The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods (20 page)

I realized that, without intending to do so, Tiger had maneuvered himself onto the slipperiest of slopes. Missing the first one means the next one will be easier to miss. Focusing on constant improvement was Tiger’s mental shield against the game’s wounds. But the wounds are inevitable, and they take their toll.

Tiger and I never talked about this process after a loss or even after a victory. He was very good at leaving the past in the past and simply moving forward. But the 2007 season was when I first began to think that Tiger was closer to the end of his greatness than he was to the beginning. In hindsight, I think Tiger did, too.

Not that it was evident in his record. Tiger won seven tournaments, including a major championship, out of 16. As he’d been in 2006, he was first in greens hit in regulation, first in scoring average, first in all-around, first in par breakers. He was hitting fewer and fewer poor shots. His course management was superb. And while it wasn’t really reflected in the statistics, I thought his driver was slowly getting better.

In the midst of his winning streak at the start of the year, Tiger let his guard down just long enough to say the Grand Slam was “easily within reason.” He’d end the year with another streak of five in a row and seven of eight, the non-win being a second. And at the end, he was blowing fields away. Tiger was only 31, yet Nicklaus contemporaries like Gary Player and Lee Trevino were conceding that Jack had never been so dominant.

But there were subtle changes below the surface. Tiger’s work habits started to slip. There were more distractions. Even as I thought he continued to get better, I could feel the ceiling closing in. I was beginning to think that, except for the driver, there wasn’t much more room for improvement. He hadn’t putted as well as when he was younger, and I knew there was a good chance that wouldn’t change.

And there was the specter of injury. Back in 2004, Tiger had told me that he had only 20 percent of his ACL remaining in his left knee. Was the knee a ticking bomb?

Psychologically, Tiger was entering a difficult time. At the top of the bell curve of a career, expectation is greater than ever, but by definition decline overtakes improvement. Certainly Tiger wasn’t going to concede reaching the top of the curve, but even
he
had to know he was very close, and it was going to take all he had to keep pushing against the forces of time. And it didn’t help that the standard he’d established meant criticism—of his swing, of his putting, of his attitude—whenever he didn’t win. No other player in history had ever faced such high expectations. Sometimes, in his attitude or his work habits, the weight of it would all show, and he’d say, “Nothing is ever good enough.”

For me, the job got harder. There was more urgency and less fun. Tiger was more irritable and impatient. The process of improvement had been his emphasis when we first began our work, but he began to be much more concerned about results, or in his words, “getting the W.” He never mentioned Nicklaus’s record, but it started to weigh more heavily at every major. And Tiger’s actions indicated he believed he had less time to do it than everyone else thought.

In retrospect, 2007 was when Tiger began to lose the joy of playing and began to look at his career as something he wanted to get over with sooner rather than later. And the most obvious sign was his growing obsession with the military.

It had gone far beyond video games and into the real world. That its roots were in his connection to Earl, who’d achieved the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Special Forces and served in Vietnam, had been clear for a few years. Right after the 2004 Masters, only a month after we’d begun working together, Tiger went to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to do four days of Army special-operations training. With Earl in attendance, Tiger did two tandem parachute jumps, engaged in hand-to-hand combat exercises, went on four-mile runs wearing combat boots, and did drills in a wind tunnel. Tiger loved it, but Keith Kleven went a little crazy worrying about the further damage Tiger might be doing to his left knee.

Tiger’s military activities now began to take the form of two- or three-day sessions at naval and marine outposts involving exercises with Navy SEALs teams, and would increase dramatically. Less than two weeks after Earl’s funeral and three weeks before the 2006 U.S. Open at Winged Foot, he’d gone to installations near San Diego for a three-day session in parachuting. In my long e-mail to Tiger after that tournament, here is what I said:

With the US Open 18 days away, do you think it was a good idea to go on a Navy SEALs mission? You need to get that whole SEALs thing out of your system and stick to playing Navy SEAL on the video games. I can tell by the way you are talking and acting that you still want to become a Navy SEAL. Man, are you crazy? You have history to make in golf and people to influence and help. Focus on your destiny, and that isn’t flushing bad guys out of buildings in Iraq, just play the video games some more. That Navy SEAL stuff is serious business, they use real bullets.

