The Secret History of Tiger Woods

The death of his father set a battle raging inside the world's greatest golfer. How he waged that war–through an obsession with the Navy SEALs–is the tale of how Tiger lost his way.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're listening to the Cost of These Dreams from Wright Thompson,
a podcast about sports stories from i Heeart Media, Graphic
Audio and Goat Rodeo. This next episode the Secret Life
of Tiger Woods. So, Tiger Woods was the Michael Jordan's

(00:25):
of golf right in the late nineties. He was all
over the place. He was on wheaties boxes, he was
on commercials, he was, you know, Oprah Interviews, the face
of a new era of golf. He had such a
big present within popular culture. And if it felt like
Tiger Woods was the Michael Jordan of golf, Nike literally

(00:48):
took the same marketing playbook they had used for Michael
Jordan's and applied it to Tiger Woods. You know, Michael
Jordan is a very extroverted guy. Tiger Woods is not.
He's not the big personality in the room by by
a long shot. I mean, it seems like that's what
looking back, Uh, He's really a very reclusive guy. He
didn't love the spotlight. And so much of tiger woods

(01:11):
greatness is tied to his father. Well, Tiger Woods was
introduced to the game of golf by his dad, Earl Woods,
and they were pretty inseparable, So to chart the story
of Tiger Woods in the nineties and the early two thousands,
he's dominating golf Records that were before seen as unbeatable
are now within the sites for Tiger Woods, and Jack
Nicholas's Majors record is in the crosshairs for Tiger. But

(01:35):
then there's this stretch of time where he starts losing
golf tournaments. He starts playing so badly he even gets
cut from some major tournaments. He starts suffering really debilitating
injuries at that time, and in between that, a sex
scandel breaks out where it is uncovered that he is
having multiple affairs with dozens and dozens of women. All

(01:58):
of this culminates in a har crash that happens that
gets national headlines. And what's so fascinating about this is
how much this decline for Tiger Woods tracks pretty closely
with the loss of his father. Yeah, and what happens
when your moral compass isn't around anymore? What happens when

(02:18):
you lose your center of gravity? Right around this time,
right gets an assignment to write about Tiger Woods. But
Tiger Woods is not exactly an easily accessible guy, and
he certainly doesn't want to talk to write most of
his life, it's not hard to fill in almost every day.

(02:41):
I mean, he's so in public that you sort of
with no inside information can fill in most days. And
where there were sightings and like you know it it started.
It was interesting to me how visible he was all
the time. And the other thing that became interesting is

(03:03):
every now and then there'd be these inexplicable, huge gaps,
like where's he going for eleven days that no one
is seeing him? Like that can't be easy, and but
I mean basically that whole story is comes from trying
to figure out in as much detail as possible what

(03:24):
he did in the space between his father dying, in
his marriage falling apart, and the frustration continues. There's three

(03:47):
Wood for Tiger Penalty heirlooms to the right. There he
was late on and just see the wind coming out
of his sales there. I see no signs of the
Tiger Woods who used to own those majors for him
not to even be in the competition for crime out
loud come Sunday. I left a lot of punt short

(04:07):
and then when I tried to hit a hard right,
gunned it past all he can't seem to put it clearly,
is a psychological thing. It comes to the majors, there's
no way he's going to chat frustrating them. I'm not
gonna be here for the weekend and be able to
uh compete for this uh great championship. Tiger Woods apparently

(04:36):
wanted to become a Navy seal. Of course, who doesn't
want to be a Navy seal. But I guess Tiger
Woods went further than the rest of us. It's amazing
how he continues to stay in the news despite not
doing anything very good on the golf course. Maybe he
should be a Navy seal. Described Gulf of Tiger Woods
has held his first interview about the ongoing six scandal
that has shadowed his image. Once among the most acclaimed

(04:58):
athletes in the world, with some of the most lucrative
endorsement deals in sports. I want to say to each
of you simply and directly, I am deeply sorry from
my irresponsible and selfish behavior I engaged in. Every one
of you has good reason to be critical of me. YEA.

