EARL WOODS: Please forgive me,
but sometimes I get very emotional
when I talk about my son.
YOUNG TIGER WOODS: Daddy! Daddy!
EARL: He will transcend this game and bring to the world
a humanitarianism which has never been known before.
THOMAS BONK: You become the biggest name in golf,
and your dad is the one who invented you?
GARY SMITH: Tiger was gonna be this bridge between
all the different races and tribes of humanity.
JIM RISWOLD: Using Tiger to expand the golf universe
is a no brainer.
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)
How are you handling all the adulation?
I honestly don't feel comfortable with it.
BONK: Tiger did not want any shadows on his brand.
He's not gonna like this shit at all.
DINA GRAVELL: He called me, and he said, "My dad's out again."
And it changed the relationship with him and his dad.
STEVE WILLIAMS: With Earl passing, he had to rely on himself.
PETE MCDANIEL: Tiger had that ability to bury something very deep,
but there's a reckoning and we all will face it someday.
Okay. So, what do you want me to talk about?
[dramatic music]
male announcer: The following is a presentation
of HBO Sports.
[helicopter rotors thrumming]
[dramatic orchestral music]
♪ ♪
- 25 days after Tiger Woods buried his father, Earl,
he went to a military base
where SEALs practice mountain warfare.
- Ready. all: Ready!
- Target.
[gunfire]
♪ ♪
- A petty officer working with Tiger asked him,
"Why is the greatest golfer running around
playing G.I. Joe?"
And Tiger Woods looked at him and said, "My dad."
[explosion] - Go, go, go, go!
- Without his father, Tiger was left
with an Earl Woods-sized hole in his life
and would spend the next few years
searching for something.
[gunfire]
I don't think Tiger Woods even knows what he wanted to find.
crowd: Tiger! Tiger! Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!
Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!
- And from Windermere, Florida,
the 1999, 2000, and 2006 PGA champion,
Tiger Woods!
[applause]
- And he hammered it.
He hammered it down the middle with a cut.
What a tee shot.
- Just belt the living daylights out of it.
[announcers chuckle]
- A number of months after Earl's passing,
Tiger appeared to be
in a very, very good frame of mind.
He was at the pinnacle of the sport,
and he had this aura of invincibility.
- Tiger is just a shot away...
- On his way to his own...
- His own universe. - Exactly.
[cheers and applause]
- His 13th major.
- It's like sometimes these golfing gods are just--
[chuckles] You know, they seem to be on his shoulders.
[cheers and applause]
But in reality, at that point in time,
being Tiger Woods had taken its toll on Tiger Woods.
- Tiger Woods, ladies and gentlemen.
[cheers and applause] crowd: Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!
- He said to me one time, "Stevie, you know,
"you become this global sporting icon,
"and you're representing all these different brands.
"Sometimes you feel you just can't be yourself
"'cause you've got so many people depending on you,
"so many people watching you,
so many people are invested in you."
- He is widely considered to be the greatest golfer
to ever play the game.
Please welcome Tiger Woods.
[cheers and applause]
- [chuckles] [cheers continue]
- You ever get sick of it? You don't get sick of it.
It's nice, wherever you go, people go crazy.
- Well, it's nice--it's nice that they are like that...
- Yeah. - Because I'm certainly one
that's not really comfortable with it.
- Very rarely is there a photograph of you,
you know, in your private life.
I thought, "This guy must have a Batcave."
You have an alter ego. You play--
- That's good. - It is good. It is good.
- I think he just wanted at some point in time,
break all those ties, get away from that,
go and do something completely different,
and it was like hitting a reset button.
[jet engine roaring]
[uneasy music]
♪ ♪
- The allure of Las Vegas is that feeling
you can escape.
People leave their morals at the airport
and pick them up when they leave.
[indistinct chatter]
And as soon as you hit that tarmac,
everything is at your disposal.
- Tiger, this way, please.
- We catered to Tiger.
We spoiled him.
We would say, "You're like a prince
and basically free to do whatever you want."
[funky music]
- Tiger Woods, what's up, man? - Come on, man.
What's going on, man?
- Tiger's two running buddies in Vegas,
Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley,
they both enjoyed the good life.
♪ ♪
The nightclubs, the bottle service.
I mean, women are literally
throwing themselves at them.
- Michael! - Michael! Michael, Michael!
- In that entourage, Tiger was a bit of a geek.
- Tiger, looking right over here.
- Tiger, this way, please. - Got a good smile.
- It wasn't like he was, like, mack daddy,
like, Casanova.
You know, those guys really didn't have to be.
Their hosts did all the work.
We would pick out the pretty girls and say,
"Hi, would you like to go up
and party with Michael Jordan?"
- Tiger asked, "What do I say to these women?"
And Michael, to his ever-loving credit, goes,
"You tell 'em you're Tiger Woods."
- Come on, Tiger Woods.
Hey, I need a president, huh? - We'll go over here.
[dark music]
- I heard rumors of sexual encounters,
and I remember thinking,
"Wow, he's a man full of secrets."
But we all--we all kept our mouths shut.
I know I did.
♪ ♪
We made him feel so safe,
like nobody's going to tell.
- This was Tiger Woods
unchained from the history of his childhood,
unchained from pronouncements about being the chosen one.
It was Tiger Woods unchained from being
a $100-million-a-year brand.
And so time and time and time again,
he would return to Vegas,
and even after he got married to Elin,
Tiger didn't really slow down.
His ability to live a double life,
it started in Vegas.
- We caught up with Tiger outside Las Vegas
on what was the coldest day there in more than five years.
Woods was on the set of his latest commercial
for Nike Golf, and among other things,
I asked him how married life
with his new bride, Elin, was going.
- It's been good. - Yeah?
- It's the same as always, you know?
- Nothing's changed? - Nothing's changed.
That's it, I mean, it's still the same,
same relationship.
- How does she deal with all the attention?
- It's one thing she had to get used to.
- Mm-hmm. - She didn't ask for it.
Back in 2002 when we started
getting pretty serious about it,
that's one of the things we had to talk about
is that I'm sorry it has to be this way,
but it's just-- it kind of comes along
with, you know, what I do.
[cheers and applause]
[gentle music]
♪ ♪
- Tiger would always talk about
having the white picket fence,
the lovely wife, children,
and some sort of normal life.
It appeared to me that he was happy being married.
Elin is very sweet,
smart, nice girl,
and I was really happy he had found that in his life,
and I thought that was, you know, hopefully for him,
gonna be, you know, where he wanted to be.
Tiger and Elin lived five doors down
from my husband and I.
And we became very good friends.
I remember Tiger told me that he was gonna be a father.
And he was just elated to have children.
He really wanted to be a hands-on dad.
That was really important to him.
I think it really lit up his life.
- Elin and I are very excited.
This is far more important than any game of golf.
This is an opportunity for us to--
to raise our first child,
and we're looking forward to it.
- Three years into their marriage,
Elin had Sam, their little girl.
Elin always loved children
and always knew she wanted to be a mom,
always felt like she was going to be a mom.
She told me that she envisioned
they would build a happy home filled with children.
They could be, as she put it, normal.
♪ ♪
- I'm happier than I've ever been in my life.
You know, I've got a wonderful balance between
on the golf course and off the golf course.
Couldn't ask for a better year.
- What's harder, sinking a ten-foot par putt
on 18 with a one-stroke lead
or changing a poop diaper
and not getting anything on you?
- Number two. Literally number two.
[laughter]
- The professional athlete
is always concerned about image,
and Tiger built himself up to be more than he was.
We all have certain demons that we have to acknowledge,
and I think, for years and years and years,
Tiger ignored his,
and that made him susceptible.
- There were so many articles written when you had a baby
that you were gonna lose your edge.
Does it bother you when you start
to see these things written?
It seems people are waiting for something to happen.
- There is a fascination in America to see
the top dog fall off the ladder.
[indistinct shouting]
- No. Yes!
[cheers and applause]
- It's called the crab in the barrel mentality.