I took a dismissive tone in that e-mail because I really thought the military stuff was a phase that Tiger would soon realize was ridiculous. I was trying to shake him back to his senses regarding this G.I. Joe fantasy. But a year later, I realized I’d underestimated. When we were at his house and he was watching the Military Channel or the BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEALs) DVD, an exercise or training mission would catch his eye and he’d make a comment like, “That would be cool,” or “I’d really like to do that.” He was telling me that this SEAL thing was more than fun and games to him. One morning I was in the kitchen when he came back from a long run around Isleworth, and I noticed he was wearing Army boots. Tiger admitted that he’d worn the heavy shoes before on the same route. “I beat my best time,” he said.

The military became central to his life, and in 2007 Tiger probably went on half a dozen SEALs trips. When the new season began, one of Tiger’s first public acts was to visit a “special warfare” SEALs unit on the Tuesday of Torrey Pines. According to news reports, he told the assembled group at a facility in Coronado, outside San Diego, “If I hadn’t been in golf, I would have been here with you guys. When I was younger, I always dreamed of being a Navy SEAL.” The first PGA Tour event where he was named host—the 2007 AT&T National—took place outside Washington, D.C., over the July 4 weekend and allowed active military personnel into the gates free.

I was beginning to realize that his sentiment ran deep, and that as incredible as it seemed, Tiger was seriously considering actually becoming a Navy SEAL. I didn’t know how he’d go about it, but when he talked about it, it was clear that he had a plan. After finding out that the Navy SEAL age limit is 28, I asked Tiger about his being too old to join. “It’s not a problem,” he said. “They’re making a special age exception for me.”

I thought,
Wow. Here is Tiger Woods, the greatest athlete on the planet, maybe the greatest athlete ever, right in the middle of his prime, basically ready to leave it all behind for a military life
. It was Pat Tillman times 100. The only thing that probably rivals it in sports history is Michael Jordan leaving basketball to play minor league baseball. Although Tiger ultimately didn’t enlist, the lengths to which he went to make a SEALs career a real possibility still stun me.

Tiger formed close connections with some ex-SEALs. One was someone whom Tiger would eventually hire as his family and personal bodyguard. The guy had accompanied Tiger on the Torrey Pines visit, and he seemed to be a kind of liaison who was smoothing Tiger’s path toward the military.

He was a muscular guy around 40 with a short haircut and an intense expression. While he was working for Tiger, with duties that included giving Tiger and Elin lessons in self-defense, he’d sometimes stay at the house in Isleworth. In fact, my first meeting with him took place when I got to Isleworth past midnight after a late flight from Dallas. I didn’t have a key to Tiger’s house, but Tiger would leave the door unlocked whenever I came in late. This time, I opened it quietly, only to find the guy peering at me through the darkness with one of those scary Navy SEALs looks. I assumed he wasn’t expecting me, so I just said, “Hi, I’m Hank.” The guy was staying in the bedroom I normally used, so after an awkward introduction he helped me choose another one.

I talked to the guy only a couple more times, and never in depth. He didn’t volunteer much, and I didn’t probe. Steve Williams had been around him more, and he told me he didn’t like his influence on Tiger. He thought the self-defense stuff and other working out with Tiger that the guy was doing could get Tiger hurt. He also thought the guy was weird. Steve said the guy told him that Earl was speaking to him on a regular basis and giving him instructions on how to help Tiger. Steve said he played dumb and asked him, “You mean Earl, Tiger’s father, who died last year?” Steve said the guy answered, “Yeah.”

Tiger’s SEALs exercises were scheduled on the calendars of his inner circle, but everyone knew not to talk about them to anyone. Unlike Tiger’s first trip to Fort Bragg, in 2004, or his PR-oriented visit to the SEALs around the time of Torrey Pines, the other SEALs visits were kept quiet by the Navy. It was understood that if the extent of Tiger’s military activities got out, it would start a media frenzy.