(05:36):
In the spring of two thousand and six, Tiger Wood
sat in his boyhood home on Teakwood Street, across from
his father's body, waiting on the men from the funeral
home to arrive and carry her away. His dad had
never sold the house because he liked the easily accessible nostalgia.
If Earl wanted, he could go see the Obi Wan

(05:56):
Kenobi posters still hanging on Tiger's closet door, or find
an old Nintendo or a Lego Star Destroyer. Earl died
three steps from his son's old room. The family gathered
at a private air terminal in Anaheim to take Earl's
remains back to Manhattan, Kansas, where he grew up. Tiger

(06:18):
plopped down in his usual seat in the front left
of the plaine. He put the urn holding his father's
remains directly across from him, and when the pilot pushed
the throttles forward to lift off, Tiger stretched out his
legs to keep the urn in place with his feet.
The flight took two hours and twenty minutes. The plane landed,

(06:38):
and Tiger and his family drove to the Sunset Cemetery,
a mile southwest of k State's campus, past the zoo,
in a high school and a cannon dedicated to the
memory of dead Union soldiers. Earl, a former Green Beret
and Vietnam combat veteran would have liked that the graveyard
was cool in the shade the hills. Rolling from the

(07:01):
street toward a gully, the family gathered around a hole
in the ground between Earl's parents, Miles and maud Woods.
Seventy seven minutes after touching down in Kansas, Tiger took
off again for Orange County. Consider him in that moment,
thirty years old, the greatest golfer in the world, winner

(07:23):
of ten major championships in counting, confident that the dreams
he and his father conceived on Teaquewood Street would eventually
all come true. I will know you Tiger on a
golf course. Tiger has the kind of poisoned confidence that

(07:43):
would be the envy of most golfers ten times his age.
We can't dictate to him what he can be and
what he cannot be. What we do is we participate
with him in golf, and he has a choice to
live his life the way he wants to live his life,
and then, of course other things would come true as well.

(08:05):
Just it's the exact opposite of the visual that we
usually have for Tiger Woods. This past February, he pulled
out of two tournaments, citing troubles with his back. I'm trying,
I'm trying everything accisability, get back and play. Just after
two on Friday morning, thirty three year old Tiger Woods
drove out of his house alone. His car first hit
a fire hydrant, then a tree. Police say his wife

(08:28):
heard the crash and ran out. The decades separating the
cemetery in Kansas and today have seen Tiger lose many
of the things most important to him. How did all
he built come undone so quickly and so completely. That's
the question that will shadow him for the rest of
his life. The answer is complicated and layered. He fell

(08:50):
victim to many things, some well known and some deeply private. Grief, loneliness, desire, freedom,
and his fixation with his father's profession. These forces started
working in Tiger's life almost as soon as his g
four landed back in Orange County after he buried his

(09:12):
father's ashes. The forces kept working until finally his wife
found text messages from rachel U Cotell on his phone,
and he ran his Cadillac Escalade into a fire hydrant
after Thanksgiving in two thousand and nine. His life split
open in the most public and embarrassing way. Can you
imagine having to talk about your sex life and a

(09:33):
press conference with your mom in the front row. I
know people want to find out how I could be
so selfish and so foolish. People want to know how
I could have done these things to my wife feeling
and to my children. And while I have always tried

(09:55):
to be a private person, there are some things I
want to say. M I stopped living by the core
values that I was taught to believe in. I knew
my actions were wrong, but I convinced myself the normal
rules didn't apply for all that I have done. I

(10:19):
am so sorry, but that car crash wasn't the beginning
of his unraveling. In an odd way, it was the end.
Everything he's endured these past years, including admitting that his
golf career might be finished, is a consequence of decisions

(10:40):
he made in the three years after he lost Earl.
He'd been hurtling towards that fire hydrant for a long time.
On some level, he even understood what was happening to him,
or at least was invested in understanding. How would you
describe your relationship with the Tiger, best friend, best friends.
That's it, no ifs about it. He is my investment.

