HBO’s Tiger Woods documentary charts the highs and lows of a man obsessed with perfection
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Tiger Woods is perhaps the most famous golfer of all time, which means many people are well aware of his many incredible highs as well as his stunning lows. But the HBO documentary Tiger still finds a way to present a compelling narrative in its two parts, as directors Matthew Heineman and Matthew Hamachek pull viewers into the life of a man who worked so hard to appear inhumanly perfect, both on and off the golf course.
The documentary boasts never-before-seen footage and interviews with an all-star roster, including Woods’ former caddy Steve Williams, golf legend Sir Nick Faldo, family friend and biographer Pete McDaniel, sportscaster Bryant Gumbel, Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce, and New York Times writer Karen Crouse. They all provide engaging and informative perspectives on the golf legend, while Woods’ high school girlfriend Dina Parr offers a moving, often heartbreaking, look at the Tiger she knew and loved but ultimately lost to his burgeoning career.
The late Earl Woods is a major figure in his son’s life, but he’s seldom recalled fondly. Tiger Woods’ grade-school teacher describes Earl as a “pain in the ass” who none of her colleagues ever wanted to see. The appraisals don’t get much more positive from there: Later, the Army vet is compared to “Dr. Frankenstein,” and his son, his monstrous “creation.” The younger Woods is described as someone who was constructed from “the outside in,” with no apparent inner life, and the responsibility for his psychological damage is placed unanimously on his parents’ shoulders.
Earl Woods’ dreams stretched beyond being a proud dad who believed his son could accomplish anything. He declared that Tiger wouldn’t just excel in the field chosen for him, but “transcend” it. He said (out loud) that Tiger would “help so many people,” like Gandhi or, most absurdly, Jesus Christ. Earl and Tiger’s mother, Kultida, would let nothing get in the way of fulfilling these dreams, not even Tiger himself. “The development of the machine always took precedent,” Crouse explains. At times, it seemed as if a young Tiger, a golf prodigy since he was 8 months old, was trapped in a cult devoted to a mythic Tiger Woods, someone who never truly existed.
Tiger makes it clear that Woods didn’t share his father’s audacious hopes, which centered around him being an inspirational figure, albeit one who would refrain from engaging in politics or activism. But Gandhi and Jesus were overtly political figures with a deep connection to the communities they represented; Tiger Woods just wanted to play golf better than anyone else. Ironically, this single-minded obsession kept him from achieving the greatness Earl Woods envisioned. Muhammad Ali and Colin Kaepernick were both willing to make political statements that put their careers at risk—this is how they “transcended” their sports, and it’s a risk that Woods has never been willing to make. He was driven to establish himself as an icon and a brand. This meant avoiding controversy. Even his charity work, which is considerable, bolstered his inoffensive image.
Woods shattered golf’s color barrier as the first Black man to win the Masters, the prestigious tournament held on a former plantation. The documentary follows the sports icon as he pushes past overt racism and incredible pressure to triumph in 1997 with an incredible 12-shot margin of victory, the largest in the tournament’s history. McDaniel notes how Black America “claimed” Tiger with great pride, but the athlete made a point of distancing himself, seeking a sort of untouchable universality. During an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 1997, he declared that he wasn’t just African American, but “Cablinasian,” a portmanteau of “Caucasian,” “Black,” Native American (or “Indian”), and “Asian.” (Black people were disappointed, but not surprised, that “Caucasian” came first.) In a prescient routine at the time, comedian Wanda Sykes joked that while Woods was now “down to 25 percent” Black, that would quickly change if he ever got in trouble—the headlines would read, “Black Golfer Arrested.”
During its first half, the documentary follows Woods’ thrilling rise to the top. The second installment focuses on his shocking fall from grace—his secret (but not for long) life spending time with “high-end escorts” and having numerous extramarital affairs—without sinking into tabloid sensationalism. Tiger reveals demons that compelled Woods to jeopardize the life he’d always claimed mattered most to him. Rachel Uchitel, who found herself at the epicenter of the sex scandal that would rip away the curtain from Woods’ carefully constructed facade, speaks candidly about her relationship with Woods for the first time. She’s presented as Woods’ unavoidable reckoning, and when she first appears on screen, the John Cooper Clarke song “Evidently Chickentown” plays forebodingly. The documentary doesn’t address how Woods entered Uchitel’s life during an equally vulnerable period for her (Uchitel’s fiancé died on 9/11), but it does show how the media blamed her because Woods chose to publicly humiliate his wife, Elin Nordegren, and reduce himself to a late-night punchline. The world quickly turned on him, savoring the schadenfreude from his disgrace.
