INFLUENCE
Women who helped flawed Woods stage his comeback A comeback far greater than Tiger’s
mined Tiger would be a golfer and guided him to becoming the world’s first billionaire player.
But it was the death from prostate cancer of the former Green Beret and Vietnam veteran in May, 2006, which was the beginning of the end of the first act in Tiger’s dramatic life.
Earl met Tiger’s Thai mum Kultilda on a tour of duty in 1968 and they settled in California, where Tiger was born in 1975. At the age of just two, he was introduced to golf by his dad and it rapidly became his life.
But it meant Tiger did not enjoy anything like a normal childhood.
On and off the golf course, he practised with his dad, with few friends of his own. Maybe this explains why, as he became a sporting superstar, many of the stories which came out about Tiger described him as a Peter Pan figure – the boy who never grew up.
He would check into hotels under the pseudonym Logan Howlett – the alter ego of the X-Men’s Wolverine.
At a New York club with Michael Jordan, surrounded by beautiful women, Tiger is said to have asked: “What do you do to talk to girls?”
But young boys also idolise their fathers. “My dad told me I had two paths to choose from,” said Tiger once – either golf or special forces soldier.
And, after Earl died, Tiger explored that other path, regularly visiting US Navy SEALs and training with them, jumping out of planes and pushing his
body to the limit. By then, he already had four green jackets from Augusta, but it seemed he would have traded them for one green beret.
Then, in 2009, his life spiralled out of control. Elin, now 39, suspected Tiger was playing away. So while he was knocked out on painkillers, she called one of his other women – nightclub manager Rachel Uchitel.
Her fears confirmed, Elin chased Tiger out of the house with a golf club. He got in his car, but crashed into a fire hydrant. The police arrived and the whole murky story unfolded.
Other mistresses soon came out of the woodwork, saying Tiger liked to talk about his childhood and about the grief of losing his dad.
In February, 2010, with his mum in the front row, Tiger made a 15-minute toe-curling public apology.
But he lost Elin, his status in golf and his sponsors, taking refuge in years of therapy.
Even as late as May, 2017, Tiger was arrested for driving under the influence – and a toxicology report cited five different drugs in his system.
The following month, he checked into rehab for addiction to prescription drugs. It was clear Tiger was still lost despite years of therapy.
At rock bottom, mentally and physically, the only way was up for Tiger and it seems that finally it was the combined influence of two women who helped him grow up.
One is Elin. “She’s made him switch his priorities from enjoying a bachelor Hogan at Wentworth in 1956 despite near-fatal crash A FEW days before Tiger’s incredible victory, he was awarded the Golf Writers Association of America’s Ben Hogan Award.
Playing Augusta, he walked four times across the Ben Hogan bridge by the 12th.
Both of these commemorate a golfer whose own comeback, certainly in a sporting sense, is even greater than Tiger’s.
On a foggy February morning in 1949, America’s Ben Hogan was driving home from the Phoenix Open when his Cadillac was hit head-on by a wayward Greyhound Bus.
He threw himself across the car to shield his wife from the impact. That heroic act also saved his own life as the driver’s seat was impaled on the steering column.
He suffered a double fracture of the pelvis, a fractured collarbone, fractured left ankle, chipped ribs and near-fatal blood clots. It took four hours to get to hospital.
At first it was feared he would never walk again, certainly never golf again.
Eleven months later he rejoined the game, winning the US Open in 1950, and a further five majors in his career.
What Tiger has achieved is extraordinary, but heroic? No, we can leave that to Hogan. lifestyle to being committed to his children,” said the insider.
The other is Erica.
One of Tiger’s few very close friends is US golfer Notah Begay III, who confirmed Peter Pan has finally grown up. “I just think that he’s really matured over the last few years,” Begay said. “When you’re injured and you’re hurt, and the future is sort of uncertain, you start to ask yourself a variety of different questions.
“And I think he came up with some really great answers and started to put a lot of his time into other things that were of interest to him.
“I think it really helped him develop as a father – and as a friend.”