We're all in a barrel,
and we have crabs trying to get out of the barrel,
and as soon as they get up to the top,
one of the other crabs grabs its leg
and pulls it back down into the barrel.
So there was a group of people,
especially in the media, pulling against him.
These detractors were plotting,
hoping for his fall.
- I think the Tiger Woods story
is a big cautionary tale.
[uneasy music]
Be careful about the image you create of yourself.
Be careful to live lies.
Be very, very careful,
because it could all come tumbling down.
♪ ♪
The "National Enquirer" had a history
of just smearing people.
They knew that the American public
loved to see the failings of their famous celebrities,
and so they fed that appetite with a vengeance.
♪ ♪
One evening, I was at the office
and I got a call to report to the editor in chief.
There he was
with the biggest smile I'd ever seen on his face.
He had the biggest scoop in years:
Tiger Woods.
[indistinct chatter]
Tiger had his trips to Vegas.
He had a wild side.
And he had an insatiable appetite for women.
[crowd yelling]
And he made a careless mistake.
There was a restaurant where Tiger would go with his wife
not far from home,
and at this restaurant was a hostess,
Mindy Lawton.
And Tiger just couldn't take his eyes off of her.
- I was shocked. I was in awe.
[chuckles]
I didn't think it was real.
I didn't think it was happening to me.
I played it cool. [chuckles]
- And they had a furiously eruptive relationship.
Sometimes before they could even get to the bedroom
of Tiger Woods' home while his wife was out of town,
they would make love in the garage
against the golf cart,
and for the squeakiest
and cleanest celebrity probably on Earth,
that spelled trouble.
♪ ♪
The "National Enquirer" immediately sent reporters
to track Tiger Woods.
They followed him into a church parking lot,
where they witnessed him having sex
with Mindy Lawton.
The reporter took photographs of them together
and even picked up the tampon
that Mindy had discarded
and kept it in their vault as proof
that Mindy had been there.
The "National Enquirer" called Tiger's team
and asked the question,
"What is Tiger Woods' relationship
with Mindy Lawton?"
and then hung up the phone.
Everyone in the Tiger camp went into damage control mode.
It was all about, how can we kill the story?
[ominous music]
The "National Enquirer" knew that they had Tiger Woods,
but the photographs were too blurry to run,
so they decided they would do a catch and kill
and make a deal.
In exchange for silence,
Tiger would appear on the cover of "Men's Fitness,"
which was owned by the company
that owned the "National Enquirer."
The Tiger camp considered the deal
and considered it favorably.
[camera shutter clicks]
As salacious as the Mindy Lawton story was,
nothing was ever printed,
and in the eyes of the public,
Tiger Woods remained Tiger Woods.
[camera shutters clicking]
[indistinct chatter]
- My father's been instrumental in getting
this foundation started from the get-go,
and I feel there's really no better way
to honor what he's done
than to create a statue like this,
because this basically is my dad and I.
- Mirror, mirror on the wall,
will we grow up like our daddy after all?
Tiger became what he loathed most about his father:
a philanderer.
- All right. [laughs]
- That boy loved his father with everything in him,
and that father loved that boy with everything in him.
They were father-son, brothers, best friends,
Dr. Frankenstein and his monster,
and I've always really wondered
if some part of him feels like
his own journey to self-realization
and going from being his father's son to his own man
required going fully down the rabbit hole
of Earl Woods.
[engine rumbling]
- It's been a whirlwind tour for Tiger Woods
and his father, Earl Woods, here at Fort Bragg.
The visit was about Earl Woods sharing with his son
the pride he had serving with Special Forces.
Tiger says military training is not too different
from staying in shape to play golf.
- It's just very similar,
except for jumping out of a plane.
I don't--[laughs]
I don't really do that to get ready for a tournament.
- But he did do that this week
with the army's Golden Knights,
not one but two tandem jumps from 13,000 feet,
and he's got pictures to prove it.
[dramatic music]
- I think he just loved that weekend with his father.
Earl was a Green Beret, and Tiger decided, you know,
"I want to find out a bit more for myself what that was like,"
and jumping out of airplanes was just the beginning.
I think he wanted to be able to say,
"Hey, Pops, you know, yeah, you're tough.
"I'm tough too,
maybe just one step tougher than you."
[helicopter rotors thrumming]
- On Tiger Woods' 31st birthday,
he was with the Navy SEALs
as part of his training.
The SEALs would take him through the kill house,
which is how they practice clearing rooms.
[indistinct shouting]
And he would go there to do this
over and over and over.
[gunfire]
I mean, it all might have started
as chasing Earl's past,
but Tiger was finding a life that was his.
[cheers and applause]
- I remember after this tournament one time,
we were driving back to the house
that we were staying, and he said to me,
"You know, I think I'm gonna give up golf
and I'm gonna go and get in the Navy SEALs."
You know, that stunned me in my tracks, to be honest.
I actually couldn't believe it.
But he seemed incredibly serious,
and, you know, anyone that's normal
wouldn't go and be a Navy SEAL,
but this man's wired differently,
and he's gonna do something that's gonna test you
to the absolute limit.
- Tiger would go do this crazy stuff.
They put this hood over your head.
The hood goes off, and you're presented with a scenario.
And it could be three guys on top of you
beating the shit out of you.
[gunshots]
You'd get shot up with Simunition,
get these huge bruises on you.
The SEALs love to tell stories
about just lighting him up,
and the guys in charge were like,
"You can shoot Tiger wherever you want.
Just don't shoot him in his hands."
Like, they were very well aware of, like,
"We don't want to be the guys that broke Tiger Woods."
Tiger had all sorts of knee and back issues
from playing golf,
and the Navy SEAL stuff was devastating on his body.
There was a SEAL who said,
"Injuries are magnets for more injuries."
And Tiger always seemed
to get kicked in his left knee.
♪ ♪
[device whirring]
- Tiger was in immense pain with his knee,
and when they scope his knee out,
they discover that he's got no ACL.
[dark music]
You know, the doctors say to him,
"You're gonna need major reconstruction there."
But it's Tiger, you know?
"Fuck that, I'm gonna deal with that later,"
and he kept training.
And of course, he gets himself
two fractures in his leg.
[soft snapping]
I remember thinking,
"You brought it upon yourself, so...
self-inflicted."
[jet engine roaring]
The doctors say to him, you know,
"You're gonna be out of the game for a while."
But he's got the 2008 U.S. Open looming.
Can he win another major
and be one step closer
to breaking Jack Nicklaus' record?
Jack's sitting on 18 majors.
Tiger needed to eclipse that mark to prove
that he is the greatest player of all time.
- You can finish your career with 19 majors,
one more than Jack, or 100 wins.
- 19.
- You can finish your career with 17 majors,
one fewer than Jack, or 100 wins.
- 19.
- There wasn't anything gonna stop him.
You know, two fractures in his leg and no ACL--
nothing was gonna stop him.
- Welcome to the 108th U.S. Open Championship,
beautiful Torrey Pines.
For competitive golfer Tiger Woods,
since his knee surgery,
what do you expect to see over the four days?
- I think the big issue is fatigue.
In practice, he was only playing nine holes per day.
First time out to go 18, so we'll see how it holds up.
[crowd shouting and cheering]
[ominous music]
- That headed left.
- Oh!
- He grimaced on that one.
Yeah, look at his knee.
You can see him favoring that knee.
- I could see just the look on his face,
the agony that he was going through.
And we all looked at each other and thought,
"He's got no right playing in the U.S. Open."
- Now Woods tied for 27th place.
- Headed way, way right.
- Wow.
He's making friends with all the gallery here, isn't he?
- What's the feeling like out here, Roger?
- It's absolute shock, Johnny.
I don't think anybody can believe
what they're watching here; I really don't.
- He hits his tee shot onto the cart path.
He's got cleats on, spikes,
and as he went to hit the ball,
his foot slipped out.
[soft cracking]
And I heard the crack in his knee.
I just saw the look in his eyes.
