The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods (11 page)

I remember once reading something John Cook, who played a lot of practice rounds with Tiger at Isleworth, said about him that I thought rang true: “Tiger knows his place.” What I think John was saying is that Tiger knew he was special, but with so much certainty that he never had to talk about it. He knew everyone else knew it as well, and he was content to let them make all the noise. He felt no need to prove it or revel in it or lord it over people. He never pulled rank with a “Do you know who I am?” routine in public places. When he walked into a restaurant, the red carpet was rolled out, a special room was provided, and the owner came by to pay homage. But all he cared about was that the meal came right away, and he’d try to slip in and out unnoticed. He might have needed indulging from those around him, but he didn’t need attention from them. I guess he’d had too much from too young an age.

It always struck me that Tiger was at his most outgoing with kids at clinics. The few times I saw him in one of those situations, he took a lot of time helping individual kids with their games and talked with them freely. During the Q&A sessions, he answered 10-year-olds much more completely than he did the media. Being around youth seemed to relax him, which made me wonder if it was because he missed his.

At Isleworth, he played a lot with Mark and John, veterans who’d helped him when he first turned pro and whom he trusted, but he was loosest with a group of much younger guys, several of them teenagers. They were all good players, but Tiger liked to work with them on their games, encourage them with needling and prods during their rounds, or just listen to their jargon and expressions. Sometimes he’d play the best ball of a couple of them and me; sometimes everyone would just play his own ball. Or Tiger would bet them that they couldn’t make a certain shot, and the payment would be push-ups, which might leave Tiger’s victim sore for days afterward. The push-up bet had started after Tiger admitted he couldn’t feel nervous playing for money. But the pain from hundreds of push-ups raised the stakes. Tiger’s most intense push-up matches came against Corey Carroll, the son of a member at Isleworth, who is 11 years younger than Tiger. Their matches would be stroke play, with Corey getting a few shots. The standard bet was 150 push-ups per stroke, with payment to be completed by midnight. Tiger loved to “collect,” usually laughing as he stood over the loser. But he sometimes lost, once having to pay Corey with 600 push-ups.

Overall, Tiger wasn’t much of a bettor on the golf course. He had a habit, if he lost, of asking to play more holes, double or nothing. Mark would occasionally make jokes about it, even telling the media that Tiger was “kind of slow to go to the hip.” In his rare high-stakes games against non-pros, Tiger set bets that would be very hard for him to lose. Former baseball pitching great John Smoltz came to Isleworth once to play with Tiger and Mark. Smoltz is a good golfer, maybe scratch or plus-1, and Tiger said he’d give him three strokes a side at stroke play. Even though Isleworth is one of the hardest courses in Florida, especially at the maximum length of 7,700 yards that Tiger played it from, Tiger’s par was about 66. That meant Smoltz had to shoot around par to be competitive, a very tall order because according to the course rating, par for a scratch player from those tees is about 77. My recollection is that they were playing for $10,000. On the first hole, Smoltz pumped one out-of-bounds, and I heard Mark needle him with, “No big deal, Smoltzie. Normally a round with Tiger is worth at least six figures. You’re getting off cheap.”

There has long been a lot of talk about Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley being close to Tiger, but I didn’t see those two guys that much. Each visited Tiger once at Isleworth that I know of, and Tiger met them in Las Vegas a few times. Tiger clearly admired Michael for what he’d accomplished as an athlete, and I think Michael gave him advice on how to handle fame. Charles cracked him up, but he also gave him some brotherly advice. But I got to know Charles well, and I know he was baffled by Tiger being closed off and keeping him at a distance. Someone else who’s been identified as a confidant, Notah Begay, I saw just a couple of times when he stayed at Tiger’s house when he was coming through Orlando. I know they’d been teammates at Stanford and that Tiger plays in Notah’s charity event, but Tiger never talked about Notah.

I don’t mean to imply that Tiger
didn’t
consider these guys friends. Rather, I’m saying that Tiger didn’t let anybody very close.