I was never totally clear on the exact nature of Tiger’s sojourns. All I’m sure about is that it was more than some kind of risk-free fantasy camp. Tiger didn’t tell me a lot, but from what he did tell me and what Corey Carroll, who joined him on several trips, confirmed, he was participating in a program that approximated the training for a Navy SEAL candidate. The purpose was a sort of “dry run” to determine whether he could physically and mentally handle the demands, and if so, whether he wanted to go forward with actually becoming a Navy SEAL.

To my knowledge, he did training in parachuting, self-defense, urban-warfare simulations, and shooting. I never heard of Tiger doing any training in the water with the SEALs, but he was already a pretty accomplished diver. He had his scuba certification and had also done a lot of free diving to depths of more than 100 feet. He claimed to be able to hold his breath a long time—up to four minutes. Supposedly, he used a technique called “lung packing,” in which lung capacity is increased through “swallowing” air after inhaling to capacity.

When I asked Tiger how his trips had gone, he might confirm having completed a training session in a specific discipline by making a comment like, “Yeah, I knocked that out,” as if he was passing progressive steps. When he shared some things about the experience, it was clear from phrases like “total rush” and “intense” that it was all a thrill.

Tiger said that a three-day trip that was focused on parachuting might include as many as ten jumps a day. He’d jump solo or in tandem. Corey told me that Tiger once hurt his shoulder in a tandem jump when he smashed into his partner in midair.

Tiger came back almost boastful from his firearms training, saying that he’d excelled in long-range marksmanship. He talked all about the different guns and how to allow for wind and the flight of the bullet, almost as if he were describing a golf shot.

Self-defense stuff was a favorite topic. He’d gotten more into it as fatherhood approached, telling me that he really wanted to be able to protect his family and his home if anything ever happened. After his training, he explained about the different martial arts that are incorporated into the SEALs style of hand-to-hand combat. Once, in his living room in Isleworth, he had me stand up so he could demonstrate some moves. He got me in one position with his arm around my neck where I couldn’t really move. “From here,” he said, “I could kill you in about two seconds.” I kind of laughed and said, “Please don’t.” But hearing those words from Tiger was creepy.

Maybe the most dangerous-sounding exercise that Tiger engaged in with the SEALs involved what was called a Kill House, an urban-warfare simulator full of rooms, doors, and even pop-up targets used to train for rescues, captures, and other team operations.

Tiger told me he actually got shot with a rubber bullet in a Kill House exercise. He said he failed to look around a corner before moving into an open area and was shot in the thigh. “I screwed up,” he said. “In a real mission I probably would have gotten some of my squad killed.” Then he proudly showed me a bruise the size of a baseball. I said, “That had to really hurt.” He answered with a smile: “It still hurts.”

Though I stayed pretty calm on the outside, my inner reaction was shock. I’d ask myself if these conversations were really happening. And there were times when I couldn’t contain my exasperation. “Tiger,” I’d say. “Man, what are you doing? Are you out of your mind? What about Nicklaus’s record? Don’t you care about that?” He looked at me and said, “No. I’m satisfied with what I’ve done in my career.” End of discussion. He knew how we all felt, but he wasn’t going to debate it.

There is a strong likelihood that a Kill House is where Tiger did serious damage to his career. In early 2011, about a year after I stopped coaching Tiger, I was in Minneapolis doing an outing when a woman approached me and said her husband was a Navy SEAL stationed in California when Tiger would come in. She said that one day in 2007 her husband called and told her, “Tiger was in here today, doing an exercise at the Kill House. He got in the wrong place and got kicked pretty hard in the leg, and I think he hurt his knee pretty bad.”

I had filed that astounding story away under the category “Unsolved Tiger Woods Mysteries.” But recently I was communicating with Corey when he told me that Tiger once confessed to him that the complete tear of his ACL had actually occurred in a Kill House exercise in which he had lost his balance and been kicked in the knee.

My immediate thought upon hearing Corey’s account, which so closely paralleled that of the woman in Minneapolis, was that it was true. And if so, it meant that if Tiger never catches Jack Nicklaus, it will very likely have as much to do with the time and physical capacity he lost as a result of his bizarre Navy SEALs adventure as anything else.