It was like he'd just been shot.
♪ ♪
I said to him, "Hey, Tiger,
"you might be jeopardizing your career here.
Maybe this is a time to quit."
And I'll never forget,
he looks at me and he goes,
"Stevie, fuck you. I'm winning this tournament."
[dramatic music]
[crowd shouting]
[cheers and applause]
- How 'bout that birdie? - Tiger!
- Well, I wasn't gonna bag it.
It's just not my nature. I don't know how to do that.
- I think that one might have hurt.
- There's never any excuses.
If the pain hits, the pain hits.
So be it. It's just pain.
- Tiger's on this quest
to be the undeniable, absolute GOAT,
greatest of all time,
and within the context of Tiger's astounding career,
the 2008 U.S. Open stands out
among all the others.
[crowd shouting]
♪ ♪
- Oh, that's gonna catch the bank.
- The mental strength, the physical strength,
everything that he brought...
- Very awkward stance,
and this can't help the left knee, I wouldn't think.
- There was something magical going on.
- One time!
[cheers and applause] - Oh!
- You got to be kidding! - Oh-oh-oh!
- He knows it too.
- It's the same thing that would allow
Lennon and McCartney to write "Eleanor Rigby."
You know, whatever it is,
there's some kind of magic in the air.
[crowd shouting]
What else could possibly explain a guy
whose body is falling apart,
and he does contend?
- Nice!
- Absolutely electric at Torrey Pines.
And a stunner of a day for Tiger Woods.
Two better at the moment than Rocco Mediate.
- All right, Rocco, describe what the last
4 1/2 hours of your life have been like.
- Oh, my God, it was unbelievable,
and it was so much fun.
I can't wait till tomorrow to see what happens.
- Can you beat him tomorrow? - Who knows?
Who knows what can happen?
But the way I'm striking it, you never know.
I just got to make a few more putts.
- Congratulations on a fabulous day.
- Thanks, thanks. It was a blast.
That night, I'm thinking,
"I can't beat him.
I got to have backup."
So I called the devil.
I said, "Devil, listen,
"Think I need some help tomorrow.
"You know, I got to play this guy,
and, you know, he's just the best."
He goes, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,
you're playing Tiger tomorrow."
I went, "Yeah."
He goes, "He's already with me.
Had him since he was a kid."
I went, "Son of a bitch. All right, thanks."
Hung the phone up.
- What kind of day is it gonna be for Tiger Woods?
Should be another interesting quest
for a major championship.
[crowd shouting and cheering]
- Tiger was still hurt, obviously,
but it didn't affect the way he played.
- That one bothered him too.
- Yeah, but it's in the fairway.
- He still played like he plays,
intense and really good.
- Oh! Aah! [crowd shouting]
- That one was audible.
- He didn't hold back at all.
I kept looking at him, going,
"What in the hell are you doing?"
But I think he thought he was immortal.
[crowd shouting]
[cheers and applause]
- Another stroke of genius by Tiger.
- You watch the stuff he did, and then you go,
"Well, of course he's immortal,
broken leg or not."
[chuckles]
[indistinct shouting]
When you stand around him,
there's something going on
that you're not used to feeling,
that feeling of, you can't hide
and you're playing with the best player in the world.
[soft dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[wild cheers]
- Expect anything different?
- Unbelievable.
I knew he'd make it.
The stuff he pulled that week,
it was remarkable.
But nothing surprised me, not one thing.
At all.
- And in one of the most remarkable performances,
Tiger Woods perseveres
and wins a third U.S. Open Championship.
- If you wish for something
so, so fervently and it happens,
that sounds like a happy ending,
but it's not always.
At his core,
Tiger has this view of the world
that only sort of a young boy has,
of conquering.
He conquered the world.
The problem with conquering the world
is that the world is gonna want its revenge.
[driving rock music]
♪ ♪
- For the last ten years,
I have stayed quiet about this story,
but at this point, I have nothing left to lose.
My name hasn't lost the stigma at all.
It's always been Rachel Uchitel, comma,
Tiger Woods' mistress.
♪ ♪
I was running one of the clubs in New York City.
I probably hosted every famous athlete
or celebrity you can think of.
- What's good, Drake?
- They come for the best night of their lives,
and I'm the person that is going
to facilitate that for them.
This is how I met Tiger Woods.
One night, I was working at the club,
and I saw Tiger sipping his drink,
sitting by himself, talking to nobody.
I was surprised it was him, to be honest with you.
I was just surprised that that was Tiger Woods.
I went over to him to make sure that he was okay,
see if he needed anything.
He grabbed me and asked me a few more questions,
and then as they went to leave,
he took my phone number.
And the car probably hadn't even got
to the light at the corner; he started texting me.
He said something like, "When can I see you again?"
It was intimidating. I mean, this was Tiger Woods.
I knew he was married.
I knew that he had responsibilities.
But he said, "I want you to fly to Orlando,
and then I will come see you there."
That was the first night I had sex with him.
[sighs]
And I remember thinking with him,
"How am I ever gonna be
with a mere mortal ever again?"
[chuckles]
Because, you know,
so many people put him on such a pedestal,
and here he was in my bed,
and he was...
my Tiger.
[gentle music]
We really enjoyed being with each other.
He would refer to it as "plugging in."
He would tell me that when he saw me,
he felt like he could plug in and get recharged.
♪ ♪
Tiger had issues sleeping,
and he would have to take Ambien.
I would sometimes just sit next to him for hours
while he would fall asleep next to me.
And when he got up,
I think that he allowed himself to be a little kid.
I mean, it sounds kind of odd.
He would eat cereal,
and he would watch his cartoons.
And he was like a fountain.
He just wanted to talk and talk and talk.
♪ ♪
He told me a lot about his childhood, his dad,
and that he was sick of trying to hide who he was.
But he was so scared of the real Tiger
not living up to the Tiger
that everybody else thinks he is.
One day, I did ask him
why he didn't check in at home with Elin.
He said, "She doesn't ask questions like you.
She's not like you."
And it occurred to me that he wanted to have someone
to check in with.
I asked him a million questions,
and he wanted to give every single detail
that he hadn't been able to say
in years or ever.
♪ ♪
One day when he was dropping me off at the airport,
I said, "I'm gonna miss you.
"It's really hard for me
to just get back on a plane and go home."
And he told me,
"You need to learn
"how to compartmentalize your feelings.
"Push them off to the side
and think about something else."
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[cheers and applause]
- You know, I mean, anytime you're off that long,
there's always some wonder if you can continue
this incredible magic, the incredible pace
when he won that U.S. Open last year.
Well, this will be another great example
of why Tiger is Tiger.
- When he comes back in 2009
after his knee surgery,
he was a winning machine.
[crowd shouting]
- Again!
A big hole.
- It feels good to be back in contention again,
to feel the rush, and it's been a while,
but it kind of felt good.
- If you made a map of the world
and especially the United States
and just put pins for where Tiger was winning,
this guy's everywhere.
- Tiger on his way to winning
for the fourth time this year.
- Really a good, positive stroke.
Get in there. Yes!
- Pretty close to paranormal, isn't it?
Is that a good word for him?
- That is in the ionosphere and just left of the hole.
- Oh, look at this shot. - Oh, what a shot.
- [laughs]
- That's certainly a strong way to finish.
- 70 wins, and he's 33?
That's frightening.
- It's an unbelievable year
not only 'cause he wins so much
but because he's doing it in the middle
of this extreme balancing act in his private life.
- Congratulations going out this morning
to Tiger Woods and his wife, Elin.
Woods' website confirming the birth of their son,
Charlie Axel Woods.
- Can you see yourself giving the kind of time
to your kids that your parents gave to you?
- As best I can.
I want my kids to know their father.
- How do you think that would affect your...day job?
- Family always comes first.
Always has been in my life and always will.
Elin and I, you know,
we have to work on that as a team.
- If you talk about Tiger Woods' greatest gifts,
certainly one of them is the ability
to compartmentalize.