(11:03):
There's always a layer of mystery between fathers and sons,
even those as close as Tiger and Earl Woods. They
lived such different lives. Earl went into the Green Berets
because he saw them as the only place of black
man could be treated fairly, and when he retired, he
played golf day after day. Before his son started playing,

(11:26):
Earl had the lowest handicap at the Navy golf course
near their home, despite not picking up a club until
he was forty. Tiger grew up without siblings or many friends,
and he and Earl did everything together, hitting balls into
a net out in the garage, or spending hours at
the golf course. When he was eleven months old, I

(11:46):
took a break and he walked right over, picked up
his little putter, took the club back and hit the
ball right in a sarier the net. Okay, you're gonna
make a part in the last home. Okay, all right,
let's go do it. And when they finished, Earl would
order a rum and a diet coke, and Tiger would
get a coke with cherries, and they'd sit and nurse

(12:07):
their drinks like two old men. The golf pro at
the Navy course worried that Tiger didn't have any friends
his own age. His friends were Earl and Earl's old
military buddies. That's who he played with, retired old soldiers
and sailors and marines, with the occasional active duty guys
stationed near Los Angeles. Fighter jets took off and landed

(12:30):
at the airstrip parallel to the seventeenth and eighteenth Fairways.
Tiger heard the stories and saw the deep love even
strangers felt for one another. His entire childhood resolved around
these men in their code. Just after the two thousand
and four Masters, Tiger and his dad took a trip
to Fort Brack, where Earl had been stationed with the

(12:51):
Green Berets. A group of Earl's old military buddies came along.
Tiger got the v I P Tour running with the
eighty second Airborne and tandem jumping with the Golden Knights,
the Army's parachute team. The man assigned to take Tiger
out of the plane was a soldier named Billy van Solan,
who explained the difference between broad daylight at Fort Bragg

(13:12):
and pitch black combat situations. Your dad was doing tactical chumps,
he said, nodding around at the controlled environment. This is Hollywood,
Van soul and strapped Tiger to himself and then the
two flung themselves out into space, smooth with no bobble.
Tiger grinned the whole way down. Earl was waiting in

(13:34):
the drop zone, and Van Solan said, he gave Tiger
a big hug. Now you understand my world. He told
his son. Earl needed an oxygen tank during that trip.
He'd been dying slowly for years and regretted that he
wouldn't live to see the end of Tiger's journey. Earl's
second heart attack happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma, during Tiger's initial

(13:57):
year on tour, and by the winner of two thousand five,
a year and a half after that trip to Fort Bragg,
he was clear to everyone that Earl didn't have much time.
Now consider Tiger Woods again in this moment, the best
golfer in the world taking his first break ever twenty
four days without touching a club, the most since he

(14:20):
was a boy. Woods planned to open his season at
the two thousand and six Buick Invitational, near San Diego.
Next on the tea from Jupiter, Florida. Please welcome Tiger Woods.
No One garners more attention in the sport, and based
on his nearly unparalleled resume, no one deserves. But three

(14:42):
days before his first competitive round of the year, Tiger
arranged for a v IP tour of the Carnado Basic
Underwater Demolition Seal Training compound BUDS for short, where recruits
are turned into seals. Yeah. Yeah. Most classes start with

(15:05):
about two d students. If thirty graduate, that's a great percentage.
It's the most difficult military training in the world. When
he arrived, Tiger spoke to class to they were waiting
for first phase to begin, and Tiger told them something
he'd never said in public. He wanted to be a
seal when he was young. The class loved Tiger's advice

(15:30):
about mental preparation and focus, while the instructors roll their
eyes when Tiger said he would have been one of
them were at not for golf. They'd seen Olympic medalist
and Division one football players quit unable to stand the pain.
A top ranked triathlete washed out. The tour visited Special
Boat Team twelve and Seal Team seven. During one stop,

(15:52):
a seal named Tom Shay helped conduct a weapons demonstration.
Was seven or eight guns spread out in front of him,
from the six hour pistol through the entire sniper suite
of weapons. Tiger stood on one side of the table,
his arms crossed, a pair of oakly sunglasses resting on
the back of his knit cap. Shay said Tiger remained
very quiet, taking in as much as he could. The

(16:15):
following Sunday, Tiger Woods won the Buick Invitational in a playoff.
Three months later, Earl died and everything started to fall apart.
Twenty five days after he buried his father in fifteen
days before the two thousand and six US Open, Tiger
went back to visit with Navy seals, this time to

(16:37):
a hidden mountain training facility east of San Diego. The
place is known as La Posta and it's located on
a barren stretch of winding road near the Mexican border.
Everything is a shade of muted tan and green, a
lot like Afghanistan, with boulders the size of cars along
the highway. This time Tiger came to do more than why.

