of HBO Sports.
[applause]
[pensive music]
♪ ♪
- Please forgive me,
but sometimes, I get very emotional
when I talk about my son.
- Daddy!
Daddy!
♪ ♪
- Whoo! There it is.
- Whoo! Yeah!
- My heart... fills with so much joy
when I realize
that this young man
is going to help so many people.
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
He will transcend this game
and bring to the world
a humanitarianism
which has never been known before.
♪ ♪
The world will be a better place to live in
by virtue of his existence
and his presence.
♪ ♪
This is my treasure.
Please accept it
and use it wisely.
♪ ♪
- Right now, I'd like you to meet Tiger Woods
and his father, Earl Woods.
[cheers and applause]
Tiger, come here a minute.
Would you like to enter into a little competition
with Mr. Hope?
Tiger?
First, can I see you swing?
Maybe we'll try the driver first.
- Oh, all right.
- Set us. - Hit that ball.
- Oh! - [laughing]
Perfect!
- Good boy, Tiger.
- Earl, how old is...
How old are you, Tiger?
- Daddy... - Two.
- Two? - He's two.
- When did he start with a golf club?
- Um-- - Remember the first time
he picked one up?
- Three months.
- Does he really love golf? You ever take him--
- Oh, he loves it. He loves it.
- How about a putting contest with Mr. Hope?
Can he putt, too? - Oh, yes.
- Okay. We'll let him putt first.
He knows. He knows.
- Rap it right in there. - Tap it right in there.
[laughter and applause]
[pensive music]
- When Tiger came out with that little bag of clubs,
a lot of people from a lot of corners
saw the potential of greatness,
and I think his father, Earl, was one of them.
♪ ♪
He told me he knew
from the very start
that Tiger was going to be a legend.
And Earl would say, "Let the legend grow."
- When Tiger was less than 10 months old,
I brought him in the garage,
put him in a high chair,
strapped him in,
and he'd watch me hit balls into a golf net.
♪ ♪
He was totally immersed in that activity,
so much so that he had to be fed in there
because when my wife tried to take him
out of the high chair to feed him,
no way.
No.
He said, "Mm-mm."
So she would have to feed him between shots,
and he'd go like this.
♪ ♪
Between shots.
And it was beautiful to see,
but the... level of concentration
at that age was off the chart.
At ten months,
I unstrapped him out of his high chair one day,
and he walked over, sat up,
and hit the ball.
[club strikes]
I said, "Oh, my God. I've got something special."
♪ ♪
Good shot.
- Whoo!
[laughter]
- Earl would take him to the golf course
and started working with him on putting.
He worked from the green back.
That was the secret
to how Earl instructed Tiger.
And his mother, Tida--
she was just as instrumental as Earl was.
- Oh. - Oh!
- Too hard.
You're right.
- Tiger's vocabulary was not that advanced,
as you might imagine,
and when teaching him how to navigate
a golf course,
Earl had to dumb it down.
He had to talk at the level of a one- or two-year-old.
So when they came upon a water hazard,
Tiger would say, "Wa-wa, Daddy.
Wa-wa,"
and Earl would say, "Wa-wa, son.
Wa-wa..." [laughs] "Wa-wa bad."
♪ ♪
- His name is Eldrick Tiger Woods.
Tiger's only 2 1/2 years old,
and since he was eight months, he's been playing golf.
- Do you like playing golf? Yes or no?
Is it a lot of fun?
- [exhales heavily]
- Yes or no? - Yes or no?
Tiger.
Tiger, my career is in your hands right now.
Will you please help me? Do you like playing golf?
Yes or no?
[laughter]
[disquieting music]
- 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 their own life to live,
and he has a choice
to live his life the way he wants to live his life.
♪ ♪
- Earl would claim
that he would've been just as happy
had Tiger been a tuba player
or a guitarist
or, you know, anything other than a golfer,
but trust me,
Earl was a well-versed bullshitter.
- Par, par, par.
- Mm, okay. You gonna make it par
on the last hole? - Uh-huh.
- Okay. All right, let's go do it.
♪ ♪
- I think Earl had the master plan
since Tiger started walking.
♪ ♪
Tiger had a small stammer,
and he didn't speak with you
until he felt comfortable
around the person, and then he would talk freely.
♪ ♪
One day, Tiger opened up,
and he asked me
to ask his dad if he could play some other sports
besides just golfing,
and I told him I would.
None of the teachers were happy
to see Earl coming in for a conference
or for anything at all.
They said he was a pain in the ass.
[laughs] That's what they said,
and I agreed with them.
He was a definite SOB.
So I didn't want to say anything to aggravate Earl,
but I did say that I thought it would be nice
if Tiger could play other sports,
but Mr. Woods said he had to concentrate
on his golf.
♪ ♪
- I know what I'm looking at, and I know what I feel.
The talent is there to be the best
in the history of golf.
The world is ready
for a non-white golfer to be successful.
I have availed Tiger of this,
and he takes that responsibility seriously.
- So the first thing I've got to ask you is,
golf's quite often seen as, you know,
an upper-class white game. - Mm-hmm.
- Do you feel in some ways that you can help change that
if you became-- - Yes.
- If you became, like, the next Jack Nicklaus?
- Since I'm Black, it might be
even bigger than Jack Nicklaus.
I might be even bigger than him...
to the Blacks.
I might be sort of like a Michael Jordan in basketball,
or something like that.
[bass guitar music]
♪ ♪
- How about Tiger Woods?
- Well, Bret, on paper, Tiger Woods looks
like the prohibitive favorite in his match today.
- All right, Stephen, and as everyone knows,
if Tiger Woods can win it,
he would become the youngest amateur champion
in history.
- He's done it. Tiger Woods.
- Breaking both age and color barriers,
Tiger Woods won the U.S. Amateur Championship.
- In sports, we report tonight
on a new face to watch on the golf tour.
Tiger Woods. - Tiger Woods.
- Tiger Woods extended his streak today.
[crowd exclaims]
The 19-year-old phenom
successfully defended his crown.
- Oh! [cheers and applause]
- What an impressive shot.
- Best teenage golfer in the history of this game.
[soft music]
- Certainly well-deserved hoopla
as Tiger Woods goes for his third straight,
which has never been done before.
- He misses his putt,
he's got his work cut out for him.
♪ ♪
- It's good. Great speed!
It's in!
- Are you serious?
- Tiger was a cultural phenomenon
as well as a sports one.
Golf is basically a bastion of Caucasian America,
and Tiger was walking into this white world
and just dominating it.
The magazine editors at "SI" wanted me
to start peeling the layers away
and seeing what's going on here.
- As the army of Tiger
continues to follow him in the fairways,
there's been a lot of speculation
as to when Tiger will turn pro.
- Phil Knight, the CEO at Nike,
has been in the gallery every single day.
A lot of other potential suitors as well.
- Just seeing all the forces that were at play here,
I felt that the pressures were already starting
to multiply exponentially,
and Tiger was a kid that was in deep.
- It's been awfully hard
with, you know, the enormous crowds
and the demands,
but I've done a very good job, I think,
and hopefully, I'll continue.
- Tiger answered my questions,
but wanted to give off that he was in control
and everything was cool.
