Revisiting HBO's 'Tiger,' Two Car Crashes Later

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It’s Masters week this week, which feels like reason enough to talk about Tiger Woods. Or maybe that’s just a faux timely-news-peg way of saying that I’ve been thinking about Tiger Woods lately.

Woods, as you’ve no doubt heard by now, crashed his car again recently. He flipped his Land Rover during an accident in Florida — luckily walking away with minor injuries. The first details about the incident to leak out were that he was found with two hydrocodone pills in his pocket, that he was “sweating profusely” and “lethargic and slow, according to officers.”

Since then, there’s been other, juicier news. Like that Woods told the officers “I was just talking to the president” at the beginning of the stop (Woods is dating Don Jr.’s ex-wife, Vanessa), along with video of Woods yawning and hiccuping in the backseat of the cop car, partly with a blanket around his head. The image of glassy Tiger, swaddled like a baby in the back of a cruiser, predictably spawned countless memes.

As far as those go, I think “that’s a narco” flew under the radar.

“Are you going to arrest me,” Woods states while the deputy is handcuffing Woods.

After he was handcuffed, deputies removed personal items from Woods’ pockets.

A deputy then found “narco” pills in Woods’ pocket.

“Oh, that’s a narco,” Woods said. Deputies placed the pills in an evidence bag. [WPBF]

“That’s a narco.” I’ve never heard Vicodin called that but it has a nice ring to it.

As far as the details of the crash:

…the crash happened on March 27 along South Beach Road in Hobe Sound. Deputies say Woods was driving a black Land Rover SUV when he attempted to pass a Ford F‑150, driven by Jeromy Bullard, with a trailer, by crossing double solid lines as the truck slowed to turn into a driveway. The SUV struck the trailer and flipped onto its side.

According to the affidavit, Woods told deputies he was looking down at his cellphone and adjusting the radio and did not notice the vehicle slowing ahead.[WPBF]

So yeah, he was doing something dumb, while a bit high, and he crashed (again). Luckily no one died.

The minutiae of the incident arguably detract from some of the more salient issues, like that this was Woods’ fourth notable vehicular incident since 2009. 2009 was the year he ran over a fire hydrant [“zonked on sleeping pills”] the day after Thanksgiving. That one had plenty of lurid details to chew on too (that he was running away from his wife after getting caught cheating, and her smashing his back window with a golf club when she caught up), all the better to distract from the more obvious one, that he was driving while impaired.

In 2017 Woods was found asleep in his car on the road with the engine running, leading to a DUI, a mugshot, a video of Woods looking barely coherent and subsequent memes of both, in exactly the same pattern that happened this past week. The toxicology report for that one came back with a cocktail of Vicodin, Dilaudid, Xanax, Ambien, and THC.

The dude still managed to win The Masters after that, in 2019. A decent late-career for Woods was still looking decently likely up until 2021, when he flipped a different car in California and had to be airlifted to a hospital and reportedly almost lost his leg.

Woods still managed to return to golf sporadically after that, occasionally looking promising despite not being able to push off his right side, with his injured leg. Despite glimpes of greatness, it seemed clear that his body can’t quite hold up for 18 holes on four consecutive days, as professional golf requires (which is hard enough on the body for guys over 40 as it as, not even accounting for flipping an SUV every few years).

To state what is hopefully obvious by now, one would think that Tiger Woods, a certified billionaire, would’ve hired a professional, full-time driver after one, or two, or even three of these high-profile car crashes that are constantly derailing his professional career and life. Or, in an ideal world, been forced to hire one. Turns out, nope, the billionaire with more access to the president than JD Vance and a right leg mangled from a car crash was still driving himself around as of a few weeks ago.

It’s a decision baffling enough that it requires a little explanation. For what it’s worth, here is what we have:

So why, exactly, does a billionaire not have someone driving him around? Great question. According to a source who spoke with People, it basically comes down to privacy. Woods does not want employees watching over him or keeping tabs on his whereabouts. He wants to move around freely, without anyone clocking his schedule. That is, genuinely, a reasonable thing for a famously private person to want.

The source also noted that Woods “thinks he is fine to drive.” [Source]

Second hand, and anonymously sourced, from People magazine of all places, but hey, that’s what we’ve got. Woods was so concerned that he supposedly couldn’t trust a hypothetical employee, presumably paid very well for that express purpose, that he had to drive, even with an extensive history of doing so very badly. The man was a menace.

Certainly we can grant Woods some privacy demons and control issues, having been some level of famous basically since he could walk (which is to say, before he could ever make an informed choice in the matter). He’s maybe more child star than athlete in that way. People have been talking about him being the next big thing since he was 15. He probably hasn’t had much real privacy ever since.

“Privacy,” incidentally, is the reason cited for why Woods will now be pursuing treatment “out of the country.”

A judge granted Woods approval Wednesday to seek “comprehensive inpatient treatment” out of the country for the sake of his privacy after his DUI arrest last Friday, The Post confirmed.

Woods’ attorney Douglas Duncan argued that “based upon the Defendant’s treating physician, the out of country treatment facility recommendation is based upon the Defendant’s complex clinical presentation and the urgent need for a level of care that cannot safely or effectively be done within the United States, as his privacy has been repeatedly compromised.” [NY Post]

Which country? According to the LA Times, probably Switzerland (based on where his private jet landed). Fair enough, I suppose.

I guess the reason I felt compelled to write about this is that I’ve always found the media’s treatment of Tiger Woods very strange. And strange in the WASPy, elitist way of golf more broadly; in the obsessive, image-managed cultiness that finds its ultimate expression every year at The Masters — a tournament, club, and event that everyone knows is very weird but never really says so to keep from getting disinvited. That has been the general flavor of Tiger Woods coverage: don’t say the wrong thing about the guy whose presence equals a lot of extra money for everyone in the sport.

In 2020, HBO released a two-part docuseries (episodes 90 and 102 minutes, respectively) about Woods’ life and times. Tiger was clearly intended to be the Woods-focused counterpart to The Last Dance, about Michael Jordan, Netflix’s 10-part (50 minutes each) docuseries recounting MJ’s life and times, told mostly from the perspective of MJ himself.

Unlike The Last Dance, which was widely acknowledged at the time as a psuedo-PR exercise by the subject, Tiger Woods famously didn’t participate in the making of Tiger, which was denounced by his agent and others.

“Just like the book it is based off of, the upcoming HBO documentary is just another unauthorized and salacious outsider attempt to paint an incomplete portrait of one of the greatest athletes of all-time,” Steinberg said.

The book Steinberg is referring to is Tiger, the 2018 biography written by Armen Keteyian and Jeff Benedict. [GolfDigest]

The unauthorized angle is interesting, because beyond the supposedly salacious sex stuff (which we all already knew) …well, you could’ve fooled me. Tiger felt more like a hype reel than an exposé. Like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods is so famous and important to his sport that the entire golf world seems to self-censor whenever he comes up.