(17:00):
He tried the sr T sniper rifle and the seals
pistol of choice, the six sour p two. One of
the instructors was Petty Officer first Class John Brown, whose
father also served as a Green Beret in Vietnam. Brown
pulled Tiger aside, and the two men talked, standing on
the northeast corner of the shooting facility. Why are you here,

(17:24):
Brown remembers asking, my dad, Tiger said, explaining that Earl
had told him he'd either end up being a pro
golfer or a Special Operation soldier. My dad told me
I had two pads to choose, Tiger said. They talked
about Earl, and Brown felt like Tiger wanted safe harbor
from his grief, away to purge some of it, even

(17:46):
to prove something to himself, or maybe prove something to
the spirit of Earl, whose special ops career never approached
the daring of a seal team. The instructor gave Tiger
camo pants and a brown T shirt. He carried an
M for assault rifle, and strapped a pistol to his
right leg. On a strip of white tape above the

(18:07):
right hip pocket, Someone wrote, Tiger, then he got to
do something only a handful of civilians are ever allowed
to do run through mock gun battles with actual Navy seals.
They took Tiger to the kill House, the high stress
combat simulator where seals practiced clearing rooms and rescuing hostages.

(18:28):
At one point, they put him through a combat stress
shooting course, making him carry a thirty pound ammunition box,
do overhead presses with it to push ups and run
up a hill with shooting mixed in. Tiger struggled with
slowing his heart rate down enough to hit the targets,
but he attacked the course. He went all out. They said,
he just fucking went all out. The military men and

(18:54):
their bravado sent Tiger back in time to the Navy
golf course with Earl and those salty retired soldiers and sailors.
He missed his dad, of course, but he also missed
the idea of Earl, which was as important as the
man himself. These military trips continued through two thousand and

(19:18):
six into two thousand and seven, kept almost completely a secret.
Hit home, Tiger read books on seals and watched the
documentary about Bud's Class two thirty four over and over.
He played Call of Duty for hours straight. He was
so into the fantasy that his friends joked that after
he got shot in a game, they might find him

(19:39):
dead on the couch. Tiger often used military lingo, a
small window into how deep he had gotten into that world,
words like secure and down range. When he could, he
spent time with real life operators. Tiger shot guns, learned
combat tactics, and did freefall skydiving with active duty seals.

(20:04):
His golfing team, particularly swing coach Hank Haney, understood the
risk of what Tiger was doing, sending a long email
scolding Tiger for putting his career at risk. He said,
you need to get that whole seal thing out of
your system. Haney does a lot of benefit work, including

(20:25):
some for the special operations community, so stories started trickling
back to him about the injuries Tiger suffered during his
military training. Tiger talked openly about the grief and loss
he felt when he practiced, since that activity was so
closely wound together with his memories of his dad. The
moments with the military added some joy to what he

(20:47):
has repeatedly called the worst year of his life. He
chose to spend December two thousand and six, his thirty
first birthday, in San Diego sky diving with seals. This
was his second skydiving trip, and while he made friends
with some of the seals, many of their fellow operators
didn't know why Tiger wanted to play soldier. It rubbed

(21:10):
them the wrong way. Guys saw him doing all the
fun stuff, shooting guns and jumping out of airplanes, but
never the brutal, awful parts of being a seal, soaking
for hours in hypothermic waters so covered in sand and
grit that the skin simply grinds away. They didn't like
the way Tiger talked about how he'd have been a

(21:30):
seal if he didn't choose golf. Then there's the story
of the lunch. This has become a legend throughout the
Naval Special Warfare community, and guys are still telling it
years later. Tiger, in a group of five or six
went to eat in La Posta. The waitress brought the
check and the table went silent. According to two people

(21:53):
there that day, nobody said anything, and neither did Tiger.
The other guys just sort of looked at each other. Finally,
one of the seals said separate checks please. We were
all baffled, said one seal, A veteran of numerous combat deployments.
We're sitting there with Tiger fucking Woods, who probably makes