You always felt you weren't getting
all the way to the bottom of it.
- Man, this is nail-biting time
for the Wood contingent.
- Good-looking shot.
[crowd exclaims] - Great shot by Tiger Woods.
- If I'd just been reliant on Tiger at that point,
I would've been in deep scramble mode.
♪ ♪
But Tiger's father, Earl,
he loved to drink, he loved to talk,
and he'd just start saying
that his son's gonna have this grand effect
on the level of Gandhi, Buddha, Nelson Mandela,
you know, basically the chosen one.
[applause] - I know
that I was personally selected
by God himself
to nurture this young man
and bring him to the point
where he could make his contribution to humanity.
- He was adamant.
Tiger was gonna be this incredible bridge
between all the different races and tribes
of humanity,
and you know, I'm just kind of sitting there
like, "Holy crap," you know?
- This for the championship.
♪ ♪
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
- I had a real sense that there was
this looming question.
In order to become what his father's vision
for him was,
to have this large an effect
on our planet and our species,
this boy
had to walk into the maw of this machine
of celebrity and fame,
and could he survive that?
- Well, gentlemen, congratulations
on a well-played final.
Tiger, a place in golf history.
What does this do as to your feelings
as to whether you'll turn pro or stay in school?
- I really don't know right now.
I just know one thing. I'm gonna celebrate
like hell tonight.
[laughter]
[cheers and applause]
- In sports today, the inevitable:
the most talented amateur player
in the history of golf has decided to turn pro.
- Tiger Woods is quitting college
to take his game and his considerable appeal
on the professional tour
and to accept
a multimillion-dollar endorsement from Nike.
- In one short week,
Woods reinvented the business side of golf.
- Tiger, this way, please.
- He will rewrite the record books
for sports marketing.
[exciting music]
- When Tiger came to us at Nike,
everyone at the campus was talking about,
"Who's the next Michael Jordan?"
That was always the Nike question.
And then lo and behold, Tiger Woods comes along,
and he kind of was
the next Michael Jordan.
One of the first things we do with a Nike athlete
is get them media trained.
But when we told Earl
about the media training program,
he said, "I've already trained him
"how to talk to the media.
We don't need this."
I think Earl was objecting
because someone else besides him
was gonna talk to Tiger about how to be Tiger.
Earl thought Tiger was his creation,
so Earl was a little nervous
that he's gonna lose some control.
I think Earl just didn't realize
the magnitude that Nike advertising can bring.
- When you make a commercial,
you want to find what makes that product unique.
Golf was very lily white,
and there was some discussion.
I brought it up. I said,
"Do we wanna play the race card?"
Nike's not stupid financially.
Using Tiger to reach a wider range of golf
or to expand the golf universe
is a no-brainer.
They said, "Fucking yeah.
Let's do this."
[percussive music]
♪ ♪
- Now, this is the first time we can remember
when a company like Nike used racial discord
to help sell its products,
used it as a way to give a tough new edge
to a very nice young man.
- I think it's a message
that has been long awaited,
because it's very true,
and being a person who is,
I guess how you could say-- non-white,
I've had to experience that,
and the Nike campaign is just telling the truth.
- The fact that Nike is marketing him
as a Black player
tells you that Tiger Woods
is the great Black hope for golf.
- You know, when this thing happened,
I said, "Well, this is wonderful for golf,
but I wonder how great this is for just a 21-year-old kid."
The bar is now way up here.
- Tiger! Tiger!
- After that ad ran,
I felt like, "Did we put too much pressure
on this young man?"
But then I thought to myself,
"This kid is built for pressure."
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- This is an African American playing in Augusta.
This is still a place that, for all its glory of golf,
harbors a nice little corner of prejudice
and an ugly side of America.
- I mean, yeah, when you look at the history
of the Masters, I mean, you know,
it's built on a slave plantation.
- And he's gonna blow that up today.
- Record throngs showed up
to see golf's legend in the making.
- Tiger! Tiger!
- For decades, advertisers and fans
have longed for an American hero.
The question is whether anyone,
no matter how talented,
can live up to such expectations.
- The number one attention from the media was Tiger.
They would call it "buzz" around him,
but it was way bigger than buzz.
It wasn't just like, "Oh, there's a rumor
in the parking lot there's a new kid in town."
It was full out, full on.
- Can Tiger Woods win the Masters?
He's paired with Nick Faldo.
Faldo and Woods are favorites.
- Make a hole, please, gentlemen and ladies.
- When Tiger came out that morning,
he had security guys around him.
There was a genuine aura shift.
The patrons,
all their attention went to him.
The players sensed it.
All their attention, like,
"Here comes Tiger."
Everybody wanted to know,
"Can Tiger do it?"
- Fore, please. Tiger Woods now driving.
[crowd exclaims]
[applause]
- Wait a minute. What happened?
Wow, that is as far left as we've seen anybody hit it.
- The look on Tiger's face tells all.
- I played with him that day.
We'd tee off,
and we didn't play well at all.
You know, he's over in left trees,
I'm in right trees-- whatever it was,
we were in deep shit. [laughs]
- Left again.
- Woods struggling.
- Everybody's gonna choke.
When you play nine holes like that,
and you're kind of out of control,
you lose that confidence,
and it's a very fast snowball effect.
But the best golfers in the world
have ability to forget things very quickly.
You've got to go, "Okay, yeah. I've got to learn to play
in this different environment."
All the pressures, all the media attention,
disappear.
You are completely engrossed in what you're doing.
That's what Tiger was able to do.
[hopeful orchestral music]
- Kind of likes it.
And he introduces his ball to the flag.
That's the finest shot we've seen here today.
- That's the momentum. You need one good break.
[cheers and applause]
- Eagle three for Tiger Woods.
- That was the moment
he turned things around.
♪ ♪
[cheers and applause]
- Kenny, let the record show,
a little after 5:30, Friday, April the 11th,
Tiger takes the lead
for the first time ever at the Masters.
- And then we didn't see him for dust
for the next 12 years. [laughs]
That was it.
- Tiger Woods has just been brilliant today.
[cheers and applause]
- Woods walloping the field
in the third round of the Masters.
A nine-shot lead.
- This is a culmination of...a lot of hard work,
years and years of training, dreams,
and it's now turned into reality.
- Going into the final round,
it was a foregone conclusion
that Tiger was gonna win.
However, the night before the final round,
Tiger was restless, couldn't sleep.
♪ ♪
During the '97 Masters,
I know that Tiger received
some racially motivated threats,
and during the tournament itself,
you would hear the N word
from some of the folks in the gallery,
and as strong as he is mentally,
he wasn't able to block all of it out.
So he got up,
he saw a light under the door
in Earl's bedroom,
and he knocked on the door and went in,
and Earl eased all of his fears.
[cheers and applause]
- My dad says, "Hey, son, when you go out there,
"it's gonna be
"the hardest round of your life,
"but if you just be yourself,
"stay cool,
it's gonna be one of the most rewarding rounds."
- I don't know how many strokes
Woods is gonna shatter this record by,
but it's apparent
he's set a new standard for golf.
- Right now, with a 12-shot lead,
he's taking everybody else out of play.
[heavy music]
♪ ♪
- And I walk up 18.