[crowd shouting]
- Well, look out.
- Oh!
- Well, that's why he's world's number one.
- I mean, to move from dominating a golf tournament
to being married and having children
and then moving from woman to woman to woman to woman--
in many ways, Tiger was living
four, five, six, seven different lives at a time.
- Come on, Tiger Woods.
- It becomes like a drug,
and you're looking for that next hit.
Tiger kept having another hit and another hit.
In the beginning, he was bright-eyed,
"Ooh," and big smile.
But I saw a change in him through time.
And towards the end,
there was a sadness about him.
Maybe that adrenaline rush had left him
and he needed to go to that next level.
I do know that he called a madam.
- Every couple of months,
he requested to have multiple girls.
Could be up to, you know, ten girls at a time.
He had a particular type that he liked:
young, college cutie, girl-next-door type,
preferably blonde.
- Vegas is providing every opportunity he wants
to sample everything and anything he wants,
including the highest of high-end escorts.
We're talking five- and six-figure weekends
with these girls.
- He was into role-playing.
We would go and get tons of girls,
and he would dress up into a suit.
We were like little puppets.
- I think there's a real danger
in trying to equate Tiger's behavior
with seeking a thrill.
This is one troubled man.
And much like alcohol, much like drugs,
much like gambling,
sex is a form of pain relief,
more than he got from winning a major
or from going in a kill house with the SEALs.
Sex stops the pain for a period of time.
[intense swirling voices]
- Tiger Woods,
like so many powerful, wealthy celebrities,
felt that he could get away with anything.
And unfortunately, that wasn't the case.
- Tiger. [indistinct chatter]
- Come on, Tiger Woods. - You're good, brother.
- The "National Enquirer" had been tracking Tiger Woods
ever since the Mindy Lawton story.
They knew about his trips to Vegas,
his nightclubs near his home,
and when the "National Enquirer"
found out about Rachel Uchitel,
they were watching,
waiting for that one moment
to catch them in the act.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Open it up. - Come on, guys, relax.
- Open it up. - Tiger!
- And welcome Tiger Woods to the Australian Masters.
We're delighted that he's such a fan of Melbourne,
and, Tiger, we wish you the best for this week.
- Thank you.
- I got a call from Tiger in November,
saying that he could not play the Australian Masters
unless I came there.
He says, "I can't sleep.
"I can't win if you're not here.
So will you come?"
This man that everybody wanted a piece of
only wanted me.
That's the biggest "I love you" you could hear.
♪ ♪
Tiger's team had booked me a separate room
on a different floor,
but I wanted to go straight to Tiger's suite.
I never knew that anybody had any inkling
about my comings or goings.
I never thought to look over my shoulder.
We were really brazen with what we thought
that we could get away with.
♪ ♪
- The "National Enquirer"
had sent a reporter
to the Crown Casino in Melbourne,
and the reporter got into an elevator
with Rachel Uchitel,
followed her to the top floor,
watched as she walked to Tiger's suite,
and that's when the "National Enquirer"
called and said, "You were going to see Tiger Woods."
- We did everything to try and stop that story.
We made every threat,
we made every denial,
and at the end of the day, the story was gonna run.
[uneasy music]
♪ ♪
- When Tiger got back to Florida,
he sits down with Elin, his wife, and he says,
"Look, there's a story coming from the 'National Enquirer.'
It's all garbage, and I can prove it."
So he gives her his phone, and it's Rachel Uchitel.
- We had an extensive 30-minute conversation,
Elin and I, convincing her that I was not having
a sexual relationship with Tiger.
We talked about how I knew Tiger,
how I knew his friends,
how and why I was in Australia.
- Elin was already inclined to believe
that the tabloid media, you know, was hurtful,
not to believe them, that they were bad.
So she sort of was inclined to go along with all of that.
- The story came out, and nobody looked at it.
Between this stupid story and the phone call with Elin,
I remember thinking, "Oh, my God,
we're gonna slide right over this."
♪ ♪
Two days later, it was Thanksgiving.
Tiger and I texted throughout the day,
saying that we have a lot to be grateful for.
We'd gotten away unscathed
in what could have been a complete nightmare.
And then I get this text message from Tiger saying,
"You were the only one I ever loved."
I remember just feeling
that things had never been better between us.
And then he told me he was taking an Ambien
and going to sleep.
When I got another text from him,
I was kind of surprised.
What came through was something like,
"When am I gonna see you again?"
And then the phone rang.
I answered, saying something like,
"Hey, babe, I thought you went to sleep."
And instead of Tiger's voice, it was Elin.
And she said, "I knew it was you."
[tense music]
[line beeping]
[touch-tones beeping]
- All right, okay.
[birds chirping]
[helicopter rotors thrumming]
- We interrupt regular programming right now
for breaking news that will rock the world of sports.
Tiger Woods, the world's greatest golfer,
has been injured in a crash.
- His SUV ran afoul of a fire hydrant and a tree
in the wee, small hours of the morning
right outside his house.
- A local police chief now says Woods' wife
had to smash a window of the car to get him out
and that Woods was in and out of consciousness,
lying in the street when police arrived.
- I just remember I was sitting at work,
and this big story breaks.
Tiger Woods was in a car accident.
- This is basically how it all went down here.
This is Tiger's house right here.
- I was very confused.
Why would he have a car crash in Isleworth,
a neighborhood where I think the speed limit
doesn't go past 25 miles an hour?
And then that sort of set in as panic
because I called his cell phone
and it did not have a voice mail.
It had been shut off,
and that's when I realized something was really wrong.
- Tiger Woods, who was hospitalized
after smashing his SUV into a tree,
declined to meet with investigators
for a second time today.
- Woods admitted to taking Vicodin and Ambien
for injuries and to sleep but refused to say
whether they were involved in his crash.
- Further silence from Tiger Woods.
People are asking, "Is he hiding something?"
- In the days before the car accident,
these two tabloids came out with cover-page stories
alleging Tiger Woods has been having
an extramarital affair
with a New York party hostess named Rachel Uchitel.
- I didn't want to believe that Tiger had done that.
I didn't want to believe that he had succumbed
to his primal nature.
So we just had to wait
for all the details to come out.
- Websites are quoting friends
as saying that what really happened
is, they got in a little da-da-da-da-da
in the house over this report that he was having an affair,
and then all of a sudden, out comes the wife
with a golf club.
- Even though the reporting was sketchy,
you had a lot of people who just couldn't get enough.
- One of the things spoken in Black households often
was, when something would happen,
somebody older than you would say,
"Hope he's not Black.
Hope he's not Black."
Because you knew it would give fuel and fodder
to those people who wanted to see you as something
much less than them.
It was gonna be used against you.
All those people who really didn't like him
and were trying to find reasons to bring him down
and reasons to say he wasn't this and wasn't that,
now they're gonna have their moment.
[electricity crackling, whooshing]
- Is there another woman in the Tiger den?
- A new day brings a new name
and a whole new slew of problems for Tiger.
- Once one woman was discovered,
many more followed.
[dramatic orchestral music]
♪ ♪
- There were more "New York Post" covers
dedicated to the Tiger scandal than 9/11.
♪ ♪
It was a feeding frenzy.
- A waitress calling him a tiger in bed.
A Hooters girl.
A porn star.
Will it ever end?
- It's time to find out how many women
have now been linked to Tiger Woods.
Let's go the Tiger Woods tote board.
- The total number of women
rumored to have hooked up with Tiger Woods
is up to 11.
- 11! [cheers and applause]
- My first thought was,
look at how the country
is taking delight in his failure.
- Like, America couldn't have loved Tiger Woods
more than they did five years ago.
Found out the man liked pussy,
everybody lost their goddamn mind.
[laughter and applause]
Tiger had sex with 15 women, and they were all white,
so Tiger don't need marriage counseling.
He need diversity training, huh?
- It was great American entertainment.
Doesn't get any better than that.
