Tiger growing, letting down guard a little
Woods still wrestling with his father's death, but that makes him tougher
 Damian Dovarganes / AP A bronze statue bears the likeness of Tiger Woods and his late father Earl Woods, unveiled Monday at the Tiger Woods Learning Center in Anaheim, Calif. |
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Tiger Woods was getting better.
Sure, he was only fulfilling a corporate obligation with 24 people who had won a day of golf with him through an equipment-company promotion. But as he stood on the practice tee at a Florida resort before his small audience, perfectionism overpowered perfunctory.
He took the participants through his precise thought pattern in a step-by-step talk-through of his pre-shot routine. He demonstrated in detail his unifying principle of the last four years: Hank Haney's theory of parallel swing planes. He displayed his trademark twirl on shots he particularly liked, along with the lost-in-flow expression. "I want you to actually get something out of this, OK?" he implored at one point. He didn't have to add, "Like I am."
Later, in the banquet room for a closing 45-minute question-and-answer period, Woods chose to use some intimate details from his guarded life as an example of how every experience is an opportunity. When asked to identify the most important thing he had learned about golf in 2007, Woods paused for several seconds, murmured, "Great question," and, in an even voice, opened up.
"Not necessarily golf-wise, but life-wise, I think I've grown quite a bit this year," he said. "After my dad passed last year (Earl Woods died at age 74, after a long battle with cancer, on May 3, 2006), I played well, but I was still not really feeling all that great about life in general."
As the audience leaned in, Woods didn't pull back.
"I felt like I hadn't really appreciated having Dad around. I didn't talk to him as much as I should have. I didn't call him, didn't see him, wasn't there enough. It was kind of in my mind through the entire last year and even the beginning of this year. That I didn't do enough."
As the words filled the big room, there was only stillness.
"But when I had (daughter) Sam this year, I wanted to take in every moment and appreciate everything. And I think that's where my life has changed off the course. And no doubt I played better as a result. But it's sad. One thing I regret is that it took the fact of my dad's passing for me to appreciate how good my life was with him. I wish I had been able to realize how good it was when he was there."
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The candor, the realness, for a moment, turned Woods into every son who ever lost a father and wrestled with the complicated aftermath. It was an intimate mea culpa one could barely see Woods delivering to close friends on his yacht, "Privacy," let alone in a generic setting with people he might never meet again. But the person who at 20 proclaimed, "I am Tiger Woods" so confidently had clearly, at 31, been giving a lot of thought to just exactly who he wants that to be. And the answers he came up with put him on the most assuredly self-determining path of his life.
When Woods began the year, it seemed that any inner turmoil from his father's death had been left on the 18th green at Hoylake. After all, he'd followed his emotional victory at that British Open with another at the PGA Championship, closing 2006 with six straight official PGA Tour victories.
When Woods made it seven in a row at Torrey Pines last January, questions about missing Earl Woods stopped, replaced by inquiries about Byron Nelson's record winning streak and the impending birth of Woods' first child.
But those in the inner circle knew the impact of Earl's death lingered. They found Tiger distant and less patient. It turned out the tears of Hoylake were much more a beginning than an end.
"There was a sense of loneliness about Tiger that didn't go away for a long time," says Steve Williams, the caddie and friend Woods embraced at Hoylake. "He had more mood swings. I'm a pretty hard-nosed person who doesn't take anything off anybody, and I consider it my professional obligation to bring anything I think will help Tiger to his attention. But for a while after Earl's death, I didn't speak up as loudly as I normally would. There are times in people's lives when you have to be more understanding."
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