Do you feel better?”
Tiger grinned. “Yeah.”
Lund smiled. “Now, get your shins against the front.”
He lasted about ten minutes before he lost it again. He was Tiger fucking Woods! He didn’t need to be taught. He knew what to do. “Fuck you!” he said to Lund again.
Determined not to let Tiger get hurt on his watch, Lund dug in, insisting that he not go downhill without learning how to turn properly.
Tiger’s natural inclination was to do what’s known in ski jargon as “crank and yank”: basically, every time he tried to turn, his skis would end up in a V-shape, the inside leg getting in the way and needing to be yanked around to complete the turn. But due to the downhill angle, the back of Tiger’s ski was catching when he tried to twist, putting tremendous strain on his knee. Aware that he’d undergone ACL surgery, Lund didn’t want him to do any long-term damage to the ligaments by learning an improper technique.
The more they practiced, the more frustrated and surly Tiger became. As he finished his final run with Lund, Tiger saw O’Meara approaching. Without saying thank you or good-bye, Tiger started trudging toward the lodge.
“See you later,” Lund said.
“Fuck you!” Tiger said.
Lund couldn’t believe it. He was the most experienced instructor on the mountain, and he had spent the afternoon working with Tiger as a courtesy. It was a fitting end to the most frustrating year in Tiger’s career. In 2004, he had won just one of the nineteen tournaments he entered. Phil Mickelson had won the Masters and was no longer afraid of him. And in September, Tiger had been toppled from the number one ranking in the world by Vijay Singh. Woods hadn’t won a major championship since June 2002, and the whispers were growing louder that the Tiger era might be coming to an end. As an ailing and frustrated Woods removed his bulky knee brace in Park City, it certainly felt that way to him.
On January 23, 2005, Tiger won the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines. It was his first PGA tournament victory since he had begun working with Hank Haney ten months earlier. During that period, Tiger had once again changed his swing, making major adjustments to his grip and retooling many of the things he had worked on with Harmon. This was the third major swing change of his career, and he and Haney still had a long way to go toward calming down his swing in hopes of avoiding injury and getting the new mechanics fully refined. But a win was a great way to start the 2005 PGA Tour season.
Elin was particularly ecstatic. This was Tiger’s first win since the wedding, and she had walked every hole of the final round with him.
Afterward, back at the hotel, Elin leaned against him and said, “We have to celebrate. What should we do?” She brought up the fact that when she used to work for the Parneviks as a nanny, they would throw a party every time Jesper won.
“E, that’s not what we do,” Tiger told her. “I’m not Jesper. We’re supposed to win.”
Elin nodded, the smile shrinking from her face. There would be no celebration.
Tiger’s emotional detachment after victories was part of his formula for greatness. Even when he played flawlessly, he acted as if he had simply done okay. The best was always yet to come.
“Tiger never allowed himself to be satisfied, because in his mind, satisfaction is the enemy of success,” said Haney. “His whole approach was to delay gratification and somehow stay hungry. It’s the way of the super-achiever: the more celebrations, the less there’ll be to celebrate.”
It was an attitude that kept him motivated week after week, but it took a toll on his relationships. Nevertheless, Elin quickly molded her approach to his, stifling her enthusiasm and hiding her emotions. It was the Woods way.
The one opponent who generated a different, more visceral reaction from Tiger was Phil Mickelson. He wouldn’t admit it publicly, but Tiger viewed Mickelson differently after he won the Masters in 2004. He had proven himself to be a serious contender. And while Tiger was in the midst of a swing change, Mickelson saw vulnerability. Weeks after the win at Torrey Pines, Tiger ended up in a head-to-head battle with Mickelson at Doral. Woods ended up sinking a thirty-foot birdie putt on the seventeenth hole to finally put Lefty away. The win restored Tiger to the number one ranking he had briefly lost to Vijay Singh in 2004. More important, Tiger sent a direct message to Mickelson—I’m still better than you.
Afterward, he came as close as he would get to expressing joy after a win.
“That one meant a little more, huh?” Haney asked him.
“Oh, yeah,” Tiger said. “Anytime I can beat that guy.”
Still, there was no celebration.