[chuckles]
[sirens wailing]
- Jamie Jungers is the first
of Tiger Woods' alleged mistresses
to speak out in a live interview.
You came here today, you said,
because you wanted to clear up some of the information
that's been out there about you, like this headline,
"Tiger paid me."
Never paid you for anything, you said.
- Nothing, I didn't even get a birthday card.
I got nothing out of this relationship
but a broken heart.
- You loved him? - I did.
- When this hit the tabloids and everything came out,
it seemed like everybody was focused on the sex part.
But that's not what busted him.
Ultimately, what took Tiger down was emotions.
These weren't girls that he was just hooking up with once
and then tossing away.
He had relationships with these girls.
- You know, we would cuddle, hug, whatever it may be,
and he always, you know, had his hand intertwined with mine,
saying, you know, "We will always be together."
- So many girls came out
because Tiger obviously hit the heart
and played with girls' emotions.
- Are you still in love with him?
- Yes. [camera shutters clicking]
I always will be.
- He must have done something
to make them feel very special,
and they were jealous; they were hurt.
They wanted to be "the one,"
and they found out there was more than one.
♪ ♪
- Hey, Rachel. Ooh.
- Damn.
- So this is why Tiger want to leave the wife?
- Did you love Tiger?
- Think about all the other girls.
- Excuse me, guys.
No, I can't make any comment, you guys.
- Are you a fan of the song "Ooh, Baby, I Like It Raw"?
I think you should get a test.
STDs are a problem out there.
- This story was so huge.
That was the end of my life as I knew it.
[somber music]
There now were probably 45 to 50 paparazzi
outside of my apartment,
telling me that I was a home-wrecker,
that I was a whore,
saying, "I hope you get AIDS and die."
- Do you feel sorry for Tiger's wife, Rachel?
- Anything you want to say to her?
- I regret that he was married
and I regret the mistakes that I made.
- Rachel, do you guys respect that Tiger was married?
Why do women cheat with married men?
- But people came at me like they wanted to blame me
for the fact that a married man
cheated on his wife.
And it was like I was the only one
that was responsible for Tiger's actions.
- Rachel--how do you say it?
- "You-ka-tell." - "You-ka-tell."
- "You could tell" she's a hooker.
- "You could tell" she's-- is that a putan?
- "You could tell" she's a putan, yeah.
[laughter]
- My name was getting dragged through the mud.
- Hey, so, Rachel, did Tiger live up to his name, Tiger?
- What's the nature of your relationship with Tiger Woods?
- Smile for me, Rachel.
- Please let me get through here.
In the meantime,
none of the people around Tiger
would answer my phone calls.
It made me really start to question
every single thing that Tiger and I had.
Finally I said, "You know what?
"I want out of this.
I need to say what happened."
But before I could tell my story to the media,
Tiger called me.
It was the first time that I spoke to him
since the accident.
He told me that his lawyers were going to call
about a settlement of confidentiality.
He said to me,
"Get as much as you can."
And I think, to him,
that was his only way to...
to love me at the time, yeah.
♪ ♪
- Good morning, and thank you for joining me.
Many of you in this room are my friends.
Many of you have cheered for me
or you worked with me.
Now every one of you
has good reason to be critical of me.
I have let you down personally
and professionally.
My behavior has caused considerable worry
to my business partners.
I hurt my wife,
my kids,
my mother,
and kids all around the world who admired me.
I know I have bitterly disappointed
all of you.
I have made you question who I am
and how I could have done the things I did.
I'm embarrassed that I have put you in this position.
For all that I have done...
I am so sorry.
[somber music]
- When he came out and he apologized,
I think that was a bad move on his agent's part.
I think I would have had him read a statement:
"Whatever's going on between my wife and I,
"that's my business.
"It's not yours.
"And if I lost some fans or endorsements,
so be it."
♪ ♪
I felt real sadness.
I felt sadness for Tida.
As much pride as she took in her son,
how she loves Tiger,
I knew it was very hard for her.
And then I felt for his children.
They were too young really to know what was going on,
but eventually they were gonna find out
some negative stuff
that no child should ever have to read or hear about.
But the main person I felt sad for was Elin,
because he had hurt her mightily.
- Elin, how are you?
Do you still love Tiger, Elin?
What do you think of his 14 mistresses?
Will you ever forgive him?
- Elin felt downright hunted
by the paparazzi.
Worse, she felt like her children were hunted.
- How are the kids, Elin?
Has Tiger seen the kids, Elin?
- You know, to think of how she told me
at the beginning she felt like
it was her and Tiger cocooned
and joined, "us against the world"...
[indistinct chatter]
- Elin, the whole world wants to know how you're holding up.
- To then all of a sudden have it be
the world all closing in on her
for a scandal not her making.
- Man, it was freezing today in New York.
It's like a phone call between Tiger Woods
and his wife out there. [laughter]
She was like, "Look, Tiger, it's either me or her...
"or her or her or her or her,
"not the Perkins waitress, but the other one,
or her or her."
- As the scandal was still kind of unspooling,
Elin moved with the children to a rental house
not far from their home so she could just kind of
get out of Tiger's space and think.
But it all kind of just became too much,
and she just sat down amid the kind of moving boxes
with their stuff.
It was just sitting there, and Sam came over
and said, you know, "What's wrong, Mommy?"
And Elin told her, you know, "Mommy's got a boo-boo."
And Sam said, you know, "Well, where?
I'll kiss it and make it feel better."
And... [chuckles]
Elin said, "It's in Mommy's heart."
♪ ♪
What she went through
and how she tried to shelter her kids from that,
it was--it was real.
She was so blindsided by her whole life
being suddenly exposed as a lie,
and that was shattering.
- Tiger Woods reportedly is working out
a big-money settlement, ending his five-year marriage.
- The details of the divorce may never be known,
though some estimate Elin may receive upwards
of $100 million.
- Can anybody explain these divorce settlements?
Can anybody make sense of these fucking things?
Tiger Woods' wife, $250 million.
Dude, there is an epidemic of gold-digging whores
in this country.
[laughter]
- Elin's story too often got warped
into "gold-digging, scorned woman."
[camera shutter clicking]
- Ms. Nordegren, are you happy with the divorce?
- But she would say something really telling,
that "money can't put my family back together."
♪ ♪
- After six weeks of rehab
at Pine Grove treatment center in Mississippi,
known for treating sexual addiction,
Tiger is out of rehab, back at home in Florida.
- When Tiger returned,
I knew that he was in a poor mental frame,
and I went down to see him.
Obviously, paparazzi trying to get photos.
So he had his house all boarded up.
Just as private as he could be.
Tiger was quite aloof that day,
and it didn't bother me
because I understood what he was going through.
He's been out of the game.
He's been crucified in the media.
You know, what's he gonna do next?
Is he gonna walk away from the game?
There's a lot of uncertainty.
So I laid it all out on the table for him
and asked what he wanted to do.
And he said to me,
"I'm going to play in the 2010 Masters."
[thunder rumbling, rain pattering]
- How will you explain this to your children
when they're old enough to understand?
- I will have that sit-down talk.
I take full ownership of it. I did it.
No one else did it. It was just me.
And that's the responsibility that I will have.
I will talk to my kids
for however long they want to talk about it.
That is a conversation that will need to be had.
- Tiger, you've been a master of control your entire life.
How did things get so out of control?
- Going against your core values,
losing sight of them.
I felt entitled, and that is not how I was raised.
- The Masters is a demanding stage on its own,
let alone for a return of this magnitude.
How do you know you're mentally prepared for this?
- Well, I'm excited to get back and play.
[tense music]
I miss the game,
but still, playing is one thing,
but the public, I am a little nervous about them.
It would be nice to hear a couple claps here or there.
♪ ♪
- We are not unaware
of the significance of this week
to a very special player, Tiger Woods.
It is not simply the degree of his conduct
that is so egregious here.
It is the fact that he disappointed all of us
and, more importantly, our kids and our grandkids.
Our hero did not live up to the expectations
of the role model we sought for our children.