I have a little tear in my eye.
It was something you always dream of.
I knew I'd won the tournament, but still,
I still had to take care of business.
- This putt to break
the all-time record at the Masters.
- That incredible 12-shot margin.
♪ ♪
- There it is, a win for the ages.
♪ ♪
- Other people now know
what I knew all along.
They were just too stubborn to see it.
He is just getting aware that he has this power.
When he is in full control of this power,
he can then make a difference in the world.
- Look at this.
This is the daily news in New York.
If this is not a big story,
"Tiger Woods' Awesome 18 Performance."
This is "The New York Post."
This is "USA Today."
This is "The Washington Post." - Little bit of attention.
[peppy music]
- Tiger mania takes the boardwalk
here in Atlantic City tonight
as the 21-year-old golf phenom
eclipses other stars who turned out here
for the grand opening of the Official All Star Café.
- Well, Tiger Woods receiving a standing ovation
from this crowd here in Chicago.
He's been referred to
as Michael Jordan in long pants.
- After the win, it seemed like the entire world
embraced Tiger.
[cheers and applause]
- Unharnessed enthusiasm
for the young legend.
- I'm talking about white folks,
Black folks, Asian folks-- you name it.
Everybody wanted him to be theirs.
- Hey, Tiger! - Tiger!
- The reaction to him
said something about this country.
Often accused still of a pervasive racism,
America was thrilled by and for Tiger Woods,
glad that such a young man could reach such heights;
gladder still, if anything,
that a Black man could.
- It was like white America
almost patting itself on the back like,
"Look, this is the promise that America makes,
"that anyone can use the tools that this country offers
"and make it to the highest levels,
regardless of race, color, creed."
- Go get 'em, Tiger!
- We like to believe we're this place
without racism,
but that's a great American myth.
- He has an amazing opportunity
beyond the golf course.
- He does have a great opportunity.
He's got a great burden...
- Yeah. - Also.
I mean, I think the expectations,
while they were enormous for him
going into this thing,
they're double that now.
The social burden will be considerable.
This is a guy who a lot will be expected of.
He'll be asked to be a spokesman,
and maybe that's unfair for somebody who's 21.
[pensive music]
A lot is asked of athletes of color
that is not asked of other athletes.
It's a racial society.
It's not just how you play basketball
or how you play baseball, how you play tennis,
how you play golf.
People thought that Tiger
was gonna introduce
this groundswell.
- Tiger Woods? Oh, the golf man?
I think he's kind of cool.
- I think it's great. I think it's history.
- He's gonna be a role model for anybody who wants
to do good in life.
- As an African American, I know how we are.
We take great pride
in our young people who accomplish great things,
and we claimed Tiger Woods.
He was ours.
[cheers and applause]
- Please welcome Tiger Woods!
[upbeat music]
♪ ♪
- Wow. - Wow.
That'll wake you up. - Oh, that will.
- Of course, you've received all kinds of adulation.
You also get hate mail.
I hear you insist upon reading it.
Why?
- Well, it reminds me
of what I have to try and do.
As people know, golf has been kind of an elitist sport,
and unfortunately, it's kind of close--
- Wasn't until six years ago the Augusta National
even allowed... - Exactly.
- People of color. - A Black member.
Yeah, it's--and in the clubs, still practice that,
and unfortunately, I've had to deal with that
all growing up.
I got kicked off of golf courses
numerous times, been called
some pretty tough words to my face,
and it's tough.
Golf needed to be shaken up.
[applause] - What about that?
Can we get this straight? What do you call yourself?
Your father's half Black,
quarter Chinese, quarter American Indian.
Mother's half Thai, quarter Chinese,
and quarter white.
So...
does it bother you to be called African American?
- Yeah, it does.
Growing up, I came up with this name.
I'm a Cablinasian. - A cablinasian?
- Ca--Caucasian. Bl--Black.
In--Indian. Asian.
Cablinasian.
- I remember when Tiger Woods was Black.
[laughter]
'Cause I don't know what he is now.
After he won the Masters,
I'm flipping through the "Sports Illustrated,"
and I read, "Tiger Woods is a quarter Black."
I'm like, "Damn, he's down to 25% now, man!"
[melancholy music]
But you know, as soon as he gets in trouble,
what will we read?
"Black golfer arrested."
♪ ♪
- People of color had so much invested in him.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed.
You know, my grandkids are biracial,
and...somebody asked me.
They said, "Well, what do you tell them?"
And I tell them they're Black, they're African American.
And they said, "Why?"
And I said, "Because that's how America's
going to look at them."
And that's the reality of Tiger.
- To force Tiger to choose I think is ridiculous.
Why choose? Why do you have to choose?
- ...is very much true,
but you go back,
and Tiger Woods will sit there and tell you
there were courses that he couldn't play
as he was coming up as a youngster.
It wasn't that he couldn't play because he was "Cablasian"
or whatever else he wants to be.
He couldn't play because he was a Black man.
- I believe Tiger knew
that there was racism,
he knew that there was an unlevel playing field,
but was he gonna be a messiah?
No way.
- Your dad thinks that you're going to be
the most important man that ever lived,
more so than Gandhi and Jesus.
- You know, that's--
I think that's just a dad speaking.
You know, a proud father.
- Tiger never really saw himself
as the unifying force that Earl saw him as.
That was Earl's dream,
and I don't think he realized the pressure
that he had placed on Tiger.
♪ ♪
- I hope you got some ripe ones.
- Don't eat them all.
- But don't eat them all up, Tiger!
- Took the biggest one.
- Yes, I want the biggest one.
- There's no question that Earl loved, loved Tiger.
- Sweet.
- But I think there was always the grand plan for Tiger.
- There's nothing better than stolen strawberries.
[laughs]
- I think in Earl's head that he really thought
it was the best thing for Tiger,
that he wasn't doing anything to hurt him,
but it was a plan,
and that was the stuff that would bother me.
Why would you put that on your kid?
[school bell rings]
♪ ♪
- Tiger and I met in my accounting class.
Tiger was very shy.
He didn't have friends.
He had the highest grade in the class,
so it kind of became this competition,
and I think I was teasing him a little bit about it,
and that's kind of how it started,
just as friends.
♪ ♪
You know, growing up, the boys were so typical.
The football players were the cool kids,
but Tiger said that he golfed.
And I was like, "Oh, okay."
I didn't even know we had a golfing team at the school.
The first time that I understood
the magnitude of who he was
was when I went to his house
and saw the shrine on the wall of him
with all the trophies and pictures
and magazine clippings.
This was, like, a whole nother level of...
"Hello, welcome to my home,
and it's all about Tiger Woods."
Like, it was just a lot.
- On the tee, Tiger Woods!
[cheers and applause]
- He had invited me to go to a tournament.
That was the first time I saw him play golf.
♪ ♪
He became, like, a completely different person
when he got up there.
He was, like, in control
and confident. - Come on.
- Go, go!
- And I loved that about him.
It was a quality that I thought was very attractive.
I loved it.
♪ ♪
I just remember the people
surrounding him.
- Right here. - On your shirt?
- On my shirt. - People were asking
for his autograph.
I'm like, "Who would want your autograph?
Like, what are you talking about?"
