Tiger Woods: Biography

Investigative reporters Jeff Benedict of Sports Illustrated and eleven-time Emmy Award winner  and Armen Keteyian, in their first major biography of TigerWoods describes the Shakespearean rise and epic fall of  American icon and  attempted to understand who the real Tiger Wood is and summed up their subject as “the most mysterious athlete of his time, an enigma obsessed with privacy who master the art of being invisible in plain sight, of saying something without revealing nothing”.

Bobby Jones observed that golf is played on the five and a half inch course the space between one’s ears.  His mere presence at the top of the leaderboard frightened his most capable pursuers into submission.

In 2002 Master, Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh all in hot pursuit on Sunday, self-sacrificed allowing Tiger once again to slip on the green jacket, as David Feherty remarked at the time that the back nine that day resembled “a train wreck in slow motion”.

His carefully managed temperament and image as golf terminator crashed quite literally in 2009 after a domestic incident resulting in a car accident exposed a double life of serial adultery.

Tiger Woods’s obsession with military training after his African-American father’s ( Earl)  death in 2006, his reluctance to embrace his status as a racial pioneer, the drug use. His Thai mother Kultida, whom Earl met when he was an army officer in Asia and still married to his first wife.

Tiger, after turning professional in 1996, brought his mother her own home and moved to Orlando, Florida, where several top golfers clustered. At the Isleworth development, he struck a tight kinship with a neighbour and fellow PGA tour pro, Mark O’Meara.

In the book, there are painstaking descriptions of his escapades with Las Vegas Hostesses and waffle house waitress. Tiger Woods came back after the 2009 sex scandal to reclaim the top ranking by 2016, debilitating back injuries appeared to have ended his playing days.

However, the generation he inspired are now golf’ superstars and their games are a  tribute to his powerful athletic and fearlessness. After a life-changing back surgery, he has restored his health and is coming back to the Masters next week as one of the favourites.

Tiger Woods by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteylan, Simon and Schuster £20/ $28, 512 pages.