The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods (29 page)

Mark had been one of the few touring pros that Tiger practiced with at Isleworth. After Mark had moved to Houston a couple of years earlier and John Cook had gone back to California, only Arjun Atwal, among the touring pros who lived at the club, was a regular playing partner. Arjun is two years older than Tiger and originally from India. His friendship with Tiger had grown in 2007 after Arjun had been involved in a car accident in which another driver was killed when both cars went off the road. Witnesses claimed the two men were street racing, but Arjun denied those claims. For eleven months, Arjun’s career was on hold as law enforcement considered charging him with vehicular homicide, but ultimately no criminal charges were brought. At Isleworth, other pros seemed to shy away from Arjun during this period, but Tiger, perhaps feeling a kinship with another outsider, invited him to hit balls and practice with him. Tiger seemed comfortable with Arjun’s low-key personality, and Arjun had a nice way of working hard on his game while still deferring to Tiger. O’Meara and Cook were the same way. Even when Mark won two major championships in 1998, he was never a threat to Tiger, and neither was Arjun.

It got more complicated for players to be Tiger’s practice partners after the scandal. Extreme discretion was implicitly demanded. Mark and John had been interviewed about Tiger many times over the years, but both had a way of saying things about the “private” Tiger without giving anything away. Arjun played it even safer, giving only the most general of answers. It was easy for a quote to backfire, as another pro, Ben Curtis, found out the hard way.

When Tiger started practicing again, he agreed to play a couple of rounds with Ben at Isleworth as a favor to Steve Johnson, my partner in my instruction schools and Ben’s teacher. Tiger didn’t play very well, but he was nice to Ben, a quiet guy who was very respectful. Tiger even helped Ben with his game. The gesture suggested that Tiger was being more considerate of others since emerging from therapy, and I complimented him on it. But a few days later, after it got out that Ben had practiced with Tiger, some reporters at the Bay Hill tournament asked Ben his impressions of Tiger’s game. Despite having won the 2003 British Open, Ben is not that media savvy, so quite innocently, he said something about Tiger appearing nervous and his game looking a bit rusty. It was a poor choice of words, considering how much attention another player’s assessment of Tiger’s game would get, and it led to news stories portraying Tiger as fragile in the wake of the scandal. Ben hadn’t meant to criticize Tiger, but that didn’t matter. The next time I saw Tiger, he mentioned Ben’s quotes and said, “I’ll never play with that guy again.”

Actually, “rusty” was a gentle description of Tiger’s game. He simply didn’t have his old command. His body speed seemed slower, and for the first time that I’d ever observed, he was mis-hitting a lot of shots. In my experience, even when Tiger hit the ball off line, he would always hit it in the middle of the club. I knew this by the sound and also because when I’d clean off his irons during his practice sessions at Isleworth the only impact mark on the face was always right on the sweet spot. Now he was catching irons too much toward the top of the ball—“thin”—as well as hitting the ground behind the ball—“fat.” Both Corey and I kept encouraging him, but it was obvious Tiger was struggling. One day, Corey quietly said, “Hank, he’s just not as good as he was.”

Tiger had plenty of distractions, including meetings with a team of public-relations experts who specialized in emergency damage control. He gave whatever energy he could muster to his golf game, but he seemed to tire more quickly, physically and mentally. At night, we’d sometimes talk about his swing, but mostly we watched sports on television. He was going to bed a lot earlier, around nine p.m. He said one of the best things that had come from his therapy was new medication that allowed him to sleep better. He’d long complained about being a light sleeper, one who usually had a hard time getting more than five hours, but now he claimed to be getting a solid eight.

There was also less conversation during our practice and playing sessions, and even during our downtime. After Tiger got out of therapy, Mark Steinberg told me, “Hank, he needs us really badly right now. Be as positive as you can be.” But even in Tiger’s best years, it was awkward trying to say anything motivational to him. I might acknowledge a good work session by saying something like, “Your dad would be really proud of the way you worked today.” But about the most such a comment would get would be a nod. It was why I preferred texting Tiger when I wanted to impart something substantial.