- There you go.
- Oh, how... - What do you say?
- Shake his hand.
- All right. - Thank you.
- He knew that the fame was not normal.
He always knew that.
I think he definitely saw the bridge
to me being able to give him a normal life.
- Oh, my God! [laughter]
- [laughs]
[upbeat music playing]
♪ ♪
- Tiger enjoyed going to my house
because it was always loud,
and I think the quietness of his house
sometimes drove him crazy.
♪ ♪
- Get down!
♪ ♪
[laughter]
- He knew that he could be himself
and there was no judgment and no pressure
to live up to all these expectations.
♪ ♪
- Dina, let's see some leg, baby, some leg.
Whoo! Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, Tiger. Some leg.
Whoa! [laughs] Oh, yeah.
♪ ♪
- I loved taking him to do new things.
Going to see, you know, a movie,
going bowling for the first time,
seeing his face-- it's like seeing a kid
at Christmas.
I don't know, it just was so natural with us.
I was in love with him,
and I would tell him all the time.
I'm like, "Golf is great, and it's your passion,
"but it's not everything.
There's more to life."
I wanted to protect that sweetness of him
because I could tell he didn't know
what was coming,
that fame.
It scared me.
[dramatic music]
[crowd roaring]
- Listen to the crowd.
- Tiger's got 152 yards.
They're gonna go nuts when he hits this thing.
[crowd roars]
♪ ♪
- Oh! It went in!
♪ ♪
It looks like a ticker tape parade.
♪ ♪
- Every time he went to play,
the gallery was a completely different scene
compared to what I was used to.
- Tiger! Tiger!
- His autograph became so wanted
that people were desperate to get it.
People were pushing and shoving,
and he would come away many days
with a golf shirt that had
all the different Sharpie marks on it.
When you get to know Tiger and you're--
you know, you're a little bit closer to him
than most people,
when you understand
what it is to be Tiger Woods,
what it is to be in his shoes,
to go through what he does,
I think you can't but admire the guy,
and you feel like you want to protect the guy
a little bit.
So working for Tiger was certainly
more than just being a caddie.
You've also got to be a bodyguard.
Could you hold the camera, please?
- A "New York Daily News" photographer
said that Steve came over
and kicked his camera
after he was taking pictures
during Tiger's practice swing.
- Good, Tiger.
[applause]
- I mean, you know, obviously,
throughout my time of caddying for Tiger,
I did a couple of things I regret,
but you just gotta try and make it
as easy as it can be
for Tiger to perform
at the level he wants to
without all the distractions.
- Life is always full of goals.
- Mm. -What's yours?
- Mine, ultimately?
To be the best.
- So you wanna be known as the best
who ever played this game.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Tiger's main focus
was to win major championships.
He always believed he could get better
and he could strive for perfection.
[quiet beating music]
I remember we were driving down this freeway,
and he goes,
"Stevie, stop the car. Stop the car."
And he got the golf club out of the trunk,
and he's swinging on the side of the road.
Now, here's Tiger Woods
on the side of the freeway in Toronto,
swinging a golf club.
He's got this thought in his head,
"If I can just do this,"
and he couldn't wait
till the next day
or till he got back to the hotel
or wherever it was.
It had to be now.
There is no one would do that, just nobody.
- I remember I said to Tiger,
"How much better can your swing actually get?
This is probably as good as anyone's ever played golf."
And he looks at me, and he says,
"You always ask me that question.
I'm gonna be way better than I am now."
- You took a lot of criticism for changing your golf swing.
- Can always become better.
- It's almost like it's an obsession.
- It is. I'm addicted.
I'm addicted to golf.
- Tiger, back then at least, was obsessed.
I mean, he was always practicing.
- A lot of the changes--
he had to get stronger to make them,
What are you, about 20 pounds heavier now
than when you first came on the tour?
- Yeah, I came on the tour at 158,
and now I'm 180.
- And then the gym took over.
- And the key here is just to keep the right arm
higher than the left.
You can see the chin gets up,
the back is much straighter,
and it's taken him over a year
to feel comfortable with that,
hitting thousands of balls.
[thunder rolls]
- The fascinating thing for me about Tiger Woods:
he's never satisfied.
The hunger never goes away.
It's this monk-like pursuit
of the goal,
the common goal:
perfection.
[drum music]
♪ ♪
- The U.S. Open, Pebble Beach.
It has a very, very, very special ring to it,
and here we are to decide the championship.
Well, it's a very interesting course
in that it tests every skill you have.
♪ ♪
Now Colin Montgomerie.
- He has hit it very high,
but it needs to get up and a little left.
Oh, that ball is down in the hazard.
Uh-oh. - Tried to get
a little too cute, I think, Mark.
[plodding band music]
- The U.S. Open likes to set its courses up
so it tortures the players.
I'm convinced of that.
It wants to see them, like,
break down and cry.
♪ ♪
That means heavy rough.
The grass is high on either side of the fairway.
♪ ♪
[crowd murmurs]
- Fore! - Out of bounds everywhere.
- Uh-oh. Uh-oh.
That's a miss. That's left.
[crowd exclaims] That's left.
- Wow. Oops.
On the cart path. Watch this thing go.
- I mean, that was a really hard golf course.
[dramatic music]
- Tiger Woods well back,
getting ready for his shot
at one of the more gut-wrenching shots
in the world.
- None of that bothered Tiger.
♪ ♪
- Let's get it right. Come on, baby.
Come on. Be the right club.
Come on! Come on, be it.
- The ball started at the left side.
It's cutting into the center of the green.
This looks really good.
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
[onlookers cheering] - Oh, my!
♪ ♪
Wow. Is this really happening?
Double digits.
- 2000 at Pebble Beach
was where it all came together,
and Tiger Woods played quite simply
the greatest golf of all time.
You just couldn't take your eyes off of him, you know.
There was this element
that Tiger brought between the ropes
that no golfer had.
♪ ♪
He was wearing a shirt the color of blood.
He was so hypermasculine.
You know, he strutted around like a toreador.
It was riveting.
- Look at that bicep on his left arm.
I mean, this guy bench presses
300-plus pounds.
- Eh, well, I guess that means this one's really going far.
♪ ♪
Wow. That is really deep.
Just a driving machine.
- As he was coming down to the last hole,
he was leading by 15.
I mean, it was absolutely incredible,
and I remember sitting there,
you know, thinking to myself,
"One day, the golfing record book
"will be two words.
In every category, Tiger Woods."
♪ ♪
[cheers and applause]
- And Tiger Woods is the 100th
U.S. Open champion
in history.
- You have long been a student of this game.
Your dad taught you the game of golf.
Today, of course, is Fathers' Day.
Your dad's not here, but I'm gonna make a wild guess
and say that I'll bet you he's watching.
Any thoughts you'd like to share with him today?
- Well, it's not too bad a Fathers' Day present, is it?
[cheers and applause]
[uneasy music]
♪ ♪
- Earl was a Green Beret,
did two tours in 'Nam.
♪ ♪
Earl was demolition,
so they would send him behind enemy lines
not with a gun, but with C4,
dynamite.
Like the most dangerous job he could possibly have
is to go behind enemy lines
and blow up a headquarters.
