Tiger teed off over questions about Haney’s book
Tiger Woods didn’t want to have anything do with former swing coach Hank Haney on the eve of his first career start as a professional at the Honda Classic.
When asked right off the top during an interview Wednesday about Haney’s forthcoming, supposedly tell-all book, The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods, the former world No. 1 told reporters to refer to comments he made in January.
“I think it’s unprofessional and very disappointing, especially because it’s someone I worked with and trusted as a friend,” Woods said then. “There have been other onesided books about me, and I think people understand that this book is about money. I’m not going to waste my time reading it.”
Nobody has read all of it because it doesn’t hit bookstores until March 27, a week before the Masters.
The first excerpts from it were released Tuesday on Golf Digest’s website, but it was hardly jaw-dropping stuff. Haney writes about the urgency Woods felt in chasing Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 majors even though “he never mentioned (the record),” and that Woods at one point considered giving up the game to become a U.S. navy SEAL.
Haney was Woods’s coach for six years until May 10, 2010, a period during which Woods won six majors and 31 PGA Tour titles.
What we have yet to learn is whether the book will further expose Woods’s personal life, the extramarital affairs that surfaced in 2009 and led to the breakup of his marriage, and subsequently his fall from grace on and off the golf course.
Mark Steinberg, Woods’s agent at Excel Sports Management, slammed Haney after the first excerpts appeared, saying: “His armchair psychology about Tiger, on matters he admits they didn’t even discuss, is ridiculous.” He also noted the only reason for the book was “selfpromotion.”
It was a testy Woods who faced the media Wednesday in a roughly 30-minute Q&A, before which reporters were instructed to stick to questions pertaining to golf and the tournament that starts Thursday (3 p.m., GOLF) on the PGA National Course at Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.
“I’ve already talked about everything,” Woods said, when asked if he wanted to be a navy SEAL.
And when pressed on the subject by Golf Channel contributor Alex Miceli, Woods said: “You’re a beauty, you know that?” and then coldly stared at Miceli before finishing with “have a good day.”
Woods is playing for the second time in two weeks and it will be the second of three consecutive starts for him for the first time since 2010.
He said he’s comfortable with his reworked swing, noting that his emphasis has shifted to his short game and putting. Woods’s putter let him down in the two Tour events he’s played this season, including last week’s World Match Play Championship where he was eliminated in the second round by Nick Watney.
He was asked how the unrelenting scrutiny of everything he does affects him.
“It’s part of who I am and what I’ve accomplished,” Woods said. “I think it probably would be similar if Jack (Nicklaus) was part of my generation. (He) didn’t quite have the media scrutiny that (we) do now.
“It’s just a different deal and I know that a lot of players don’t get the same analysis with their games that I do. But it’s been like that since I turned pro.
Woods was an amateur when he last played the Honda Classic, held at Weston Hills in 1993, and he missed the cut.
For Woods, the start of the Tour’s Florida swing is preparation for next month’s Masters and he heads into the Honda – where he will play the first two rounds with Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter – looking for his first Tour win since the 2009 BMW Championship.
And Woods said nothing is new, as far as his approach to a tournament.
“It’s still the same. Still to win every golf tournament I enter,” he said. “That has not changed since I was in junior golf and there’s no reason for it to change now.” He said it: “It is not a matter of life and death. It is not that important. But it is a reflection of life, and so the game is an enigma wrapped in a mystery impaled on a conundrum.” – British TV golf analyst Peter Alliss, a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, who turned 80 on Tuesday.