The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods (32 page)

Then I sent a text to Tiger saying we needed to talk. He texted back, “I can’t talk today. I’m with my kids.” The wheels were already in motion, so I put everything I was going to say in a text and sent it to Tiger. It said:

Tiger, in every instance when I am asked about Tiger Woods, I always answer in the best interests of Tiger Woods. Every time you are asked about Hank Haney, you never answer in the best interests of Hank Haney. It bothers me. It hurts me. If anybody should understand the value of friends at this point in their life, it should be you. I feel like I’ve been a great friend to you. I don’t feel I’ve gotten that in return.

He texted me back right away:

I always tell people you’re my coach. You take criticism of my game way too seriously. And maybe it’s time that we just take a little break.

I had another text ready. I thought,
How am I going to feel when I press the Send button?
It was definitely a big moment in my life. I pressed that Send button, and immediately felt a huge sense of relief. I sort of checked to make sure I wasn’t deluding myself, and realized that my emotion was genuine. I thought,
Oh my God, I can’t believe I feel this good
.

The message said:

Tiger, I appreciate everything you did for me. The incredible opportunity I had to work with you. It’s been an unbelievable six years. You’ve won a lot of tournaments, we’ve had a lot of great times. It’s taken me to a place in my profession that I would never ever have hoped to have been. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the opportunity, but it’s time for you to find another coach.

He responded,

Thanks, Hank. But we’re still going to work together.

I was surprised, but I wasn’t going to waver. I answered,

No we’re not. It’s finished. Done. Over. I’m no longer your coach.

A few seconds later, Tiger texted,

We’ll talk in the morning.

Amazingly, I later learned that Tiger did a telephone press conference in the afternoon supporting the AT&T National in which he referred to me as his coach while talking about how his neck injury affected his swing. “I talked to Hank about some of the stuff,” he said. “We’re still working on it. We have a lot of work to do.”

Not long afterward, the Golf Channel read my prepared statement, which I also posted on my website. It said, in part:

I have informed Tiger Woods this evening that I will no longer be his coach. I would like to thank Tiger for the opportunity that I have had to work with him over the past six-plus years. Tiger Woods has done the work to achieve a level of greatness I believe the game of golf has never seen before and I will always appreciate the opportunity that I have had to contribute to his successes.… It has been a great learning experience, and along the way Tiger has elevated me in my profession to a level that I never thought I would achieve before I had the opportunity to work with him.

I made sure to add,

Just so there is no confusion, I would like to make clear that this is my decision.

The next morning, Mark Steinberg called me. He said, “Hank, you handled everything well. Your statement was classy. Tiger’s fine about it. He’s going to issue a statement and say it was a joint decision.”

I said, “What? Mark, that’s bullshit.”

He said, “What do you mean?”

“That’s not what happened,” I said. “And you
know
that’s not what happened.” I was hot, and I just let go as I never had with Mark before. “That’s something that can get you in trouble with the media, telling a lie. That’s not what happened. And if you say it was, I’m not going to go along with it. I tell the truth.”

There was silence for a few seconds, before Mark said, “OK, OK.” Still, when Tiger’s statement came out, it didn’t acknowledge that I resigned. Instead, it said:

Hank Haney and I have agreed that he will no longer be my coach. Hank is an outstanding teacher and has been a great help to me, but equally important he is a friend. That will not change. I would like to thank him for all he has done for me the past six years.

That afternoon, Tiger called me. I felt and probably sounded emotional, and I’m sure he could sense it. He sort of reiterated his official statement, saying, “Thanks, Hank, so much for everything you’ve done. I felt like my game got so much better with you helping me. We have been great friends and the most important thing is to remain great friends. You know, we’re still going to work together.”

For some reason that I still can’t figure out, he just didn’t want to let go. “Tiger,” I said, “if you ever want me to watch you or help you with an opinion, as a friend I’ll be happy to do it. But we’re not going to work together. I’m never going to be your coach again.”

“We’re still going to work together,” he said again.

And I answered, “No, we’re not.” He kind of chuckled, and we said good-bye.

A few days later, Jim Gray came to my home in Dallas to do a long sit-down interview for the Golf Channel. When Jim asked me about whether I’d ever known Tiger to take performance-enhancing drugs, I said very firmly that even when I witnessed Tiger’s injections from Dr. Galea, I never saw anything suspicious, and I didn’t believe Tiger ever took any kind of PEDs. I added, “The only thing I knew about was his issue with the sex addiction.”

After the interview aired, I got a text from Tiger that said, “Thanks for telling everyone that I was in sex-addiction treatment.” I felt bad, because I’d intended to exonerate Tiger, and I’d assumed his sex therapy was common knowledge, since it had been widely reported. But he’d never actually publicly confirmed that he’d been treated for sex addiction.

The next morning, Mark Steinberg called me, fuming. “How could you do that?” he said, raising his voice. “How could you say that? How can he raise any money? This will kill his foundation.”

I said that I was sincerely sorry. “I tried to be very positive in that interview,” I said. “I didn’t mean to hurt him or cause him any problems. I apologize if I did.”