He had the mental fortitude that it took
to survive in Vietnam,
and that's how and why
he was able to create this little assassin
within the ropes.
♪ ♪
And he did it at the Navy golf course,
the Bethlehem of golf.
♪ ♪
The Navy golf course was only open and available
to active duty and retired military.
When I first started there,
I was the new young assistant pro.
I was the new guy.
No one was giving me the time of day.
Along comes Earl Woods,
introduces himself, shakes my hand,
nicest guy in the world.
I'm like, "Finally, somebody's being friendly to me
in this joint."
Well, we hit it off.
Earl invited me to play with him and Tiger.
Mind you, I still don't know who Tiger is.
I just think he's Earl's kid,
so I'm kind of checking him out
while we play.
Whenever Tiger would go to hit,
Earl would start jiggling his change
and talking to me like I'm talking right now,
loud, just being completely rude.
- That didn't work.
- Finally, like, on the sixth hole,
I shush Earl. I shush him.
And Earl's like,
"Joe, don't you know what I'm doing?"
He goes, "I'm preparing Tiger
to play through distraction when he gets to the tour."
[pensive music]
- Where's my fade?
♪ ♪
Sit down. Sit!
Stop. - It went over.
- Stop!
- I brought this out in him,
his toughness.
I would do all kinds of things
to mess him up,
usually on the golf course.
Man, did he get angry with me.
- Step over. That's it.
- I could say one word,
and that word was the release word
that the whole training was over.
I said, "Tiger,
"if you never utter that word,
"I promise you that you'll never meet
another person as mentally tough as you."
- He played mind games on me almost every shot I hit,
until I grew up and accepted it,
and then it was nothing.
♪ ♪
- Earl did everything he could to toughen his boy up.
One of the things that really made Tiger
incredibly strong
was this ability that he had taught to him
by his father's friend,
who was a naval psychological ops operative,
basically, a psychologist,
to hypnotize himself.
♪ ♪
People say, "Oh, Tiger's in the zone,"
but he literally was in some sort of a trance,
which is an amazing thing that you would do
for a kid that was 13 or 14.
♪ ♪
- Good try, Dad.
- That military training that Earl passed along
to Tiger, it was something else.
But his mother,
she's the one who made him a complete competitor,
because her philosophy was,
"Put your foot on their throat, son.
You kill them."
- I am very tough with him, and he knows it.
Not with Dad.
Dad only used the voice and tone,
but I said to Tiger, "No matter how big you are,
I can beat you. I can spank you."
And he knows it, what I mean.
[laughs]
- She was very strict.
She said if I ever cross the boundaries that she set,
there was always consequences.
♪ ♪
- Earl and Tida, they had this image
of who he was supposed to be,
and I think that they were worried about me,
'cause I certainly didn't fit into that.
I felt like their plans were creating this robot.
There was all this preparation for golf, which is great.
You're gonna be a great golfer.
But he had no life skills.
He had not been prepared for life.
And I was probably the only person around him
that really kept him in check.
- Merry Christmas, Tiger.
all: Merry Christmas!
- And I would tell him,
"You know, you are gonna want to get married and have kids,
"and golf is not gonna be the most important thing.
I mean, you're gonna have to find that balance."
He would say, "I'm in love with you.
"I want that.
I just wanna have a life with you."
♪ ♪
- Earl and Tida, they were very nervous about that.
One time, Tiger lied to them
in saying that he was coming home
from college the next day,
when he'd actually arrived the day before
and stayed at his girlfriend's house.
Tida and Earl,
they were furious.
Tiger called me. He was so upset, he called me.
"Joe, I'm a lot of trouble, you know?"
And he told me what had happened.
I said, "Well, I'll go over there."
You know, "I'll help you out, champ.
I got your back on this,"
'cause I was very close to Earl and Tida at the time.
I go over there, and I was shocked.
Tida was goddamn-ing a lot,
very loud tone of voice. "God damn it!"
And Earl was just incensed,
and you could just hear it in his voice.
"We don't need this.
"You gotta push-- she's gonna get pregnant.
"You're gonna blow-- he's gonna blow
the whole goddamn thing."
And they're ready to just kick him out of the house.
They were so mad.
And Tiger, you know, he was spooked.
He was spooked.
- "Dina, the reason for writing this letter
"is to inform you my parents and myself
"never want to talk or hear from you again.
"Reflecting back over this relationship,
"I feel used and manipulated by you and your family.
"I hope the rest of your life runs well for you.
"I know this is sudden and a surprise,
"but it is, in my opinion, much warranted.
Sincerely, Tiger."
♪ ♪
Yeah, it was awful.
I mean, we've been in this three-year relationship,
and you know, I thought about, "Should I drive over there?"
I just wanted to confront him.
I just wanted him to look me in the face and tell me this.
If it's the truth, then we're good.
Then our relationship was a whole lie.
That's fine, but I wanna hear it from you.
It's just--I replay that day in my head
over and over again.
What happened?
What really triggered all this?
But you know, I have to--
it has to be that it was just the plan.
[disquieting music]
♪ ♪
It was like a death, and I had to treat it like a death,
because I had to just let it go
and pretend like he was gone,
because honestly, the person that I fell in love with,
the Tiger that I had known,
had died.
♪ ♪
That part of him, the part of his soul,
that I knew would never treat me that way.
His sweetness was stolen from him.
The new Tiger was here,
and he was all about golf.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- In almost complete darkness...
- And it is very hard to even see
the flight of any ball onto the 18th green.
Now Tiger.
- This one appears to be online, I think.
- Oh, no. You can't do that!
I don't believe it. [laughs]
I don't believe it.
♪ ♪
- What Tiger does with a golf club is...
it's stunning.
It's frightening how good he is.
- Johnny, I have seen a number of players putt
from the back part of this green,
and the results have not been good.
♪ ♪
[crowd yelling]
That's...better than most.
- How about in? - It is better than most.
Better than most!
- I don't think that people
had ever seen anybody like Tiger before.
- Tiger's about to give this quite a big lash.
[laughs]
- His swing was so violent,
and he had such a torque in his back,
I thought it just was gonna snap like a twig.
- Heaves it on.
- That was not just technique.
That's all about strength.
- I've never seen anybody who had so much fun
crushing a golf ball
and just obliterating his opponents.
- Ti got in trouble at the 17th.
- When Tiger played golf,
there was a hunger to see him do something
that you've never seen before.
- Would you believe it?
[cheers and applause]
- People invested themselves in him as a figure,
as something representing
what they wanted to believe
was good in themselves.
It became this hold he had
on people's sacred imagination.
♪ ♪
Earl Woods was
the original evangelist of the Gospel of Tiger Woods.
He put it out into the world
and found all these other evangelists
who were willing to spread it.
- You're the man, Tiger!
- Among the fans, I mean, there was just
an overwhelming urge to come see this guy.
People's enthusiasm grew
until it became this monster,
and Tiger knew he couldn't stop it.
[somber music]
- Tiger, please! - Step back, step back!
Stay back. Stay back.
- I think there's fame, and then there's mania.
[fans clamoring]
♪ ♪
Being out in public with Tiger
was absolutely insane.
[fans clamoring]
It was just the most intense,
screaming, crying,
jumping up and down,
almost hyperventilating reaction to him.