(22:16):
more than all of us combined in a day. He's
shooting our m o, taking our time. He's a weird
fucking guy. That's weird. Something's wrong with you. People who
spend several hours with him usually think he's aloof and weird,
while people who hang around long enough to actually know
him end up loving him and being oddly protective. His

(22:39):
truest self is shy, awkward, and basically well intentioned. But
he is as unsuited for life in public as he
has suited for hitting a ball. God's not hard with
Tiger Woods and heirs in t w today basic chips
on hitting the shot. Ah. Someone wants to play to

(23:00):
keep up with the old guy, you know, just to
bother the clubhead. Tiger is a natural introvert, and he
struggled with the financial interest for him to be extroverted.
There was an entire machine just ready to make him
into the next Michael Jordan's, but he struggled to be

(23:22):
what Michael Jordan was to the public, and he struggled
with the fact that he struggled with that so he
moves through the world in a cocoon of his own creation.
He comes and goes quietly. There's no entourage or team Tiger,
no agents or handlers or managers, just a middle aged
man alone coming to terms with himself and his future.

(23:43):
His circle of trust tightened to virtually no one. Frankly,
the real Tiger Woods just isn't that marketable. Tiger bought
a pair of combat boots. They were black made by
the Tactical Outfit or Black Hawk, and popular with ex
special ops guys who become contractors and mercenaries. The boots

(24:07):
were inevitable in hindsight. You can't insert something as intense
as the seal culture into the mind of someone like
Tiger Woods and not have him chase it down a dark,
deep hole. He started doing timed four mile runs and
combat boots, required by everyone who wants to graduate from buds.

(24:29):
The rare sighting was almost too strange to process Tiger
Woods and combat boots, where Nike workout pants or long
combat style trousers depending on the weather. Pounding out eight
and a half minute miles, Tiger knew the seal physical
requirements by heart, easily knocking out the required push ups,

(24:50):
pull ups, and sit ups. When he couldn't sleep, he'd
end up at a nearby Golds gym at three am grinding.
One of his favorite work outs was the latter or
the PT pyramid, a popular Navy seal exercise. One pull up,
two push ups, three sit ups, then two four, six,

(25:10):
up to ten and back down again. Soon, the training
laposta didn't cut it anymore. He found something more intense
with Dwayne Deeter, a man allowed by the Navy to
train seals and a specialized form of martial arts that
he invented. Deeter is a divisive figure in the special
operations world, working out of his own training compound on

(25:33):
the Maryland Shore. His method is called close quarters Defense
or c q D, and some students look at him
is almost a spiritual god, like a modern samurai. Others
think he's overrated. For Deeter, a few things were more
important than ancient warrior principles like lightness and darkness. Tiger

(25:54):
got introduced to Deeter by the Navy, and he learned
c q D at Coronado. Hooked, he wanted to go further,
and he ended up making trips to Deeter's compound in Maryland.
He'd fly in and either stay at the facility or
at a nearby fancy resort. He'd park outside a nearby target,
sending someone else inside for cheap throwaway clothes that they

(26:15):
could ruin with simunition. The practice rounds left huge bruises.
He did all sorts of weapons training and fighting there,
including this drill invented by Dieter. He would stand in
a room, hands by his side, wearing a helmet with
a protective face shield. At first, the instructors went easy,

(26:36):
not hitting him as hard as they'd hit a seal.
Tiger put a stop to that, and soon they jumped
him as aggressively as everyone else. When the drill finally ended,
the room always smelled like gunpowder. An idea began to
take hold, A dream, really, one that could destroy the
disconnects Tiger felt in his life, completely killing off the

(26:59):
care or he played in public. Maybe he could just
disappear into the shadow world of special operations. He mentioned
his plans to people around him one by one. There's
only one reason to run for miles and pants and
combat boots. This wasn't some proto training to develop a

(27:20):
new gear of mental toughness. A friend of Tigers who
knew about the training said the goal was to make
it through buds. It had nothing to do with golf.
Too Many people inside Tiger's inner circle jack Nicholas's record
of winning eight teen majors wasn't as important a Tiger
as it was to the golfing media and fans. They

(27:41):
say he never mentioned it. Multiple people who spent significant
amounts of time with him say that when Tiger did
talk about it, someone else brought it up and he
merely responded. The record instead became something to break so
he could chase something that truly mattered. So if he'd
had two hot ears and broken the record, he would