Mark didn’t let up, saying, “You better not be doing any more interviews.”

That hit me wrong. “Mark,” I said, “you don’t control me anymore. I’m going to talk to who I want to talk to.”

I hadn’t wanted there to be any bad blood, but now it appeared there might be. I figured my next meeting with Tiger would be awkward. I was pretty much done traveling to tournaments, so I didn’t expect to see him soon. But then I learned that he’d be playing at J. P. McManus’s pro-am in Ireland in July, where I was scheduled to do a clinic. I was nervous on the way to the event, hoping I wouldn’t have to see Tiger. There was a chance I wouldn’t, depending on when Tiger played on the two days I’d be there. Because he usually skipped pro-am dinners, I didn’t expect to see him there. But when Suzanne and I walked into the dining room the first night, there was Tiger at a table with J.P.

I sucked it up and walked right to him. When Tiger saw me, he stood up with a big smile and hugged me. “How you doin’, bud?” I asked. “Good as I can do,” he said. I told him to hang in there, and he said, “I’m making it.” I don’t know what Tiger said about me when I left, but while I was there, he was gracious. Except that doesn’t describe it exactly. I guess you could say that he was the same as always—warm and cold at the same time.

It was the last contact I’ve had with Tiger.

My departure was complicated, but I’m proud of the way I managed it. The analogy the whole experience brings to mind is that of a frog in a pot of water. When a frog is thrown into an already boiling pot, it will jump out. But when a frog is placed into water that is tepid, it will stay in. And if the temperature is raised gradually, it will stay in until it’s too late.

I guess I’d felt the water getting warmer, but until I hit that Send button, I hadn’t realized how hot it really was.

On the television screen, Tiger is studying a six-foot putt to win the Chevron World Challenge in December 2011. For nearly two years, he’s missed from this distance more than he ever did before. But something has shifted. On the previous hole, Tiger had made a birdie putt to tie for the lead, and now his face has the calm intensity that erases the doubt I’ve felt over every important shot he’s faced since the scandal. When the ball goes into the center, he’s once again simply Tiger, the guy who can make the last putt.

It means that Tiger has won his first tournament in the 27 he has played since hitting the fire hydrant on November 29, 2009. The Chevron isn’t an official event, but rather a select field invitational with only 18 players who get a nice payday and the Southern California star treatment before the holidays. Tiger has hosted the event as a way to raise money for his foundation, and in the ten times it has been held at Sherwood CC in Thousand Oaks, California, he has won five times and been second four times.

But the soft setup doesn’t diminish the victory as one of the most important of his career. Tiger has been in the wilderness since returning to competition at the 2010 Masters—mentally lost, injured, uncertain with his golf swing and tentative with the putter. After ranking number one in the Official World Golf Rankings for 667 of 723 weeks since January 1998—and never falling below number two during that time—Tiger dropped as low as 58th in 2011. Many said he’d never be back.

But something special is still in there, under the rubble. Whereas postscandal he’d responded to the few times he’d gotten in contention by backing up, now he doesn’t. He is clutch again. Tiger reacts with an unrestrained fist pump and yell, but a few minutes later he’s eerily matter-of-fact in his interview. The governor on his emotions is there to send a message: This is just another win, and winning is what I do. It’s that quality of self-belief, that implicit faith in his own specialness, that tells me Tiger shouldn’t be counted out yet in his bid to catch Jack Nicklaus’s major-championship record. It’s as if he’s wearing a sandwich board that says C
ONDUCTING
B
USINESS AS
U
SUAL
. Perhaps he believes that if he says it enough times, and walks the walk, the scandal and the victory drought that followed in its wake will simply fade away. Maybe he is right.

Meanwhile, there is an outpouring of pent-up pro-Tiger sentiment. As Tiger has gradually played better, fans and commentators, a lot of the same ones who’ve been bashing him, clearly want him back. There are retrospectives of Tiger’s journey. A topic of continuous speculation is whether Tiger can ever regain his best golf of the early 2000s.

It hits a nerve. I wonder, will that always be history’s verdict?

Three days after resigning as Tiger’s coach in May 2010, I decided to do some research of my own. As I sat down at my computer in my office in Dallas, I was nervous. For a change, it wasn’t because of what I might see on websites and blogs about how I’d messed up Tiger’s swing. And I’d taken relatively few hits for leaving Tiger; few saw it as the abandonment of a friend in a time of need. There
was
some unfounded but not unreasonable speculation that I’d made a preemptive strike before being fired, but most of the coverage was on my side. It was as if the revelations about Tiger had made it clear that being his coach was a wearing job, and that—as a cabinet member often bids adieu after a president’s troubled first term—it was time to move on.

But to achieve closure, there was still something I needed to do: add up the score.

In the last few years of my tenure, I’d resisted the urge to closely track the record Tiger had built with me as his coach. I knew he’d won a lot of tournaments in our last three years together. I had a strong sense that he’d achieved more consistency than ever. But I didn’t really want to know how I stood.