There were a couple of times when I was at his house when Tiger
did
talk a bit about his situation. He knew I understood the language of therapy, and he knew I believed that sex addiction was a legitimate condition. He opened up a little, telling a few stories about some of the people he’d met in his group without ever saying who they were. There was one guy about his age who was also trying to save his marriage after having multiple affairs, and another man whose problems had started as a child when he was molested by a priest.

He said nothing about the root of his problems, though he did speculate about what the future held. “There are some girls who are going to be after me even more now, especially the wild ones,” he said. “But what I learned is that for the rest of my life I can’t have sex with someone unless I genuinely feel something for them. If I do, I’m putting myself in jeopardy.”

It was a statement that hinted at his lack of confidence in the future of his marriage. When I asked how things were going, he admitted he wasn’t sure Elin could ever overcome feeling betrayed. I told Tiger, “It’s normal that she feels it was all somehow about
her
. It’s going to take time for her to understand that it was about
you
. You did this to yourself and, unfortunately, Elin was really hurt in the process.”

I knew I’d ventured into sensitive territory with that statement, so I waited for Tiger to respond. Again, he just nodded. I guessed he agreed with me, but as was so often the case, I wasn’t really sure.

When I got back to Dallas, I thought a lot about Tiger and how I could help him. I probably doubled the rate at which I sent him text messages. I put a lot of thought into them because I was trying to demonstrate friendship. I hoped I could get him to be more in touch with his feelings and be able to express them. But I never got a response.

It was right before my next trip to Isleworth a week later, on March 16, that I learned that Tiger had decided to end his hiatus from competition at the Masters, which was less than a month away. I wasn’t consulted on the decision, and I was disappointed to hear the news. I thought it was a bad game plan. Too soon, too much pressure, too easy to have a confidence-killing disaster. Normally after a long absence, six weeks was the time that Tiger needed to get ready. With all he’d been through and the way he’d been holed up indoors for so long, I figured that, ideally, he should put in ten weeks before testing his game in a tournament. It was going to be a rush job. Still, I didn’t argue against the decision. I was fairly certain I wouldn’t change Tiger’s mind, and I didn’t want to be considered unsupportive at a sensitive time. He made the public announcement the next day.

From a selfish perspective, I wanted him to take a much longer break, even to the point of skipping all four majors. It would lessen the pressure on me in general, particularly because of what was coming up. The U.S. Open was at Pebble Beach, where ten years before, Tiger had won by 15 strokes in what is commonly considered the greatest major-championship performance of all time. A month later, the British Open would be played at St. Andrews, where it would be the ten-year anniversary of his eight-stroke victory. Returning to the scenes of that double would mean an endless media diet of “Tiger then” versus “Tiger now”—the peak of the Butch Harmon era versus the possible nadir of the Hank Haney era. It wasn’t something I was looking forward to.

When I returned to Isleworth a few days after the announcement, Tiger’s game was still erratic. Two weeks before the Monday of Masters week, Corey and I joined him on a trip to Augusta. Corey was actually a late fill-in. Tiger had originally invited one of his rehab friends to play—another thoughtful gesture—but at the last minute, the guy had canceled. On the early-morning drive to the airport, I asked Tiger how he felt to be outside Isleworth for the first time in six weeks. “Good,” he said, but nothing more, and the conversation stopped there. Just as his life was about to become public again, he seemed to be retreating deeper into himself.

To make sure there were no photo opportunities, Tiger drove his Escalade into the hangar where his Gulfstream G550, which he now owned, was being parked. After landing in Augusta, the plane was towed into the hangar, where a van from the Augusta National awaited us.

The club rules mandated that we had to play with a member, and our host was a former Augusta National club champion. Though Tiger’s game had been bad at Isleworth, it got worse at Augusta. I’d never seen him look as helpless on a golf course, as he sprayed several drives into the trees and mis-hit a bunch of irons. Rather than show anger, he got sullen and discouraged. When we got to the ninth hole, he decided not to hit his tee shot. At first I didn’t know what he was doing, so when I showed puzzlement, he said, “I’m not going to play for a couple of holes.” He proceeded to walk along with us on the ninth, tenth, and part of the eleventh hole without hitting a shot. It was a first. Before, when he played badly in practice, he’d get hot, but he’d also get motivated and play better. Now he was moping and quitting. Obviously, he was loaded down with thoughts.