Is there a way forward?
We at Augusta hope and pray
that our great champion
will begin his new life here tomorrow
in a positive, hopeful, and constructive manner.
But certainly, his future will never again be measured
only by his performance against par
but measured by the sincerity
of his efforts to change.
- One of the things that I never got over in Augusta
is the feeling that there's this thin
undercurrent of racism right below the surface.
It was not the place of the tournament
to chastise a former champion,
especially a champion of color.
Do you think that they would have done that
to Fred Couples?
Do you think they would have done that to Nick Faldo?
I felt like it was a public whipping.
[applause]
- Ladies and gentlemen, the 2010 Masters
has now officially begun.
Have fun.
- Yeah, basically.
Basically, it was a public whipping.
What Billy Payne did at Augusta,
to sit there and scold Tiger,
it was disgusting.
Tiger's family, his wife,
they had a right
to be angry, disappointed, upset,
not the chairman of some damn golf club.
Who the hell are you?
[dramatic music]
- Now to the long-anticipated return of Tiger Woods,
his first pro tournament since he left the game in scandal.
♪ ♪
- I was on the first tee when he came out that morning.
There was embarrassment and humiliation
off the charts.
I cannot imagine all of that emotion
being bottled up inside you.
The players are looking at him.
The fans are looking at him.
The television's looking at him,
which means the world is looking at him.
[indistinct shouting]
[applause]
- Good tee shot on the first hole,
and I don't care who you are, Tiger Woods or whoever.
The first tee shot is nerve-racking.
But so far, it looks like business as usual.
- Oh, look at that thing turn.
- I sense he loves that.
Oh, that's an incredible golf shot.
- Oh, my goodness.
- I think Tiger loves and craves and needs
that competitiveness that comes with the game.
But I'm not sure it was the best way
for him to cope with everything.
- A lot has happened in my life
over the past five months,
and...
I'm here at the Masters to play and compete.
And nothing's changed.
I'm trying to go out there and win this thing.
- It seemed like he was trying to just sort of
put it behind him and keep moving forward.
But as his friend, I could feel that something--
something was not right.
- Oh, there it is.
[cheers and applause]
- I knew that deep down, Tiger was incredibly sad,
lost, broken up,
and very vulnerable.
After the crash, I remember just thinking,
"This is when he probably needs his friends the most."
I tried to reach out,
but he had shut his phone off.
I thought, you know, maybe in a couple weeks
as things died down, maybe he'd reach out,
but the longer it went on,
I realized I had been completely cut out of his life.
He grew up in an environment
where feelings were not discussed,
and I think he doesn't understand
how to deal with complex emotions.
Instead of having to actually process something like that,
I think it was more easy to cut people out of his life.
Years of friendship, and all of a sudden,
never heard from Tiger again.
It felt like my friend had died.
Just to be sort of discarded like that,
there was a lot of hurt that went along with that.
- After such a long and difficult absence
from the game, can you put this week in perspective
for us, for you?
- Yeah, I finished fourth. Not what I wanted.
I wanted to win this tournament,
and I didn't get it done.
I didn't hit the ball good enough,
and I made too many mistakes around the greens.
You know, consequently, you know, I'm not there.
- Any idea after this performance this week
when we might see you again?
- No, I'm gonna take a little time off
and kind of reevaluate things.
- Thank you for your time, and thank you for being here.
- Thanks, Peter. Appreciate it.
[somber music]
- After the Masters,
Tiger took a little bit of a break away from the game
just to, you know, get his mind free
as well as deal with some niggling injuries.
As a caddie for Tiger Woods and a great friend of his,
you know, I wanted to deeply respect
what he was going through.
But I still didn't know when he was gonna be playing again.
You know, I was just expecting a phone call at any moment,
saying, "Oh, I'm playing next week," you know?
"Get your shit together and get over here."
There was a lot of uncertainty.
So when a friend that I'd caddied for before
called me and asked me could I caddie for him,
I ran that by Tiger,
and he said, "Absolutely, no problem."
But then a couple days before the tournament,
Tiger changed his mind.
He had his agent call, and he said,
"If you go and caddie for your friend,
that'll be the end of your time caddying for Tiger."
And I thought, "Well, there's just no way
the guy is gonna fire me."
But a couple days after the tournament,
I got the phone call to say that that was--
you know, our time has ended.
You know, and I believed in my own heart, you know,
I gave it 100% when I caddied for Tiger
for the entire time that I was with him,
and then, you know, for him to fire me
over that kind of thing, I found that pretty unusual.
- Sometimes we all need changes,
and this was a change, and as I told you guys earlier,
I was at peace with it,
and it was a decision and direction I wanted to go,
and that's it.
- When he fired me,
I thought he was firing me as a golf caddie,
not firing me as a friend.
[cheers and applause]
- He adds another major to the tally.
- And a thanks to Steve Williams.
They have been a tremendous partnership.
- I mean, Tiger was the best man at my wedding.
I didn't think we'd have no communication
for the rest of our life.
I mean, that just didn't even enter my mind.
[applause]
To this day, I find that a hard pill to swallow.
Someone that you spend 13 years with,
give all your time and all your effort,
you know, the guy can't even speak to you.
- I felt that it was time for me
to go in a different direction in my professional life.
As far as personally,
life goes forward, and I just keep moving forward.
- Tiger's sacrificed so much
in order to become the greatest player.
He certainly had the mental strength
to block out whatever he needed to block out,
but that ability made it possible
to shut off his friends and family,
and at the end of the day, his only focus was to win.
It was quite sad really, I mean,
but that was just the reality of it.
[uneasy music]
♪ ♪
- It's a pleasure to watch greatness in action, isn't it?
As we look at Tiger, we often wonder
what's going through his mind.
What we wouldn't give to know his thoughts.
[indistinct shouting]
- That's pretty good.
That's quality control, ladies and gentlemen.
[cheers and applause]
- In 2013, Tiger was winning at a clip
that called to mind his prime years.
- Tiger Woods sends a message
with a win in his first tournament of the season.
- And all of a sudden,
everybody breathed a sigh of relief.
Fans seemed to have forgotten
they had humiliated him,
because now he was back to being the machine.
On a really elemental level,
people weren't even looking at Tiger as a person.
They were looking at him as a performer.
[crowd shouting]
- Get in there! Get in there!
- Go in! Go in!
- How 'bout this one?
How 'bout that one?
- That would have been the best four of all time.
- Tiger Woods number one in the world again.
- 2013 became this dominant period.
And Nike came out with this ad,
"Winning takes care of everything."
- In your career, this is the quickest you've gotten
in one season to four victories.
How would you describe the way you're playing golf right now?
- I'm getting better.
- [chuckles] That's it?
- That's it.
[applause] - Tiger!
- He's asked so often about whether or not
he's back to the form of 2000,
those historic, epic years.
- His game looks good, and his putting is fantastic,
and his irons are really good.
Looks pretty much a done deal.
Is it gonna cut?
Wow. - And he went down in pain.
- He is down.
[somber music]
♪ ♪
- It was an extraordinary sight.
We know that he has a high, high tolerance for pain.
I mean, the guy won the U.S. Open on a broken leg.
So you can only imagine how excruciating
the pain must have been for him to fall to his knees
in the way that he did at that tournament.
[indistinct shouting]
- Oh, he's hurting right now.
- Yeah, there is something wrong.
- His swing was violent.
Like, frighteningly violent.
Think of the number of repetitions that it took
to perfect that swing.
- [laughs]
- He started doing it when he was just a baby,
and the body can only stand so much.
[camera shutters clicking]
- Since you've won your last major,
you've gotten a little older.
You've had the injury. You've had the divorce.
What's been the most significant?
- Probably your first point, I'm older.
[chuckles] Father Time's undefeated.
We all, you know, eventually start losing
some of the things we're able to do when we're younger.
- He told us that during this time,
his back would spasm.
One time, he fell to his knees and he was like a pill bug.
He couldn't get up.