- Take it easy. Take it easy.
- My uncle was also a professional golfer,
so I knew that world,
but this was different.
This was next level.
♪ ♪
As a friend, I know that he wanted
to be a normal kid in many ways
and that inside, there's a person
who is a little confused
by this crazy world he's been thrust into.
♪ ♪
- I guess there's one thing that I really do miss
is a sense of privacy.
People are usually trying to invade my privacy,
and you know, sometimes that's tough.
[pensive music]
- The machine of fame starts to just wallop Tiger.
♪ ♪
Earl sees this piling up on his son
and tries to break the tension, and Tiger says,
"You don't know what this is like."
And Earl, you know, tries to sympathize with him,
like, saying, "You're right. I--must be terrible,"
and Tiger just, you know, bites his head off.
[camera shutters snapping]
We're really getting a sense of the pressures
that were gonna start coming on Tiger and Earl,
the father-son relationship that had been so tight.
- Okay. We're rolling, fellas.
- Even though Earl taught him
the mental toughness to tackle the game of golf,
I'm not sure that Tiger was mentally tough enough
to handle the pressures of fame,
and he started looking for ways to sort of escape.
[tranquil music]
♪ ♪
I remember when he started really taking
an intense liking to scuba diving.
That, to me, just kind of was odd.
But then, when I started kind of asking him
more about scuba diving,
I think he said to me, you know,
"The fishies don't know who I am down there."
♪ ♪
I thought that there was so much truth
in that statement,
so much sadness in that statement.
He loved the silence and the peace
that he could find at the bottom of the ocean.
♪ ♪
He could just be.
♪ ♪
[crowd chanting "Tiger"]
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Quite extraordinary atmosphere,
knowing that he's going to win.
- It's as if they're just waiting
for the king to be crowned.
[desolate music]
- With Tiger Woods, surely nothing can go wrong now.
♪ ♪
Oh, please go in.
We don't want any anticlimax.
♪ ♪
Oh, well done.
- Tiger's form was unmatched to me at that time.
His win at the U.S. Open
was still just in the mirror behind us,
and then he went on and backed it up
at the British Open,
remarkable back-to-back wins in major championships.
- The champion golfer for the year, Tiger Woods.
[cheers and applause]
- One of the most unusual things
about working for Tiger:
there was never really any big celebrations.
Soon as that tournament was over,
the thought was to the next major championship.
♪ ♪
- This to win now from Tiger.
- Get in the hole! Get in the hole!
- Tiger!
[onlookers shouting]
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
- When Tiger went to the PGA Championship,
that's three in a row.
Everybody starts asking,
"Can Tiger Woods win the Masters next year
and hold all four trophies?"
- Will he be the first ever
to win four consecutive major championships?
- Tiger's going for his fourth straight Major.
- Even the unbreakable records
seem within Tiger's reach.
- I mean, I got to the point where I got sick of hearing it,
sick of reading about it.
It just dominated golf
for that period of time, and...yeah.
- If Tiger Woods wins this tournament,
it'll be the greatest achievement
in modern-day golf.
- The first couple of rounds, Tiger played remarkable,
and when he arrived for the final round,
it all came down to him
and one other player,
the guy that he wants to beat the most,
and the guy that he would least like
to see win the tournament:
his good mate Phil.
[disquieting music]
♪ ♪
- Tiger had grown up in Phil's shadow
in southern California.
Mickelson was about 6 1/2 years older,
and he had all the southern California records.
- Good afternoon to you.
Phil's gone, and same rules.
Good luck to you.
- Play good, man. - Good luck.
- Thanks. I got...
- Tiger knew that Phil was
the most naturally gifted player
ever to hold a golf club.
- Yeah. Get it, Phil!
- But Tiger looked at him with disdain
because he couldn't fathom having that much ability
and not putting in the time to be great.
Phil had about 20 extra pounds,
and Tiger was looking more and more
like Mr. Universe,
and with Tida Woods, it was personal.
Tida loved to make fun of Mickelson's body.
- Phil's nickname is "Lefty,"
but Tida called him "Hefty."
♪ ♪
So Tiger is in the situation
where to prove his alpha dog superiority,
he's gotta beat this guy.
But it's not enough to just beat Phil.
- Beautiful.
- You gotta try to humiliate him
at the same time.
- Oh, on the tee,
Phil Mickelson.
Did he cut it enough?
Oh, yes, he did.
He has been very good at his tee shots here with 13
all week.
- On the 13th hole,
Tiger and Phil are dueling,
and Phil got up and hit this great drive
right down the middle.
- Now Tiger Woods.
- Tiger decided
that was gonna be the perfect time
to play a little bit of a mind game on Phil.
He gets his three wood, which is a smaller club...
[cheers and applause]
- That's huge.
That's really big.
You thought Mickelson was big?
Put it right by it.
- You know, I could sort of sense
that Mickelson was feeling a bit dejected.
He's just hit the best drive he could,
and then Tiger's hit a three wood
and whipped it by him,
and Phil says to Tiger,
you know, "Do you always hit your three wood that long?"
and Tiger said, "No, further.
Normally further than that." [laughs]
It's amazing, the little games within a game
Tiger would play.
That shot just deflated Phil's ego,
and he couldn't bounce back.
- He's looking dangerously down the left side.
[disquieting waltz music]
And that catches the trees.
- If there ever was a must putt,
you're looking at it right now.
♪ ♪
[audience exclaims]
- Wow.
- And now Tiger Woods...
can make his move now on this closing stretch.
Oh. And he's pulled it
right at the hole. Look out!
[crowd roars]
Was that any good? - Unbelievable.
♪ ♪
- Well, that should be enough to do it.
Here comes the salute
to an achievement that's about to be completed
unlike anything this sport has ever seen.
♪ ♪
- A streak that started at Pebble Beach.
- St. Andrews. - Valhalla.
- Augusta.
- And here it is.
This putt for the Tiger slam.
[crowd cheering]
- There it is, as planned as it gets!
And Tiger has his slam.
- He's won all of golf's majors
faster than any other player in history,
and he just made history again,
signing a new five-year, $100 million endorsement deal
with Nike. - And he's locked in
with American Express, with Titleist,
for millions and millions of dollars.
Buick, he just signed a huge contract with them.
- He's making a lot of jack, as they say.
- Much more than Michael Jordan,
and he was the king.
- He can sell just about anything:
cereal, cars, golf clubs.
- Now, Tiger's conquering another kind of golf game:
video golf.
- Pick up your controller, Mr. Woods.
Okay? - Yes, sir.
- When you see the swing here
versus when you look at video of your swing,
how realistic is this?
- It's almost identical, yeah. - Really?
- I just wish I was that big.
[laughter]
- As Tiger's bank account swelled,
as he collected jets and yachts
and all the trappings that this world has to offer,
I think he pushed back from Earl quite a bit.
[melancholy music]
- What is the relationship with your father these days?
- You know, we're still great friends,
still, you know, a father, son,
but we don't get a chance to spend much time
with each other 'cause I'm so busy.
- Tiger became a corporation, trying to make money,
and it needs a steady, consistent rock
at its head,
and that wasn't Earl anymore.