Later, Gumbel and McDaniel spare no words condemning Augusta’s racist “public whipping” of Tiger when he returns to the Masters. Augusta National chairman Billy Payne declared before the 2010 tournament that Tiger had “disappointed all of us,” as if they owned him. Woods’ sordid behavior was repulsive but personal; unlike someone like Lance Armstrong, the golfer didn’t betray his sport. His wife and children deserved an apology, but not Billy Payne or even his fans. Woods had given the latter everything on the greens, and we are shown the price his body paid over the years. The golfer overcame debilitating pain to win the 2008 U.S. Open on a broken leg, but his aging body was the one opponent he couldn’t ultimately defeat. During a lengthy slump, he was asked by Charlie Rose why he wasn’t playing like he once did. This was a silly question, and one Woods had already answered years earlier: “Father Time always wins.”
The grainy black-and-white footage from Woods’ 2017 DUI arrest haunts Tiger, and if you are only casually familiar with his career, it’s understandable if you assume while watching that this marks its tragic end. What unfolds throughout the documentary makes Woods’ 2018 comeback, when he won the PGA Tour after a five-year drought, seem improbable, almost fantastic, but Tiger Woods still had a few miracles left in him. Tiger effectively reminds us why we found the legend of Tiger Woods so compelling, while never losing sight of his complex humanity.
43 Comments
To nitpick with the first sentence – is there any doubt that Tiger Woods is the most famous golfer of all time? I can’t think of another realistic contender. Arnold Palmer is famous as a beverage, I guess, but I’d guess a lot of people don’t know who he was.
It’s not really fair to judge “fame” between generations. He’s surely the most famous golfer of his generation, but how does one really compare fame between a current player like Woods, a mostly retired player like Nicklaus, and dead players like Palmer and Bobby Jones?I wouldn’t expect non-golf fans under the age of 50 to even know who Bobby Jones was, but he was the most famous golfer in his generation.
Yeah, I feel like the conversation begins and ends with Tiger, Jack, and Arnold when it comes to “most famous” of all-time. At the end of the day, I think Tiger will wind up going down as the most famous ever, simply because he came along at exactly the right time and had his “brand” a la Michael Jordan, which will keep him in the public consciousness for years, if not decades.
Not even close. Woods transcended golf. The others were famous in a much more insular time.
But that’s part of the generational aspect. Who knows what fame Nicklaus or Palmer might have had if their prime years coincided with Woods? Media coverage of just about everything is different now than it was 30 years ago.Also, how many more people know of Woods because of media coverage of his infidelities, DUI, and messy divorce? There isn’t much difference between famous and infamous anymore.
Google it. At Tiger’s peak, he was the most recognizable figure in the world. This is global.
That’s as much because ad campaigns by companies like Nike went global in the past 30 years as anything Tiger did on a golf course.
Absolutely. Thus, global recognition.
Absolutely thus it’s the time not the individual
I would agree he “transcended” it, but as the article states, hardly in a way that makes him more admirable. Kap is known more for his activism on the field than any play he made. I grew up knowing Tiger as a golf player and also a brand, a celebrity. So.. he transcended it in that he became a recognizable sports celebrity as opposed to “just” an incredible golfer.
I think he is clearly the most famous today, and while that partly relates to his recency, it doesn’t necessarily (e.g. Tolstoy is more famous than any Russian novelist writing today, I would suggest). And I think most of the past champions haven’t been remembered as well by the broader public compared to figures from other sports – for example, John McEnroe is of a similar era to Tom Watson and had comparable success in his sport, but is much better-known today.
From my point of view, I don’t think there’s any question that athletes in the modern age are generally more popular than athletes from past generations. The increased exposure on TV, internet, etc has opened up sports to much wider audiences and made it easy to track and understand accomplishments. So IMO there’s also no question that Woods is the most famous golfer of all time. That’s not taking anything away from Nicklaus or Palmer.