In my experience, the person Tiger shared the most with was Corey. They met on the practice range at Isleworth in 2004 after Tiger noticed how hard Corey worked on his game. Corey is an academically brilliant kid who did stuff like build computers and study quantum physics. He told me he missed one question on his SAT. Corey wanted to become a tour player and, even as a teenager, knew a lot about the golf swing. Tiger liked debating technique with him, especially because Corey was deep into the very complex cult instruction book called
The Golfing Machine
when they first met. Corey shared Tiger’s work ethic, and they practiced and played together a lot. Corey also became Tiger’s workout partner in the weight room.

Corey was a little nerdy, but I realized that for all the super-jocks whom Tiger is said to be friends with, nerds—smart, diligent straight arrows—are the guys he most relates to. That’s the way I’d characterize two of his long-standing friends, Bryon Bell and Rob McNamara, who also work for him. It seemed to me that on those rare occasions when Tiger sought advice, it was those guys, along with Mark Steinberg—who had that same buttoned-down character—whom Tiger confided in most.

In private, Tiger’s humor was young. Sometimes he was clever or droll, but often what tickled him was something as mindless as belching. The larger the group, the more he stayed on the sideline, offering asides but never taking the stage to tell a joke or share a story on himself.

One example of Tiger’s humor that he told me about occurred a month before the 2006 Ryder Cup. U.S. captain Tom Lehman thought it would be a good bonding experience for the team to go to the K Club in Ireland to spend two days together. Rather than give each player his own room, Lehman paired up roommates, putting Tiger with Zach Johnson. Knowing that Zach is a devout Christian, Tiger, when he got to the suite first, immediately purchased the adult-movie 24-hour package and turned the television on. When Zach walked in, he saw the sights and sounds, but presuming that it was what Tiger wanted to watch, didn’t change the channel or turn it off. Tiger never commented on the movies, nor did Zach. “It was so funny watching him acting like everything was normal,” Tiger told me. “I got him pretty good.”

He’d put on a different face in public, offering nothing more risqué than a reference to “my farmer’s tan.” His favorite one-liners for the media were of the Clint Eastwood/Terminator variety. Before their first-round match at the 2006 WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship, Stephen Ames irritated Tiger by telling the reporters who asked him about his chances, “Anything can happen, especially where he’s hitting it.” Tiger put on a birdie blitz that got him 9 up and ended their match after 10 holes, the fewest holes required to win an 18-hole match. Asked to comment on the round, Tiger with a deadpan expression simply repeated the lopsided score: “Nine and eight.” He liked ending interviews with similar getaway lines.

Although he didn’t let any of them get close, Tiger’s relationships with other players were mostly good. He enjoyed the team competitions for their camaraderie, especially the Presidents Cup, where there was less pressure than the Ryder Cup and the structure was looser. He definitely felt a kinship with those who knew firsthand what it was like to succeed and fail in the arena. He also liked the exalted status he held with the other players. Tiger never seemed to feel the need to say much, in part because what he’d done spoke for itself. With the players, he could just be.

Those he genuinely liked tended to be quiet, modest, hardworking guys like Jim Furyk and Steve Stricker, whose ability he respected but whose talent didn’t elevate them to the position of serious rival. He kept the supertalented at a distance. He didn’t want players who could be a threat to feel comfortable around him.

He was averse to loud and cocky players, especially if he felt their records didn’t warrant all the talk. He wasn’t a fan of Ian Poulter, for example. A couple of weeks before the 2007 U.S. Open at Oakmont, a few players drove to the Pittsburgh area course after the Memorial Tournament in relatively nearby Columbus to get in some practice rounds. Poulter was one of them, and while there he was cheeky enough to ask Tiger, “How are we getting home?” He knew Tiger had a plane at his disposal, and that he sometimes gave other players who lived in Orlando a ride. But Tiger did that for guys he liked, and he didn’t particularly like Poulter. Tiger gave kind of a noncommittal answer and hoped Poulter would take the hint and find an alternative. But at the day’s end, there was Poulter at the jetport, acting as if Tiger had said yes. Tiger stretched out on his regular spot, in the two seats in the front right of the plane, and immediately put on his headphones. That left me to talk to Ian, which I didn’t mind because I got along with him. As we were conversing, Tiger texted me, “Can you believe how this dick mooched a ride on my plane?” As far as I know, Ian didn’t get any more rides.