So there became some issues that arose
that necessitated Tiger kind of moving away from Earl.
♪ ♪
- Tiger and I had a very big fight,
and he said, "Well,
"I have this problem,
"and the problem is,
"I don't know whether you can handle
"being a businessman
and a father at the same time."
- Tiger was growing up,
and I think that caused disagreements.
♪ ♪
Heated.
Obviously, there's far more that I could tell you
about the disagreements, but I can't.
I can't talk about that.
That's one place I know not to go to.
♪ ♪
- How would you describe
your relationship with your father?
- He is my best friend... - And yet this--
- No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
He is my best friend.
- But he's much older than you.
- That's all right.
You can still have a best friend who's 61.
- Tiger absolutely idolized his dad.
He loved his dad.
Golf was their connection,
and they had spent a lot of time
doing that together.
- There it is. There it is.
Perfect. Good boy.
He's my best friend.
- But he's your son.
- But he's my best friend.
- They were buddies,
but he needed his dad.
He didn't need another friend.
That was forgotten in that relationship,
and Earl crossed boundaries
that he shouldn't have crossed.
♪ ♪
- [sighs] Gosh.
You know, I love this guy.
Earl was a great, great dad, but...
I don't know how to smooth this one over.
I assure you that we were not the best role models
when it came to honoring your marriage.
I assure you.
Ooh, this is a tough one.
Yeah, w...
Hang on. Give me two seconds.
I gotta collect my thoughts.
♪ ♪
Shit.
He's not gonna like this shit at all.
♪ ♪
Earl had this little Winnebago,
and we'd let him teach on the range,
and he somehow would...
teach very attractive blonde women.
I never figured out where he met these women.
And often, you know, after the lesson,
they'd go into the Winnebago for cocktails.
♪ ♪
And you know, Tiger was at the course.
♪ ♪
You know, and I was just every bit as bad.
I mean, for a long time, me and Earl were
the two biggest male figures in his life,
the two closest to him, and you know,
and here I am... [sighs]
Chasing skirts and bringing them to the course,
and he's seeing this.
Yeah, yeah, and I was married, too, at the time,
and he's seeing this.
♪ ♪
Yeah.
You know, to have that kind of access
to this child's development
and expose him to that is just...
Yeah.
I mean...yeah.
♪ ♪
Yeah.
Sorry, champ.
Sorry.
♪ ♪
- I mean, any child having to witness that
and know what's happening--
it's not right.
It's just not right,
and you know, that made
a huge impact on his life.
[uneasy music]
When Tiger and I were still together,
he would travel in the summer for tournaments with his dad,
and he called me one time,
and I will never forget.
He was sobbing on the phone uncontrollably.
I couldn't even understand
what he was saying, he was so upset.
He, you know, finally caught his breath,
and you know, said, "My dad's out again.
He...met this girl, and they're going out."
♪ ♪
The sound of Tiger's voice
was so upsetting,
I wanted to crawl through the phone
and just take care of him.
I've never heard somebody in my life so upset.
And his dad, I don't think,
really cared that he knew it.
I think that also bothered him.
Like, why would you not try to hide this from me?
Like, why would you just,
you know, let me see this?
♪ ♪
Tiger's mom was a loyal, good mother,
and he absolutely loved her,
so there was an anger there with his dad,
but he could never show it.
He could never express it.
He had to keep that in.
And it changed the relationship
with him and his dad.
Did he still idolize him and love him?
Absolutely.
But it changed. It changed.
♪ ♪
- Now, you used to appear more at tournaments
than you used to.
Is it strictly a health thing? You've had eight bypasses.
You've battled prostate cancer. - No.
No, it isn't health.
If you noticed,
Tiger's grown up.
Tiger is handling his life
by himself,
and that was the original game plan.
♪ ♪
- Earl was a human being,
with all of the foibles and faults.
He had girlfriends,
and they became messy.
It was gonna become public, and Tiger went out of his way
to make sure that nobody knew
what was going on with Earl: the womanizing, the drinking.
Tiger did not want any shadows on his brand.
He did not want any shadows on his foundation.
It drove Earl and Tiger apart at the very time
that they probably should've been together,
because Earl was finally starting to show his age
and fragility.
- What's the most important thing
that he taught you?
- Patience and understanding.
- What's the most important thing in raising children?
What's the one bit of advice that you can give
the fathers and the mothers out there?
- You have to earn their trust and their respect.
I have a phrase that love is a given,
trust and respect are earned.
You have to earn it.
♪ ♪
- During that period,
I don't think they were able
to spend as much time as they had before.
Tiger had his own life to try to live,
and he moved on.
- He is one of my all-time favorite guys
in the world. I just adore him.
He has a God-given talent that makes grown men weep.
[laughter]
- Please welcome Tiger Woods!
[jaunty music]
♪ ♪
Whoo.
Here we go again.
So how are you handling all the adulation?
As you came in, the guys were, you know, bowing and--
- I haven't gotten used to it.
I honestly don't feel comfortable with it.
- You don't? - No.
- Tiger has a really close-knit group
of superstar athlete friends,
one of them Charles Barkley.
He has advised you
not to get married until you're 30.
- Mm.
- Everybody wants to know. Who you dating?
[laughter]
- Who? - Anybody
you wanna tell me about? - I am, yes.
- Okay.
[laughter]
- When you find the right person,
you know it's the right person.
[lilting music]
Elin, she was a nanny
for one of the other players.
I remember, straight away,
he was very, very fond of this girl...
♪ ♪
To the point where
I had to learn how to pronounce her name properly,
'cause how you say it in Swedish...
He was adamant that when I say her name--
"No, Steve, this is how you say it."
So I knew straight away
that hey, this girl was a little bit different
to probably some of the other girls
that he had been with.
- Elin told me that he didn't make
a great impression on her at first.
She had her opinions about celebrities,
and they were not high,
and she's very shy,
so the idea of kind of joining that world
was not appealing to her.
And when he asked her out,
I think she turned him down at first,
and then she gradually was convinced
that she should give him a chance,
and so they did go out.
- Do you love Tiger, Elin?
- She said the hardest part about that
was adjusting to the spotlight that followed him.
But Tiger was very sweetly protective
of Elin.
She said it felt special.
Ironically, the spotlight that first repelled her
suddenly bonded them,
sort of "us against the world."
It was just the two of them,
and she believed it was everything.
- I have found a life partner, a best friend.
You know, Elin's been incredible for me.
She's brought joy and balance in my life,
and I'm very lucky.
- Tiger and Elin were married October 5th
on the island of Barbados,
a lavish yet intimate affair
they tried desperately to keep private.
- Yeah, make sure you get the shot.
That's Jordan behind.
- This is supposed to be an intimate moment
between our family and friends...
- Right. - Not with the whole world.
So... [clears throat]
That part of it I don't quite understand why,
but the world's changed so much.
Gossip sells now.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Elin was fantastic.
Beautiful model, squeaky clean image.
She made Tiger bulletproof.
You could've sent somebody from central casting,
and that's her; she's the wife.
- Action.
- Tiger certainly has a good understanding
of what sells these days.
Tiger earns an estimated $80 million a year.
- Her image, you know, it promotes his brand.
It's exactly the side of him that he wants you to see.