We all stayed in one of the club’s cabins that night. Even though Tiger is considered a member of Augusta because he’s won the Masters, he isn’t a regular member, and club rules dictate that the regular member who was hosting us had to stay in the cabin as well. The next morning, the weather was cold and damp, making it hard to make the cleanest contact off the wet, tight turf. As I warmed up on the range, I could hear Tiger hitting balls behind me. I could tell from the slapping sound his clubhead was making at impact that he was repeatedly hitting iron shots fat. It didn’t get much better on the course. There was no way that, counting his first ball on every hole, Tiger broke 80. It was ugly, and though I still believed focused practice would bring his game back to a respectable level in time for the Masters, I was also starting to wonder whether Tiger would ever be the same player again.

The following week, we returned to Augusta. This time I didn’t play and focused totally on helping Tiger get ready. Tiger shot somewhere in the mid-70s in both his rounds and was still struggling.

The time had come for me to be assertive. Tiger was subdued on the ride back to the airport for the return flight. There was still plenty of daylight when we got to Orlando, so as we drove back to Isleworth, I went strong.

“Look, Tiger,” I said. “Just give me thirty minutes on the range. We can fix what you’re doing wrong, and we’ve got to fix it because you’re going to have no chance at the Masters if we don’t. And in these thirty minutes, I don’t want to hear how far you’re hitting it, or any of that shit. I just want you to try what I’m going to tell you.”

I got his attention. He didn’t protest, just said OK. I got his clubs onto his cart and we drove over to the practice tee. Right away, I focused on the bad habit that had gotten worse, dropping his head down and away from the target on the downswing. It was a tendency Tiger fell into when he became consumed with hitting the ball farther, which had happened more often in recent years as more and more young players outdrove him. To steady his downswing, I stood facing him as he took his address position, my right arm outstretched and holding the top of his head with my hand. Immediately he hit the ball better, and he continued to after I stepped away. To prove to him how much better his swing looked, I filmed him with my iPhone and showed him—something I rarely did, because I usually wanted the emphasis of our analysis to be based on ball flight. He agreed that he was hitting the ball with more control, but he also added, “Yeah, but it doesn’t go as far.” That frustrated me, especially when I saw that over the next few minutes of hitting more balls, he gradually returned to moving his head down and back and slinging his arms through impact. It was Tiger the student at his most stubborn.

There was another problem: Steve Williams. Since the scandal broke, I’d been in touch with Steve, who’d been in New Zealand. Steve is a tough customer who lives by an old-school code of behavior, and he was upset that Tiger hadn’t called him or returned his calls. He was particularly upset that Tiger hadn’t made it clear publicly that Steve hadn’t been involved in the womanizing in any way—didn’t even know about it, in fact. Steve told me the scandal had hurt his reputation in his home country and even caused some tension in his marriage. He’d even made public comments that Tiger had to “earn back my respect.”

In our phone conversations, Steve told me he was very eager to have a long talk with Tiger when he came to caddie at the Masters. He wanted to discuss his salary as well as ask that Tiger show him more appreciation verbally. And what he really wanted from Tiger was an apology.

I told Mark Steinberg that Tiger had to have a talk with Steve before Masters week, or their relationship was going to be damaged, perhaps irreparably. As much as he didn’t want to, Tiger first called Steve’s wife, Kirsty, in New Zealand. Kirsty was a good friend of Elin’s, so Tiger knew the conversation was going to be uncomfortable. Tiger said he told her that Steve was blameless. He also tried to get her to understand that his actions hadn’t been aimed at Elin but instead were a compulsion that had gotten out of control. I asked Tiger how that conversation went, and he shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “She was still mad, and she didn’t really understand.”

Meanwhile, Steve wanted a face-to-face meeting with Tiger, and he was told by Mark it would happen Saturday after Steve landed in Orlando and came to Isleworth. But when Steve went to Tiger’s house to see him, all he got was a lukewarm greeting. Tiger was preoccupied, and he told Steve he had to go somewhere and that they’d talk later.