(28:01):
have hung up his clubs and enlisted. See if he
can make a good swing here and find the fairway.
He's heard there is something wrong right now, Something is
wrong with Tiger Woods be able to pick up his
tea major breaking news here in our future. On July

(28:23):
twenty of his thirty first year, Tiger finished tied for
twelfth at the Open Championship and then came home in
the weeks after he had announced that he'd ruptured his
left a c L while jocking. His news release did
not mention whether he'd been running in sneakers or combat boots.
Tiger's account of his injury might be true, but so

(28:46):
might the scenario laid out in Hainey's book that he
tore his a c L in the kill house training
with the seals. Most likely they're both true. His knee
suffered repeated stresses and injuries from military rills and elite
level sports training and high weight low rep lifting. His
body took a terrible beating from both the seal training

(29:09):
and his aggressive weightlifting, and in the years after losing
his father, Tiger was adrift and yet was still dominating
all the other golfers in the world. They were never
his greatest opponent, which was and will always be a
combination of himself and all those expectations. He could never

(29:29):
control Tiger one acron. Then, when his thirteenth career major
the following week at the PGA Championship in Tulsa, and
in fifteen hours after getting home from the tournament, he
packed up and flew off again to do CDQ training
with Dieter. Even ten years later, the loss of his

(29:52):
father still exerts force and pull on his inner life.
The anniversary of Earl's death is a time when he
can't sleep, staying up all night with his memories. The
wounds seemed fresh. Tiger spent just seventy seven minutes on
the ground in Kansas, saying goodbye to Earl, before hurtling
back into a destiny previously in progress. It's nearly certain

(30:15):
he hasn't been back to his father's grave since. If
it's true that he hasn't, one day, perhaps he'll walk
across the field to find the place where they left
Earl's ashes, between Maud and Miles, in the shade of
a bush and near a big red rock. He'll have
to find the spot from memory because there is no headstone,

(30:36):
even a decade after the funeral. Maybe he wants it
private who are simply unable to take such a final step.
But whatever the reason, Tiger Woods never had one placed.
He buried his father in an unmarked grave. You know

(31:02):
this was this was an assignment. I spent a long
time sort of just spinning my wheels, and I was like,
this just isn't working. I don't need to go find
meaningless scenes. I need to sit at home and make
a million phone calls. I mean, this is it sounds
so stalker ish to say out loud, but I just

(31:26):
was like, I need to find out what he did
every single day between Earl Wood's dying and him hitting
that fire hydrant. I mean, I have a spreadsheet somewhere.
I spent a lot of time around Michael Jordan's I
have never been alone in a room with Tiger Woods,
and so I love to imagine me popping up on

(31:49):
that documentary and Tiger being like, who the fuck is this?
Like what could he possibly know? And like that's an
interesting discussion too. I mean, yeah, I talked to hundreds
and hundreds of people, but like there is still this
unknowable thing about Tiger that remains unknowable. He has somehow

(32:10):
managed to find himself again. I loved watching him when
that Masters a couple of years ago, because you know,
if he won all those other tournaments for a whole
complicated constellation of motivations and reasons, I feel like he
won this one for himself. Ah. I loved saying that.

(32:32):
I mean, whatever he did, my Cody paid a price,
and I think he's remains to me a tremendously interesting person.
The cost of these dreams is from I heart media, graphic, audio,
and right Thompson. This series is produced by Goat Rodeo

(32:55):
in and Right and Megan Nadolski are the lead producers.
The episode is part of the eight part series The
Cost of These Dreams. Find other episodes wherever you get
your podcasts. If you want to dive in deeper to
write Thompson's The Cost of These Dreams, access the full
audio book wherever you get your audio books. Discover other

(33:16):
works by Right Thompson, including his latest book, Pappy Land
wherever books are sold from the Goat Rodeo team. Production
assistants from Rebecca Sidel, Isabel Kirby McGowan, Hams A Ship Too,
Maxwell Johnston and Kara Shillen. Music by Ian N. Right
are Deep Thanks to Right Thompson, Caitlin Riley and John Weiss.

(33:39):
Thanks for listening.