Stood out to me too. I wasn’t alive when Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer were in their prime. But it’s hard for me to imagine they had the cross-cultural cache that Tiger had. I’m sure for the privileged white wealthy men who consumed golf and who also ran everything, including the media generally and sports media in particular, they were a massive deal, which probably gave them outsized importance in the culture at large, but knowledge of Tiger Woods is basically ubiquitous.
I knew who Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer was when I was a young kid in the 80s and no one in our family watched golf, so I assumed they were ubiquitous then. Compare to now when I don’t know any golfers’ names, except that I think one of them might be a Bubba? (unless he’s retired?)
Tiger Woods is certainly super famous, but I agree it’s kind of hard to judge between different eras at a glance when sports celebrity has also changed (partly due to Tiger).
You white? Anyway, you surely know who tiger woods is even though you don’t know any other golfers now. ETA: Sure, you knew who they were. Did they make you care about golf? Tiger made a lot of people care about golf who didn’t otherwise care about golf.
I think Tiger Woods is the most recent golfer I know for sure, so I am a poor judge of important golfers. (What’s the line about it ruining a good walk?)What I was trying to get to was that comparing fame between players (of any sport) between different eras seems like it might be rather subjective and public memory is short.
At one point he was the most recognizable figure on the planet. So, the most famous golfer is kind of a given.
Yeah… that’s nonsense. Maybe, and that’s a very big maybe, in the US, but there’s dozens and dozens of soccer (ahem, football) players that would be more recognizable in the entire world during Woods’ prime than he was. Americans tends to overestimate how recognizable their sport idols are (Jordan being a big exception) outside their country and really, really underestimate how big soccer is worldwide.
Not to mention, you know, I’m pretty sure the Pope was always more famous than Tiger Woods. Obama and Dubya too.
I’m going to nitpick the use of “Woods shattered golf’s color barrier as the first Black man to win the Masters.” He shattered no “barrier.” He was invited (heck, he’d been there before, as an amateur), as Lee Elder was invited 46 years ago (because he earned it, same as Tiger). And he won the tournament handily, which was awesome in itself, leading to “Tiger-proofing” the course, which, ironically, made it easier for him to win than his opponents.I will be watching this. No, he never “transcended his sport.” All he knows is golf, from what I’ve seen. But, if he wasn’t playing one week: ticket sales were down, eyeballs watching TV were down, revenues were down, etc. What he did was steer interest to golf. And a lot of people appreciated it and made money, even as they were getting beaten by him. Second-place check was as big as a first-place check before he came on Tour.
Remember that Palmer was popular enough in his prime to boast a fan-base known as “Arnie’s Army”. If Woods broke the color barrier in golf, Palmer earlier broke the class barrier. Its not well remembered today, after he’s seemingly been the symbol of old white golfers for decades, but early in his career, he had a reputation as a scrappy blue-collar warrior, fighting the elite snobs of the country club world. Or at least, that was how the press spun his narrative.I, too, came from a family with absolutely no interest in golf, but Palmer was well known enough that his name, face and voice were instantly recognizable to us.So yes, it is really hard to compare the popularity of athletes or celebrities in general across genetations
Arnold Palmer was one of the most famous people on the planet in his prime. I imagine Woods is more famous because fame can be overwhelming in the modern age. But if you think Palmer was just another great golfer and now he has a drink named after him, you would be extremely wrong. He was a household name.
Until I can play “Tiger Woods’s Putting Challenge”, Lee Carvallo wins.
Ironically, this single-minded obsession kept him from achieving the greatness Earl Woods envisioned. Muhammad Ali and Colin Kaepernick were both willing to make political statements that put their careers at risk—this is how they “transcended” their sports, and it’s a risk that Woods has never been willing to make.
You’d have to work pretty hard to convince me that Woods didn’t “transcend” his sport. Maybe not more than Ali, but I would certainly say more than Kaepernick. And not to mythologize or lionize Woods, who certainly doesn’t need it, but his mere presence on the golf course, one of the most exclusionary pastimes by both race and wealth, not to mention his absolute domination of it, is itself a “statement” and explains why he did, in fact, transcend his sport in a way I don’t think Jack Nicklaus or Arnold Palmer or any other golfer (except maybe my personal favorite, John Daly) ever did. Which is not to say it wouldn’t have been great if Woods were more engaged socially, but it’s actually kind of difficult for me to imagine him being a more transcendent figure than he was and is.