♪ ♪
But there was a lot of speculation
that she was gonna affect his golf.
- People were always trying to create a way
that's gonna somehow knock him down off the tree.
He gets married.
Is that gonna show a slump in form?
- I mean, this guy-- he's way different
to anybody else. Come on.
♪ ♪
- This is the ball of Tiger Woods.
Lenny, what about this?
- This is extremely difficult.
This is one of the toughest pitches
on the entire place here.
There's a good chance he doesn't get this
inside the mark to his ball.
♪ ♪
- Oh, there it comes.
[crowd cheering]
Oh, my goodness.
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
Oh, wow!
In your life, have you seen anything like that?
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Thank you.
I want to thank my mom, my wife, Elin,
for always being there with me and for me
and just helping me out.
You guys are the best. Thank you so much.
[applause]
But also, I gotta say one last thing
before I go.
My dad hasn't been feeling very well this year.
He's just hanging in there, so I...
[exhales forcefully]
Every year that I've been lucky enough
to have won this tournament, my dad's been there
to give me a hug, and he wasn't there today.
I can't wait to go home and see him,
to give him a big bear hug.
Thank you.
♪ ♪
- Earl Woods lost his battle with cancer today
at the age of 74.
There was no understating the impact
this one man had
on his very famous son.
[somber music]
♪ ♪
- When I heard that Earl had passed,
I worried about Tiger more than anybody.
♪ ♪
In Earl's latter years,
I don't know how much they saw each other.
When you don't see a parent as often as you would like,
there's a sense of guilt
when something happens to them.
♪ ♪
And so Tiger had
a very, very heavy burden on him.
You could see it in his face.
- Daddy!
Daddy!
♪ ♪
- Whoo! Good job.
- Dad, I'm out three out there.
- Yeah, you're doing very good.
♪ ♪
- Tiger kept Earl at a distance at the end,
but that's looking at the story--
only this part of it.
You gotta look at the whole thing.
I mean, he was pops.
Look at what Earl accomplished with Tiger.
A little kid with buck teeth
banging on a club in a garage?
I mean, when you start with something like that,
and then you become the biggest name in golf,
and your dad is the one who invented you,
that's pretty heavy stuff.
I mean, his pops meant everything to Tiger.
- In the days following Earl's death,
there were a lot of later-night calls.
Hearing Tiger cry and just--
he just was having a very hard time processing.
♪ ♪
There was no replacing Earl.
This person who had always been
by his side was gone,
and he couldn't compartmentalize that.
♪ ♪
That was sadness on a level
that he had never felt before.
That was grief,
and I'm not sure that he knew how to grieve.
♪ ♪
- After the death of his father,
it's been an emotional roller coaster,
but Tiger's pretty good at shutting everything out.
- On the tee from USA, Tiger Woods!
[cheers and applause]
- Let's hear it for Tiger Woods.
He's in the same grouping at Nick Faldo.
- When you go through a loss like Tiger's,
I think any athlete would say
that, well, "Just get me on my field,
my course,"
because all that thinking, all that emotion,
is just not what we're used to.
The golf course is a sanctum.
[pensive music]
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
- Good luck, guys. - Thanks.
- I played with him for those first two days,
and I remember describing him as being in golfing Zen.
♪ ♪
- Having to bury my father,
it hurt a lot,
but I still hadn't really grieved yet,
and for some reason, it was the most interesting thing,
going out there and playing.
I had this overwhelming sense of calm.
It was like a-- my pop was there.
- Oh, soaring into the blue sky.
♪ ♪
[crowd exclaims]
Oh, oh, it's in. It's in.
He doesn't know yet. Yeah, he knows now.
- Oh, that is just extraordinary.
It was just a fantastic shot.
- It all provided a lot of self-confidence
for Tiger,
but with Earl passing,
you know, now he had to rely on himself.
♪ ♪
The whole thing was just a great way
to actually get it out, get it in the open,
and move forward.
He seemed to be, you know, the same Tiger Woods as old.
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
- The crowd love him.
The crowd appreciates the skill of this man,
and there's his wife.
The man is gonna win his 11th major
here at Islay.
Tiger Woods is the 135th Open champion.
He is the champion golfer of the year.
[cheers and applause]
And there's emotion there because, I am sure,
he's thinking of his father
and how much his father would have loved
to have been here.
- He released all of the emotions that he had,
but still, it wasn't over.
[John Cooper Clarke's "Evidently Chickentown"]
He suffered from a lot of scars,
and Tiger had that ability
to bury something very deep
and never think about it again.
- The human side of Tiger Woods.
[cheers and applause]
You admire him even more.
- But I believe there's a reckoning.
We all will face it someday.
♪ ♪
That's the way it always happens.
- ♪ The bloody cops are bloody keen ♪
♪ To bloody keep it bloody clean ♪
♪ The bloody chief's a bloody swine ♪
♪ Who bloody draws a bloody line ♪
♪ At bloody fun and bloody games ♪
♪ The bloody kids he bloody blames ♪
♪ Are nowhere to be bloody found ♪
♪ Anywhere in Chickentown ♪
♪ ♪
♪ The bloody scene is bloody sad ♪
♪ The bloody news is bloody bad ♪
♪ The bloody weed is bloody turf ♪
♪ The bloody speed is bloody surf ♪
♪ The bloody folks are bloody daft ♪
♪ Don't make me bloody laugh ♪
♪ It bloody hurts to look around ♪
♪ Everywhere in Chickentown ♪
♪ The bloody train is bloody late ♪
♪ You bloody wait, you bloody wait ♪
♪ You're bloody lost and bloody found ♪
♪ Stuck in fucking Chickentown ♪
♪ ♪
- Okay, so what do you want me to talk about?
- ♪ The bloody view is bloody vile ♪
♪ For bloody miles and bloody miles ♪
♪ The bloody babies bloody cry ♪
♪ The bloody flowers bloody die ♪
♪ The bloody food is bloody muck ♪
♪ The bloody drains are bloody fucked ♪
♪ The color scheme is bloody brown ♪
♪ Evidently Chickentown ♪
♪ ♪
♪ The bloody pubs are bloody dull ♪
♪ The bloody clubs are bloody full ♪
♪ Of bloody girls and bloody guys ♪
♪ With bloody murder in their eyes ♪
♪ A bloody bloke got bloody stabbed ♪
♪ Waiting for a bloody cab ♪
♪ You bloody stay at bloody home ♪
♪ The bloody neighbor bloody moans ♪
♪ Keep the bloody racket down ♪
♪ This is bloody Chickentown ♪
♪ ♪
♪ The bloody pies are bloody old ♪
♪ The bloody chips are bloody cold ♪
♪ The bloody beer is bloody flat ♪
♪ The bloody flats have bloody rats ♪
♪ The bloody clocks are bloody wrong ♪
♪ The bloody days are bloody long ♪
♪ It bloody gets you bloody down ♪
♪ Evidently Chickentown ♪
♪ The bloody train is bloody late ♪
♪ You bloody wait and bloody wait ♪
♪ You're bloody lost and bloody found ♪
♪ Stuck in fucking Chickentown ♪
♪ ♪
announcer: This has been a presentation
of HBO Sports.