He had to have his daughter, Sam, call for help.
That's when he realized,
"I can only control so much of this for so long.
"But everybody else still wants to see golf's god,
"and I can't give them that,
because I'm just a man."
And I think that recognition broke him mentally.
- Uh-oh. - Wow.
That was unbelievable.
- For me, I remember thinking,
what has Tiger done to Tiger Woods?
I mean, he was wrecking himself.
Mental strength, that was always his greatest skill.
And then all of a sudden, he's got the chipping yips.
- How did Tiger Woods shoot his worst round
as a pro on the PGA Tour?
Chipping was a disaster.
The scorecard was almost surreal.
- Golf is all about confidence.
You've got to trust how you're gonna strike the golf ball.
- Tiger chipping again.
We're all gonna pay attention.
- You sort of have this feeling
that he could chip it closer with his eyes closed.
- If you lose that confidence,
your career is on a slippery slope downhill.
- He doesn't know what the problem is.
I feel he's as confused as he's ever been.
- Watching Tiger struggle,
it was like, "Wow."
It was--
you know, this wasn't the Tiger that I knew.
When he was a kid,
he could make any shot he wanted to.
- Go in. Go in! Go in!
- I remember one time when I was at his house,
and Earl and Tida and me and Tiger
are in the living room, and I'm talking with them,
and all of a sudden, this ball comes over my shoulder.
He's hitting them over the couch,
over my shoulder, over the glass table,
and stopping them before the fireplace.
Okay, he did one, right?
I'm thinking, "Okay, that was luck."
Does it again, does it again, does it again.
He used to be able to do all these crazy shots.
- From one bunker to another.
[crowd groans]
- But it was just... [imitates explosion]
Crash and burn.
- Tiger Woods has not won a major since 2009?
- '08. - '08.
- Mm-hmm.
- How 'bout Jack Nicklaus? - What about him?
- He has 18, and you're at 14. - I'm at 14, correct.
- So I'm struggling to understand
why you're not playing like you used to play.
- I've had three back operations.
- Yeah.
- And that's taken its toll on me.
- When you look at losing it,
it must be terribly hard for you to accept this.
- It's been terribly hard not to be able to do
the things that it would take for me to get to that level.
And that is simply just practicing.
[gentle music]
- Tiger Woods has pulled out
of golf's first major of the year, the Masters.
He said he's just not tournament ready,
due to his troublesome back.
The 14-time major winner won his first major
at the Masters 20 years ago.
♪ ♪
- At the 2017 Masters,
we knew something serious was up.
Tiger came to the champions dinner at Augusta,
and he was sitting there with Jack Nicklaus.
And you could visibly see he was in so much pain
from his back into his legs, he couldn't sit still.
Poor bugger.
You know, and he said to Jack, "I think I'm done."
♪ ♪
"My career is finished."
- What are you going to do if you're Tiger Woods
and you're in your early 40s
and the thing that's made your whole life possible
and defined your whole life,
that gets taken away from you?
The entire identity of Tiger Woods
is bound in his golf,
and to that degree,
there's only one path to the end line of his golf,
which is undisputably, undeniably
the greatest of all time.
So if he's got to leave golf
and can't really say he's worn the mantle
of the greatest of all time,
then really, where is he?
Because that has been his entire identity,
and that is just--
had to be untenable for him, I would think.
[engine revving]
[siren chirps]
[indistinct police radio chatter]
- 10-4.
[indistinct police radio chatter]
- Go ahead and stand with your feet together
and your arms down by your side.
Okay, don't begin until I tell you to, okay,
but when I tell you to, I want you to close your eyes
and tilt your head backward, and you're gonna recite
the entire English alphabet in a slow, nonrhythmic manner,
meaning you're not gonna sing it, okay?
Do you understand the instructions?
- Okay, what were the instructions?
- Not to sing the national anthem backwards?
Okay, sir, what I want you to do
is go ahead and place your hands behind your back, okay?
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- Troubling new headline for Tiger Woods.
- Legendary golfer was arrested overnight.
- Five drugs in his system, Xanax, Ambien, painkillers.
- If you take an opioid pain reliever,
and he's had back surgeries, too often, a patient like that
ends up addicted to opioids.
- Don't get behind the wheel. Don't endanger my family.
This was another bad decision by Tiger Woods.
[engine revving]
- It's painful to watch that tape.
- Go ahead and stand on that yellow line
and then face the front of the room.
- But it's also revealing.
- Turn around.
- Here, one of the most powerful,
one of the wealthiest athletes in the history of sports
is in a holding cell for having five different
prescribed drugs in his system.
- Okay, you may begin.
- Today is May 29, 2017.
I have arrested and charged Eldrick "Tiger" Woods.
- Tiger Woods has spent most of his life
with a camera pointed at him.
- Tiger! [camera shutters clicking]
[overlapping chatter]
- The second that camera is pointed at you...
- You want to try to control the image
to the degree you can, knowing that often, you can't.
[overlapping chatter]
But on that night,
Tiger is still being filmed.
- [whistles] Watch. Look.
I'm gonna need two samples of your breath.
- And even though he's deeply impaired...
- Blow. [device beeps]
Good, there you go.
Keep going, keep going, keep going.
- It's some of the most truthful moments of his life,
because he realizes it's all over
and there was no way to hide from it.
- Seeing his mug shot there, it's not the Tiger Woods
a lot of us are used to seeing.
- That picture, he should look at it.
- He's completely lost touch with his image.
- His golf career, it's virtually nonexistent.
He's never gonna dominate and win again.
- It's at a point now where the next press release
Tiger Woods should release should be, "I'm retiring."
- Tiger Woods is finished.
- I remember thinking,
"Wow, is this how it ends?"
This is how it ends
after everything.
After all the pontifications and pronouncements
about Tiger being the chosen one,
this once-in-a- multigenerational athlete
who had been inspiring people in ways
people had never been inspired before,
he was just a guy in need of a hell of a lot of help.
This is the tragic ending that no one wants to write.
- Okay, Mr. Woods, got to read you your rights.
Okay.
- You have the right to remain silent and not answer...
- I'd seen it on the news, but I didn't watch it.
People were telling me, "You got to see the video.
It's horrible. It's awful. He looks so bad."
And, "He's done. He's a mess."
And I just thought, I didn't really want to see it.
There was just this fiercely protective nature
that I had with him.
But then I watched the video just by myself.
- Oh.
- He had referred to Orange County,
and that took my mind back home to Southern California,
to our childhood...
[indistinct chatter]
To thinking about that jovial, funny, quirky kid.
- Oh, my God!
I mean, he had so much fun
and sweetness in him.
[laughter]
But he ended up
on the street alone and on his own.
- And I just thought, "I really hope
he can reflect back and remember the real him."
[gentle music]
♪ ♪
[camera shutters clicking]
- Are you looking forward to the hearing, Mr. Woods?
Will it impact your golf career?
- In 17CT-9620,
the defendant will be pleading guilty
to the charge of reckless driving.
Mr. Woods, are you entering this plea
freely and voluntarily?
- Yes.
- The defendant must complete the DUI school
and any and all recommended treatment.
He must enroll for that within 30 days.
- Everyone will face a reckoning.
I don't care who you are.
And Tiger's reckoning came hard.
He was in the depths,
and I think he had to do a lot of soul-searching,
and it started by looking at his past.
- Daddy.
Daddy.
♪ ♪
- We can't dictate to him
what he can be and what he cannot be.
So as a consequence,
what we do is, we participate with him in golf,
and if it was bowling,
we would participate with him in bowling.
Each and every one of us has our own life to live,
and he has a choice to live his life
the way he wants to live his life.
- Tiger was constructed, there's no question about it,
and Earl drew up the specs.
A perfect golfing machine
built from the outside in.
The outside was the more important thing,
how you show your talent.
Crushing the ball, crushing opponents,
success.
- He played mind games on me,
almost every shot I hit,
until I--until I grew up and accepted it,
and then it was nothing.