You can certainly say he transcended his sport. Would any of us right now be talking about any golfer or the sport at allif it wasn’t for Tiger Woods? Tiger Woods carried an entire sport and industry on his back for 20 years. Golf was nowhere near as big as it is now before him. He helped golf reach places it had always been less than an afterthought, a rich white man’s sport.
If it wasn’t clear, I think Woods absolutely transcended his sport.
Kaepernick didn’t transcend shit, he’s an absolute clown. Shouldn’t be in the same breath as Ali and Woods.
Yea…anyone saying Woods hasn’t transcended his sport is being ridiculous and doesn’t understand what that term means. Transcending the sport means an athlete is a household name, someone so iconic that the average person knows them whether they watch that sport or not. That can happen due to making political stances as Kaep did but it more often happens when an athlete is an all-time great. Tiger Woods definitely makes that list.Next they’ll be saying Gretzky or Jordan didn’t transcend their sports…
“…a golf prodigy since he was 8 months old…”I know that Tiger was an amazing athlete, but I assume this should read “8 years old”. I’m not a golf player, but I seem to understand that the ability to at least stand is a prerequiste skill in this game.
Sadly, no. This is him on TV at 2 years old.
I remember seeing that.
Do kids not learn how to stand until they’re 8 years old now?Jokes aside, my friend has two young sons and lives on a golf course. His sons can both swing a club and make contact (1.5 and 3.5) although they have some hilarious fails now and then. I don’t know if that makes them prodigies but it is definitely possible for really young kids to hit golf balls.
I’m not sure how I never put this together before, but Tiger is basically a “successful” version of Marv Marinovich’s experiment with his son Todd. (There was a fantastic 30 for 30 about that story, for those who are unfamiliar.)I put successful in quotes because while Tiger has undoubtedly been transcendent in his sport, it’s obvious there’s been significant psychological damage.
I remember Payne’s “disappointed” quote and how much it implied ownership or at least a parent/child dynamic, and I was pretty amazed by his non-response. If that were me, I’d tell him to kiss the fattest part of my ass and fuck off, but since it’s Tiger, he’s gotta take it to preserve his brand, and as a black golfer, the very last thing you want to be tagged as is “uppity.”
Yeah, I can see why black people would be furious with that, but I think the Augusta National / Masters people think they own everyone. They are the ones who banned Gary McCord and Jack Whitaker from commentary on CBS. White guys.
The best take anyone had on the whole Tiger Woods affair was Woods himself: “Marital problems should not equal press conferences.” As the article states, he may have owed an apology to his family, but not to the general public. I feel he stood his ground there, nicely.
Did anyone see the Tiger Woods: America’s Son documentary that came out about a month ago on ESPN? If so, how was it? I would see it on my channel guide, but was never able to catch it.
Any discussion about his weird obsession with Navy SEALs, which also contributed to his physical breakdown?
Any footage of him playing golf with Trump?
Can we all just take a moment to appreciate Wanda Sykes? That joke you cited in the review is absolutely perfect.
This is a minor topic of Tiger Woods’ celebrity, but as an Asian American I’ve always had affection for him since he always mentioned that part of his background, and that he was Buddhist. It’s always been a little rough how a strain of the sentiment that tested his blackness would sideline that, but in a more general way I remember what little bother there was when during the height of his scandal years Chris Wallace (the reasonable Fox guy) told him “Hey, Buddha’s not working out, check out Christ,” like telling someone to go find a new religion after they mention theirs is a friendly gesture.
What unfolds throughout the documentary makes Woods’ 2018 comeback, when he won the PGA Tour after a five-year drought, seem improbable, almost fantastic, but Tiger Woods still had a few miracles left in him.Just for correctness sake, he didn’t win the 2018 PGA Tour, he won the Tour Championship event, which is the final event of the FedEx Cup Playoffs. And despite his win in that event, he didn’t actually win the Playoffs (Justin Rose did) as he was far enough behind going in that he needed to both win and have players at the top do poorly.
The documentary doesn’t address how Woods entered Uchitel’s life during
an equally vulnerable period for her (Uchitel’s fiancé died on 9/11), It doesn’t mention how they met through Derek Jeter? The NDA between Rachel and Derek must be pretty tight.
He won the 2019 Masters after his long hiatus, not the 2018 PGA (which, as an aside, would be referred to as the PGA Championship, not the PGA Tour).