Most other players never asked. They understood Tiger had to have a killer mind-set to be as good as he was, and going out of his way for other people wasn’t part of the equation. So even when he was distant, there was more respect for Tiger than dislike. In his own way, he was being up-front. They didn’t know him, but they realized he really couldn’t let them.

Self-centeredness went with the territory. Whenever I joined Elin and Tiger for a meal in their home, the moment Tiger finished, he simply got up and left without a word. If you were with him in a restaurant, when he was done—and he habitually ate fast—you were done. Whenever we got takeout food from outside the club, I’d go pick it up, and I always paid.

I always remember a quirky aspect of Tiger’s behavior that in retrospect says a lot about how it was with him. When we were watching television after dinner, he’d sometimes go to the refrigerator to get a sugar-free popsicle. But he never offered me one or ever came back with one, and one night I really wanted one of those popsicles. But I found myself sitting kind of frozen, not knowing what to do next. I didn’t feel right just going to the refrigerator and taking one, and I kind of started laughing to myself at how hesitant I was to ask Tiger for one. It actually took me a while to summon the courage to blurt out, “Hey, bud, do you think I could have one of those popsicles?” He looked at me as if puzzled that I was asking, and said, “Yeah, sure, go ahead and get one.” I did, but even after that, Tiger never offered me a popsicle.

It can sound petty, recalling a slight so ludicrously tiny, but my point is, it was that quality of paying attention only to his own needs that was so central to his ability to win. It allowed Tiger to walk past little-kid autograph seekers who were begging him to stop. I always winced a little when this happened, because I knew in many cases it would be those kids’ enduring memory of Tiger. Rather than make a fan for life, he probably spawned a critic. He knew he’d take an image hit for it, especially because Phil Mickelson signed so many, but to Tiger autographs were a time-robber in the best case, and he knew that no matter how many he signed, he was going to leave some people who didn’t get one screaming in disappointment. A long time before I began coaching him, he’d made a choice, and he never indicated that he was tortured by it. He was after something bigger than being adored.

He was also a terrible tipper. Tiger once won several hundred thousand dollars playing blackjack in Vegas when I was with him, but gave the dealer and the cocktail waitress only a couple of hundred dollars, when a couple of thousand each would have been more appropriate. Not only did it not seem to occur to him how he could change a life with a significant tip, he didn’t consider that casino employees were important reputation makers. These were people who got asked, “Hey, I heard Tiger was in here. How well did he take care of you?” Those answers got around, in particular to other high-rollers and influence makers. Locker-room attendants, maître d’s, waiters, valets—these are people whose judgments carry weight. I always wanted to tell Tiger that if he was spending money on a public-relations campaign, the most efficiently spent money would be in tips. Mark O’Meara would get on him about this all the time. Tiger would laugh. He seemed to think it was funny to be cheap.

Sometimes Tiger seemed to suffer pangs of conscience, as if he knew he should try harder with people. He’d try to atone with little flurries of interest or appreciation. In my case, he’d remind me that I’d been the only swing instructor in that old
Golf Digest
article who had prognosticated that he’d be dominating the PGA Tour within a year of turning professional. Or he’d call me Henry. No one else, including my parents and sister, has ever called me that. It always made me feel good. Those gestures might not have seemed like a lot coming from other people, but because of who he is and how he lives his life, it was a lot from him. Almost in spite of myself, I’d feel kind of touched.

Definitely, the closest I felt to Tiger was when we played golf during his practice sessions, especially in our rounds alone. It would just be he and I in his souped-up cart. I’d grown up listening to golf guys talk about their rounds with Hogan or Palmer, but here I was playing with Tiger. Maybe it happened 150 times, which probably makes me the non-tournament player who’s played more rounds with the world’s greatest player—while he enjoyed that status—than anyone else who has ever lived.

I felt like a witness to history. But more than that, I temporarily felt that warmth you have with a golf buddy, because golf is one of the best games for nurturing a friendship. We didn’t talk a lot beyond my commentary on his technique. If he hit a really good one, I’d say, “That was incredible.” If I happened to do something that was better than average, he’d never say, “Good shot.” He would go with, “Where the fuck did that come from?” or, “How did you do that?” That was Tiger’s version of affection.