E-Paper
Unsettling story of Tiger Woods: Good son, terrible husband, great golfer, good father and probably a drug addict too
Tiger Woods may be a great golfer but something is terribly wrong with him. Is he some kind of sociopath?
What's the matter with Tiger Woods? Why does he keep getting into totally avoidable troubles? Is he some kind of sociopath?
How else do you explain his accident on Friday in Florida, after which reports have emerged that the golfer might have been on some drugs because he took the breath-analyser but refused the urine test! At present, he is in jail.
Anyway, this was not the first time Woods had been in an accident. In 2021, the crash was so bad that many considered him lucky to have come out alive. He came out alive all right but surely it damaged his career in a big way. One can count his appearances on the fingers of one’s hand in competitive events since.
In 2017, he was found all over the wheel of his parked car. Then there is the most infamous one in 2009, when Woods hit a hydrant, a tree and hedges, after which his world got totally upside down. A series of extramarital affairs involving him came to the surface, which ended his seven-year marriage with the beautiful Elin Nordegren and, in many ways, ended his career. On the golf course, he has since been average, more often that not.
With 14 majors in his bag in 2009, he just needed five more to overtake Jack Nicklaus' record of 18. The way Woods was playing in those days, it was impossible to think that 17 years on, he would still be trailing Nicklaus by three majors.
The truth of the matter is that Woods has problems. He is like a sociopath who can't learn from their mistakes. If anything, he would repeat them. These accidents prove that.
Sometimes you would also think that he hasn't been able to forgive himself for what unfolded in 2009. Woods was a model sportsperson who had his worshippers all over the world. He was quiet, endearing and very successful. Extremely wealthy to boot.
He had become such a big name by 2009 that, despite very little success in the next one and a half decades, he still managed to join the billionaires' club. There are not many sportspersons who can boast that.
But as far as his game and personal life were concerned, something terribly went wrong. In recent years, he has been seen bucking up his son Charlie, an up-and-coming golfer, at various events. Earlier this week, he competed in the TGL indoor league finals, his first competitive participation in more than a year.
There were hopes that he might feature in next month's Masters, but now this has happened. In 2019 at Augusta National, when he won his first major since 2008, it appeared he was back on track and sure to break Nicklaus' record, but then the 2021 accident happened.
It's just not a story of being unfortunate. It's also a story where the lead character has refused to learn from their mistakes. Woods, son of a Thai mother and an African-American father, was raised to win. His parents were relentless, and he lived up to their expectations, one can say. Now, turns out he is carrying some trauma, which is getting in the way of his behaving normally.