- In the meantime, maybe something was left out inside.
- For Tiger's whole life,
the development of the machine took precedence.
It wasn't until the recovery
that he entered after the arrest
that Tiger really had to go through the human development.
Sort of this growth period that for most of us
happens pretty early on.
Here he was in his early 40s saying,
"Well, the machine got me here.
I have to evolve into something else."
- The first step was to go into treatment.
He got clean.
He got healthy.
And he crawls out of that hole.
I mean, if you look back on how deep into the throes
of drug addiction he was,
just to become a functional adult
is the comeback of all comebacks.
[birds chirping]
- Tiger had had back fusion surgery
to just be able to resume an ordinary life.
And as he started to feel better physically,
he obviously started thinking about golf.
- Post-back fusion surgery,
I was able to bend over and start rotating without pain.
And so I was given the okay to start chipping.
All of a sudden, the thought came back
that, you know, I might be able to do this again.
Next you know,
I started to piece together a golf swing.
- Woods posted this video on Monday,
dropping his biggest hint yet
that he's ready to step back up to the tee.
- Who would have thought ten months ago
that he would even swing again?
- Just seeing him at this level,
man, how do you not be excited?
- All of a sudden, everybody was wondering,
"Will he play golf again?"
I ended up writing an open letter to Tiger saying,
"I hope you can come back
"but not for the reasons you might think.
"I don't want you to come back so that you can
"pass Jack's major record.
"I want you to come back so that you find the joy
that led you to the game in the first place."
- Today is perhaps
the most highly anticipated round of golf.
For the first time in 301 days,
Tiger Woods is playing competitively
for the world to witness.
[cheers and applause]
- Oh, yeah. - Wow.
- And he loves this one.
[cheers and applause]
- This week is a big step for me.
To come out here and to be able to do
what I've been doing with the guys,
that--that's so exciting.
You have no idea how exciting that is.
I hadn't been able to play fun golf like that
in such a long time,
and honestly, I miss playing golf for fun.
- Tiger Woods playing alongside Kevin Na.
- He has this little short one for birdie.
- Oh, man. - Wow.
Pick it up.
You got to let it get to the bottom
of the hole first, though, Kevin.
[laughter]
- Tiger got a kick out of that one.
- Oh, that's good.
- All right, Tiger from just over two feet.
[laughter]
- Now, would you have ever seen Tiger do that
a few years back? - No.
- I don't care what situation he was in.
- For all these years, he had been so hyper-focused
on the results.
He didn't want to fraternize with the people
that he was gonna be trying to beat.
But now when I watch him play golf,
I see him enjoying the camaraderie
with his competitors.
[crowd cheering] - Go, Tiger!
- I see him connecting with fans
in a way he never did before.
♪ ♪
I see a real, genuine sense of gratitude
for this second chance.
crowd: Tiger! Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!
Tiger! Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!
- I'm very lucky.
I'm grateful to have been given
the opportunity to have a life
and then on top of that,
blessed to even have the opportunity to play golf.
Because I wasn't. I wasn't able to.
I was just laying down.
That's all I could do is lay down.
A lot of times, I couldn't move.
I would be helped, you know, up
out of--off the floor, out of the bed
and had to be carried around the house.
You know, these are tough times,
and to live months upon months like that,
it was not fun.
But now to be on the good side of it,
the neat thing for me is to be able
to share it with my kids.
For so long, all my kids knew
was my soreness and pain.
They'd never seen me win golf tournaments.
They don't know what it's like.
You know, and I said,
"Hey, I'm just getting started here, okay, guys?
Dad's not done yet."
♪ ♪
- Round one of the Masters today at Augusta National.
So many story lines to track, including Tiger Woods.
- He almost lost the ability to play the game.
Wasn't sure two years ago
if he was going to play tournament golf again.
Now that he's back,
he understands his place in the game.
- Tiger now is the voice of history
amongst the players here at Augusta National
because, you know, it's 22 years removed now
from the '97.
- It's exciting for me to be part of,
and hopefully, I can be part of it come Sunday afternoon.
- Tiger, do you feel like you need to win here again?
- Well, I don't really need to win again.
But I really want to.
[applause]
- When he walked out to the first tee,
I think we all thought, "There's no way.
There's no way he can win another major."
Because of what we saw five years ago,
there's no way physically.
I mean, technically, there was no way
he could win another major.
- No, no, no.
- And that one is leaking left.
He knows it too.
[crowd gasps] - Oh, my God.
- He will be hard-pressed to make his par
from where he is.
- See if he can manufacture a shot.
- Down, ball.
[crowd murmuring]
[cheers and applause] - He can.
- There are signs, subtle signs,
of the way Tiger used to play golf.
- One thing I've learned from 20 years of Tiger Woods
is, do not underestimate Tiger Woods.
That is not the way to bet.
After playing Augusta for so many years,
he figured out how to play the golf course.
- Try and land it in the middle of the green.
[cheers and applause]
- That's Masters experience right there.
- On every hole, he figured out,
This is the safest place to hit it."
It's a little bit conservative for him.
You know, he wasn't going out there
and stepping on people's necks.
But this was a different Tiger.
He's older Tiger.
[crowd shouting]
[cheers and applause]
- Anybody enjoying this?
- Yes, sir.
- I kept telling myself,
"I've been in this position before.
"You have a lot of holes to play.
"Hang in there until the last couple holes,
"and then we'll see where we are.
Just keep hanging in there."
[cheers and applause]
- Right now, everybody's talking
about that leaderboard.
There are some huge names,
and right behind sits Tiger Woods.
[cheers and applause]
- There's a whole generation of tour pros
that grew up idolizing Tiger,
but they never played him at his peak,
never saw the shots that they only can see on YouTube now.
And there were some pros who said,
"I can't wait to get into the hunt
with Tiger on a Sunday in a major."
The fuck you do.
You have no idea what you're getting into.
[dramatic percussive music]
- Our leader, Francesco Molinari.
♪ ♪
[crowd groans]
- That was just so weak.
- With Tiger Woods on the prowl,
the guys just crumbled.
- Now Koepka...
can make this thing interesting.
[crowd groans]
- And Finau.
He really has an opportunity.
- Get in! [crowd groans]
- Ugh.
- Let's go, Tiger! - Can Woods take advantage?
[crowd murmuring]
[cheers and applause]
- Tiger Woods has the lead.
The impossible has become possible.
- Suddenly, we're back to watching Tiger.
You know, everybody's emotion went...[imitates crunching]
You know, to the roof.
[cheers and applause]
- Down towards the cup for Tiger.
[cheers and applause continue]
This might be the shot that seals it all.
♪ ♪
Incredibly play
at exactly the right time.
[cheers and applause continue]
- For Tiger Woods to come back
after an 11-year drought is just a Cinderella story.
- I don't know if it means anything,
but, you know, the solar cycles of the sun
are every 11 years...
- Wow.
- So maybe the sun of golf has returned.
The patrons are 20 deep,
and many thousands more walking up 18
in readiness.
On the nose.
[cheers and applause]
[uplifting music]
♪ ♪
- When he was coming up the fairway,
hoping to win his 15th major championship,
I knew what to expect.
A lot of people would spin it
like he was a different man now,
he's the conquering hero,
but these are the same people
that when he was riding high,
they were pulling for him to fall,
and when he fell,
they jumped on him with both feet.
And when he rose again, all of a sudden,
he is a virtuous man now,
which to me is bullshit.
He's a human being
with frailties like everyone else.
The problem is, we always try
to make him out to be more than he is,
and that goes all the way back to Earl.
[applause]
- This is the minute
that millions around the world have waited for.
♪ ♪
Waited for years.
Many doubted we'd ever see it,
but here it is.
The return to glory.
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
- Please forgive me,
but sometimes I get very emotional
when I talk about my son.
♪ ♪
My heart fills
with so much joy
when I realize
that he'll transcend this game.
This is my treasure.
Please use it wisely.
♪ ♪
announcer: This has been a presentation of HBO Sports.